List of works by Rafael Viñoly

Inaugurated on 23 May 1968, the main office of the Banco Ciudad de Buenos Aires employed a traffic-stoppingly innovative design: the extensive use of glass bricks (a modernist trademark) and a glazed panel that gave on pedestrian traffic, signifying institutional transparency as well as accessibility to all Argentinians, regardless of socioeconomic class.

An open site allowing pedestrian traffic through most of its footprint creates a large public realm, while the presence of solaria, decks, shops, gardens, and other services throughout the project's multi-level internal circulation scheme encourages interaction among its inhabitants.

The Metabolists advocated for modular design based on "a core construction capable of branching", treelike, "and expanding over time" to create "flexible urban environments" able to keep pace with population growth and the shifting needs of an ever-changing metropolis.

The innovative design breaks up the monotonous, oppressive regularity and rectilinearity of most such office towers, notes the Princeton Architectural Press monograph Rafael Viñoly, "by cutting away or pushing back the façade wherever the floor area of the roughly rectangular plan exceeds the programmatic requirements.

"[8] Designed to foster community and facilitate circulation via pedestrian zones connecting the development's residences, landscaped plazas, playgrounds, and commercial spaces, the 222,200-foot ALUAR factory housing complex in Puerto Madryn, in the Argentinian province of Chubut, reflects the theoretical emphasis on social engineering that characterized public architecture in Argentina in the late 1960s.

Hired to "convert a historic high school building into a research library" (Muchnic) at the City University of New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Viñoly ended up designing a substantially expanded version of the original project, which evolved to include a theater, swimming pool, gymnasium, indoor track, and tennis courts.

The renovation inserted a sky-lit interior plaza within the high school's cast-iron columns and load-bearing masonry walls; around its perimeter is the college library, which includes one of the largest criminal justice collections in the United States".

Applicants had their work cut out for them: bounded on the east by the curving viaduct of the famous "Bullet Train" and on the west by the moat and outer gardens of the Imperial Palace, the awkwardly shaped site defied cookie-cutter solutions.

In designing the large, complex facility, Viñoly had to reconcile the security demands of an urban threat environment transformed, after construction had begun, by the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11; the energy-efficiency requirements of a greener architecture; and his desire to create a structure whose public courtyard, in the words of his firm's website, embraces "neighboring communities with an open and engaging civic plaza".

[27] Nevertheless, the architect's website contends, "The Hall of Justice expresses the judicial system's openness and transparency" through its translucent curtain wall, whose fritted glass "allows daylight to permeate deep within the building" yet "screens the private circulation corridors.

"[31] Like the Princeton stadium, the visually arresting Van Andel Institute for cancer research in Grand Rapids, Michigan makes ample use of natural light to create psychologically appealing interior spaces that prioritize the human use of buildings while reaping significant rewards in energy efficiency.

"Its structure of folded steel ribs sheathed in plate glass renders an incredibly transparent enclosure with a free span of approximately 50 meters," according to the monograph Rafael Viñoly (Princeton Architectural Press, 2002).

"[35] Overlooking the Allegheny River in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the 1.4 million-square-foot David L. Lawrence Convention Center marries Viñoly's commitment to green architecture—RVA's use of natural ventilation, gray water reclamation, native landscaping (eliminating the need for irrigation), low-temperature air distribution, and daylighting (which illuminates 75% of the building) earned the Center Platinum LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification—to a cresting, wavelike suspension-cable roof that pays homage to Pittsburgh's historical sense of itself both as a "City of Bridges" and a Promethean "Steel City," powered by industrial innovation and manufacturing might.

The design "draws structural inspiration from the bridges that span Pittsburgh's Allegheny River to create a suspended roof with a rising contour that encourages passive ventilation and shelters a vast, column-free space," the RVA site informs.

In order to minimize thermal loading on the mechanical systems, a series of 31 12-meter-tall, computer-controlled aluminum louvers track the movement of the sun to provide optimal shading to the south-facing curtain wall at all times, creating a dynamic interplay of light and shadow in the atrium throughout the day."

