César Pelli (October 12, 1926 – July 19, 2019) was an Argentine architect who designed some of the world's tallest buildings and other major urban landmarks.

[5][6] In 2008, the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat presented him with The Lynn S. Beedle Lifetime Achievement Award.

They had two children: Denis, a neurobiologist and Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University and Rafael Pelli, like his father also a well-known architect.

[17] After his graduation from the University of Illinois School of Architecture, Pelli worked for Eero Saarinen in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, for ten years.

[18][19] While with Eero, he worked on the TWA terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport[20] and the Morse and Stiles colleges at Yale University.

[35][36] In May 2004, Pelli was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the University of Minnesota Duluth where he designed Weber Music Hall.

[38] Buildings designed by Pelli during this period are marked by further experimentation with a variety of materials (most prominently stainless steel) and his evolution of the skyscraper.

One Canada Square at Canary Wharf in London (opened in 1991); Plaza Tower in Costa Mesa, California (completed 1991); and the NTT Headquarters in Tokyo (finished 1995) were preludes to a landmark project that Pelli designed for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami, Florida, opened in 2006, the same year that Pelli's design for the Minneapolis Central Library completed construction, as well as the Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall and Samueli Theater in Costa Mesa, California.

[48] That same year, he received the Lynn S. Beedle Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH).

[56] Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, whose tenure witnessed the designing and construction of the Twin Towers, praised him as a "great architect"[57] while expressing his condolences to Pelli's surviving family members.