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http://www.news-gazette.com/story.cfm?Number=16473
CHAMPAIGN - He has designed skyscrapers, performing arts centers and museums around the globe, including the world's tallest buildings, but now Cesar Pelli has returned "home" for a labor of love.
Pelli and his son, Rafael Pelli, collaborated on the new University of Illinois College of Business building, and the design is winning rave reviews on campus. Plans for the $60 million project, to be financed with state money and private donations, were unveiled recently.
For Cesar Pelli, the project has been a homecoming of sorts.
A native of Argentina, Pelli came to the United States in 1952 with his wife on a nine-month scholarship to the UI. He expected to return to Argentina, but "we loved it here," he said. They were from a small provincial city, and Champaign-Urbana was an ideal transition to the United States.
"We were completely naive. If we had come to New York, I don't think we would have survived even two months," he said in an interview. "We were so warmly received. The people were so generous, so kind, so open, it was just a marvelous place to be."
He stayed an extra year to teach at the UI, then accepted an offer to work with acclaimed architect Eero Saarinen in Michigan.
In 1977, he was named dean of the Yale School of Architecture and established Cesar Pelli & Associates in New Haven, Conn. His son, who received a bachelor's degree at Yale and a master's in architecture from Harvard, later joined the firm and now runs its New York office.
Pelli received a gold medal for lifetime achievement from the American Institute of Architects, which also named him one of the 10 most influential living American architects in 1991.
Among the firm's notable projects: the World Financial Center and Winter Garden and an addition to the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan; headquarters for The Hague and several U.S. banks; and performing arts centers in Miami, Charlotte, N.C., Cincinnati and Japan.
But Pelli is perhaps best known for the 1,483-foot Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the world's tallest buildings when they opened in 1998.
The project posed a unique challenge: how to design a massive, modern skyscraper appropriate for Malaysia, a relatively new country in a tropical climate with an overwhelmingly Muslim population.
Pelli designed a pair of towers based on Islamic art, which relies heavily on geometric principles. The towers are two interlaced squares overlaid with eight semicircular lobes, making a 16-point star, he said. The interplay of flat and curved surfaces, and the stainless steel finish, reflect a constantly changing light, he said.
"They are buildings of great, great richness. They seem like natural things that have grown there," he said.
By comparison, a four-story UI academic building may sound mundane, but not to Pelli.
"This is not mundane at all. Each design problem has its soul. And I think our task is to discover that soul and respond to it, and make it sing."
Pelli said he jumped at the chance to design something for the UI. His firm had competed once before on a UI project but was not selected.
"In many ways, it's like designing a building in your home town," Pelli said. "I have a great deal of love and respect for the campus here at the University of Illinois. I'm anxious to see this building go up."
Pelli visited the UI a half-dozen times to meet with campus officials about the project, and his son is here every other week.
"For me, on a personal level, it's been a great way to have him reminisce about his first experiences in this country, when he came here with my mother," Rafael Pelli said. "It's prompted a lot of stories I haven't heard."
For inspiration, Cesar Pelli went back to the UI buildings he had always loved - several around the main Quad, including Lincoln Hall - to view them with an architect's eye and see "what made them so special" and how they gave the campus such "enormous character."
"Those qualities we have tried to reproduce in a contemporary way," he said. "We are not copying anything. We are designing a building that will be seen as a natural member of a family of buildings that makes the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign."
Avijit Ghosh, dean of the College of Business, said Pelli and his son have been easy to work with, despite their international stature. Rather than impose their own ideas, they listened to what the college wanted and translated that into a stunning architectural design, he said.
"It's tremendously exciting to have someone like him, not only because he's a well-known architect but because he has brought to this project a degree of imagination and creativity we very much appreciate and very much needed," Ghosh said.
Exterior honors past; interior looks forward
CHAMPAIGN - From the street, the new College of Business building pays respect to its traditional red-brick-and-limestone neighbors. Inside, it's a different story.
A soaring commons looks out over a new courtyard through a three-story glass wall. Roof lines morph from traditional to contemporary, and an elliptical auditorium provides sculptural contrast to the linear, U-shaped building.
Cesar and Rafael Pelli said their challenge was to create something that pays homage to the old campus yet presents a contemporary, forward-looking design - a fresh interpretation of what campus architect Charles Platt might have done.
The building will also help define a new quadrangle for the southwest portion of campus, bordered by Sixth Street, Gregory Drive, Fourth Street and Peabody Drive.
"It really captures, I think, what we wanted to do with this building," said business Dean Avijit Ghosh. "We're looking forward to this becoming a landmark for the campus."
The 153,900-square-foot building will be built at Sixth and Gregory, just west of Wohlers Hall, headquarters for the College of Business.
Cesar Pelli said it was important to design something that fit comfortably with other college buildings. But "as soon as you are in the interior, it will be totally new and fantastic, a great gathering space that will really become the heart and soul of the college."
One wing, facing Gregory, will house graduate students and the MBA program. A second wing, facing Sixth, will house undergraduates and the accountancy program. They flank the commons, envisioned as a place where students and faculty will gather informally - sort of a modern version of the library, Rafael Pelli said.
"I'm a great believer in the academic importance of informal discussions," said Cesar Pelli, who has taught at Yale and several other universities. "Those are the places where one learns the most, sometimes more than in a class. When you go out and discuss a subject with other friends, that is when it really penetrates your mind and connects with other ideas and becomes fertile.
"Teaching and learning is as important to me as designing," he said.
The commons, in fact, is just one of many "breakout spaces" in the building where UI business students can work together on case studies, Rafael Pelli said. Much of today's education focuses on team projects, but older classroom buildings weren't designed that way, Ghosh said.
The college had requested a more "modest" lobby/gathering space directly outside the auditorium, where students and faculty could meet for a cup of coffee or host more formal receptions and student presentations, Rafael Pelli said.
The architects enlarged the concept into the expansive commons and gave it a connection to the outdoors so that space, too, could be used for meetings and public gatherings, he said.
The state-of-the-art auditorium provides a transition from the building to the courtyard and outdoor seating areas. It was designed as "a looser element against the rigidness of the bars and even the plain glass wall of the commons," Rafael Pelli said.
"We wanted it to be visually identified from the outside," he said. "This will be a universitywide amenity."
It will feature full data and video connections for remote lectures, presentations by business leaders in other cities, video conferencing or the transmission of campus events "to a broader audience anywhere in the world," he said.
The building also includes several environmentally friendly features, known as sustainable design - most notably, "green roofs" near the auditorium and on a fourth-floor terrace just off the faculty offices. A traditional waterproof roofing system underneath an 18-inch soil mixture will allow plants, shrubs or even low trees to grow. Besides being pleasant to look at, green roofs cut down "significantly" on heat and glare, Rafael Pelli said.
The UI is hoping to receive some state planning money for the $60 million project this year and begin construction by late 2005 or early 2006. If all goes well, it could be completed by 2008, Ghosh said.
"This is a top priority for the campus," Ghosh said.
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