... [T]he museum, as revised by Viñoly, combines spatial clarity with an abundance of natural light, a generosity of public spirit, and a connection to its urban surroundings...[49]Located in Ashburn, Virginia, the 281-acre Janelia Research Campus is part of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Its community of scientific researchers and technologists ("integrated teams of lab scientists and tool-builders", in the words of the facility's website) focuses primarily on problems in mechanistic cognitive neuroscience, 4D cellular physiology, molecular tools and imaging, and computation and theory.

The critic Simon Richards thought the building bristled with hostility toward the "Victorian eclecticism" and "Art Deco stylings" of the surrounding neighborhood, presenting "only a paranoid layering of sharpened blades that curve around to protect it from all angles".

"[57] Officially named for its address but derided by critics as "the Walkie-Talkie" because of its topheavy shape—a chunky oblong that bulges outward as it rises, like a Lego block left too long in scorching sunlight—20 Fenchurch Street is inarguably the most controversial of Viñoly's projects, no mean feat for the architect Curbed described as "prolific and polarizing".

"If you book three days in advance, or reserve a table at one of the overpriced dining concepts," wrote the architecture critic Oliver Wainwright, "you can go through airport-style security and be treated to a meagre pair of rockeries, in a space designed with all the finesse of a departure lounge".

Before it was even open, it was found that its south-facing concave glass facade channelled the sun's rays into a deadly beam of heat, capable of melting the bumper of a Jaguar, blistering painted shopfronts and singeing carpets—with temperatures hot enough to fry an egg on the pavement."

Closed in 1983 after more producing a fifth of London's electricity for more than a half century, the Battersea Power Station—familiar to many as the hulking icon of smokestack capitalism on the cover of the Pink Floyd album Animals—sat dormant, slipping into decrepitude until October 14, 2022, when it reopened as "a mixed-use sustainable development offering commercial and retail functions as well as residential, cultural, and event spaces interspersed with community facilities" (Rafael Viñoly Architects website) on the South Bank of the Thames, in the Nine Elms neighborhood.

Viñoly envisioned "three primary streets that link the Power Station to the site's southern perimeter and through to a future extension of the waterfront park and river walk" and a complex whose architectural vocabulary is "defined by a series of varied typologies that reflect the different character areas of the public realm.

"[80] Viñoly's bold design, "which takes up the equivalent of five stories with staggered levels arranged in a double helix instead of traditional floor slabs spanning the whole building footprint", posed significant challenges, noted ENR.

And, as ENR noted, "lacking conventional floors and columns also was an engineering puzzle... 'There are two spirals that create a number of levels, like a parking garage almost,'" said an interviewee.The solution was using multiple 55-sq-ft bays that step upward around a central atrium, which itself has a sloping perimeter walkway and features conference rooms that "hang" from the glass and steel roof's beams.

You then experience the Senate replica—with its yellow gallery walls, navy and red textiles, Levanto marble, cherry desks, and oval tray ceiling—as a sunburst.Mark Favermann, writing for Berkshire Fine Arts, was less laudatory, judging the Institute "not very visually celebratory" and lamenting that "this is minimalism just being too minimum.

As always with RVA, environmental impact and energy efficiency were guiding precepts: the campus's "narrow streets and building massings ... are scaled to adopt the optimal ratio of shading and composed according to prevailing winds to promote natural ventilation.

Ross interviewed some of the "tragically underpaid and ill-treated migrant workers" who helped build NYU Abu Dhabi, many of whom were reduced to de facto servitude by the crippling debt they owed the recruitment companies that brought them to the UAE.

[91] A mixed-use tower comprising residential, retail, and commercial spaces, 432 Park is one of Rafael Viñoly's signature buildings, a swaggeringly bold architectural statement and, undeniably, a lightning rod for popular outrage at the super-rich.

"Set into a five-acre tranquil landscape" on the banks of Mark Holtz Lake, a man-made pond near the 1994 Ballpark baseball stadium replaced by Globe Life Field, "the Museum complex's primary building volume seemingly hovers above ground by 40 feet, supported by five concrete megacolumns, each representing a branch of the United States Armed Forces," notes the architect's website.