SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — As we continue to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, we are bringing you the story of the man behind the iconic Salesforce Tower: the tallest building in San Francisco.
ABC7 News Reporter Luz Pena spoke with his son about the legacy of his father in the city and the world.
Cesar Pelli is known as one of the greatest architects of the 20th century, but to Rafael Pelli, he was simply “Papa.”
“I loved working with my father. I was lucky,” said Rafael Pelli.
Rafael got a front row seat to his dad’s story and legacy, feeling inspired by him at an early age.
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“I was overexposed to it as a child. I love to draw. I love to make things. I would make models,” Rafael said.
Cesar Pelli died in 2019 at 92 years old. Rafael treasures every story his dad shared with him and his brother, especially the ones about growing up in San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina and the moment he first considered architecture.
“It was one step away from arbitrary that he chose architecture. He was looking at a catalog from the university of all the different fields, and he was interested in philosophy, but he chose architecture, because in the catalog it said it combined art history, drawing and mathematics. And he thought, ‘Well, those are all things I like to do, and I’m good at it. I think that could be fun,'” Rafael said.
In the 50’s, Cesar was granted a scholarship to complete his master’s degree in architecture in the U.S., a move that would change his life, and later skylines, throughout the world.
“My father was in his early 20s. My mother was in her late teens, and my mother was just pregnant. They came on a one-year scholarship to the University of Illinois, and they decided to risk this big adventure,” Rafael said.
Taking their two sons to Argentina to connect to their roots was key to the Pelli family.
“They would have me stay for 6- or 8-weeks during summer vacation, and I would bounce between all of my relatives,” said Pello. “We used to eat a lot of meat, which I can’t eat anymore!”
Rafael thinks back to his summers in Argentina as moments full of joy and culture that he says shaped him.
“There were things about Argentina which influenced me, probably in ways that I don’t even know. And certainly, my parents had just a very rich culture,” he said.
Cesar carried that culture with him throughout his life, going on to be named one of the 10 most influential living American Architects by the American Institute of Architects, and designing some of the world’s most iconic buildings. Among them, the Petronas Towers in Malaysia, the International Finance Center in Hong Kong, the World Financial Center in New York City and the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco.
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To truly grasp Pelli’s vision, we had to go to the top of the Salesforce Tower, where you can see the entire city. Behind the construction over $2 million man hours and 12,000 tons of steel.
A model of the Salesforce Tower stands tall at their firm in New York City.
“The Salesforce Tower was a very special project for my father,” Rafael said. “He always thought, these are two buildings that come together as a package. It was the Salesforce Tower, but it was also the Salesforce Transportation Center. And so, it really exemplifies a lot of his belief in cities, is that you create beautiful buildings — which are attuned to their use — but you also create public space.”
As the Senior Partner at their firm, Rafael worked with his dad on other projects that changed the way people experienced buildings.
“My father would love to say he didn’t want to see pictures of his buildings with no people. And, he said, it’s the people that make it work. It’s the people that give it life. That’s why we designed it,” Rafael said.
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Rafael says what truly touched him was to see the lives his dad changed and the people he empowered.
“Easily more than 30 people who have gone off to start their own firms afterwards, with this as sort of a launching pad of kind of being taught and being allowed to grow under Cesar’s watch,” Rafael said. “He loved to teach, allowing each person to kind of grow into themselves. And that was a quality that he had as a father with me and my brother, too.”
Cesar Pelli loved teaching so much, that he considered doing it full time.
“It was his nature. He was, I would say, first and foremost, a teacher. He taught all his life. He loved to teach. And he, on two or three occasions in his life, almost gave up architecture entirely to teach, even coming to Yale to take over the deanship of the architecture school in 1977. He imagined he was not going to be practicing much.”
Rafael Pelli has become a recognized architect himself, with his own take and focus on sustainable designs across the world, in countries like India, Brazil and throughout the U.S.
“Each building we do is different, and my father felt like each building needed to respond to its environment, its neighborhood,” Rafael said.
He is now a son building his own legacy, while staying connected to his roots and looking up to see “Papa” in each design.
“I see a project of his that that I may not have worked on, but it’s also a way for me to connect with him across time,” Rafael said.
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