Archinect - News

Rafael Pelli and Gruen Associates push to restore father César’s masterwork San Bernardino City Hall after 52 years

2024-05-13T17:21:00-04:00

César Pelli was a rising architect when he got the job of designing a new City Hall for San Bernardino. [...] a push is on to renovate City Hall and restore it to use. The lead architect: Rafael Pelli, son of César Pelli. [...] “The idea is to preserve what’s great about it and make it better,” Pelli said of the building. “The bones of it are very good. We just need to bring it forward.”

Chief of among the estimated $60 million renovation tasks is the work of replacing the building’s over 6,000 original windows, which Rafael Pelli says will now be double pane for improved insulation against the heat. The City of San Bernardino, California, shut down operations in the building in 2017 due to seismic concerns. The design features an early version of the same glass curtain facade solution later used in the Pacific Design Center. As the San Bernardino Sun reported, a decision to finance the expected four-year restoration could come as soon as late May.

Inspired by Japanese architecture, Pelli Clarke & Partners opens adaptive reuse sake brewery in Hyde Park, New York

2024-05-02T13:54:00-04:00

Pelli Clarke & Partners and Jun Mitsui & Associates have shared photos of the recently completed Asahi Shuzo’s Dassai Blue Brewery project in Hyde Park, New York. The adaptive reuse of a former grocery store into the first American home for the popular Japanese brand pays homage to the naturalism of its native country while mirroring the “dance” of fermentation.

Image courtesy Pelli Clarke & Partners

Inside, 55,000 square feet of space for rice washing, Koji-making, drying, steaming, and other parts of the fermentation process are enabled without any major alterations being made to the building’s footprint. Production flows counterclockwise to accommodate a volume of approximately 140,000 cases annually.

Image courtesy Pelli Clarke & Partners

Elements from traditional Japanese architecture feature throughout, and the exterior is also rendered in the same character, beset by a materials palette led by Yakisugi...

Pelli Clarke & Partners opens Mori JP Tower, Japan's new tallest building

2024-03-18T13:56:00-04:00

Pelli Clarke & Partners has shared news of their completed work on the Mori JP Tower project inside the Azabudai Hills District in Tokyo. The new tallest building in Japan is a 64-story mixed-used design complementing the two other high-rise structures included in the redevelopment district and was completed last fall at a total height of 330 meters (1,082 feet).

“Mori JP Tower, and with it Azabudai Hills, is among the first buildings visitors see upon arrival to Tokyo, creating a new center and landmark for the city,” Mitch Hirsch, Partner at Pelli Clarke & Partners, said in a project announcement of the scheme. “To design a tower of this significance in a city renowned for its unique skyline is a privilege.”

Photo by Jason O'Rear

The building is designed to evoke the symmetry of a lotus flower form, clad in a distinctive pearl-grey glass curtain facade and topped by a crown made from four separate curved glass pedals.

Photo by Jason O'Rear

Photo by Jason O'Rear...

Pelli Clarke & Partners completes the tallest building in Mexico City

2023-01-23T11:01:00-05:00

Pelli Clarke & Partners has completed Torre Mítikah, the tallest building in Mexico City. Situated in the city’s Coyoacán neighborhood, the 877-foot-tall residential skyscraper is described by its designers as a “window to the heavens.”

Image credit: Jason O'Rear

Externally, the sleek tower features a gently curved taper on the north and south facades. The design approach for the form centered on creating a “timeless quality with a strong sense of stability,” and drew inspiration from the “Axis Mundi” concept: an imaginary vertical axis linking the earth and sky.

Image credit: Jason O'Rear

Inside, the scheme provides 1.1 million square feet of residential space composed of three different types of living space. While the tower's base is occupied by multi-story townhouses, the mid-levels house two and three-bedroom apartments. The upper levels are devoted to luxury penthouses with indoor gardens, exclusive terraces, and heliport access.

Image credit: Jason O'Rear

News of the tower’s com...

Tower frame on what will be Japan's tallest building has been completed in Tokyo

2022-04-27T17:21:00-04:00

Construction has been completed on the structure of Japan’s second tallest building, the 330m Toranomon-Azabudai Project A District tower, which will be second only to the Tokyo Tower.

The tower is part of the larger Toranomon-Azabudai District Category 1 Urban Redevelopment Project, which will include two other buildings, all designed by Pelli Clarke & Partners, that will host offices, residences, a hotel, an international school, retail shops, restaurants, and cultural facilities. Together they will form an 8.1-hectare “modern urban village” featuring no less than 2.4 hectares of greenery and a 6,000-square-meter central square.

Image: Pelli Clarke & Partners

When complete, the tower is expected to be Japan’s tallest building, just shy of the nearby landmark Tokyo Tower. The entire redevelopment complex is set to be complete by 2023.

Rafael Pelli talks about the shifting dynamics of his newly renamed firm

2021-12-06T16:56:00-05:00

One of the biggest desires right now is for flexibility. How can you create spaces that can be repurposed for multifunctional spaces, so you can have a big dinner with a catering kitchen, then close the doors and make it a yoga room? It’s key now to think flexibly about the use of space, then think about flexibility over time, meaning how spaces might evolve.

Rafael Pelli, the son of influential high-rise designer César Pelli, recently talked to Mansion Global about some of the design challenges and new mandates that have taken over the industry in the time following his father’s death in July of 2019.

“Urban cores will go back to being largely what they were,” the architect said. “The very factors that led to their existence and growth remain — it’s that need to communicate, together. At root of that is a basic belief that a lot of really useful things happen outside of a formal meeting [...] That’s not replaced by technology.”

Related on Archinect: In Praise of César Pelli's Quirky Corners

Pelli also commented on the firm’s recent name change, which he says was meant to shift the narrative away from the damaging Great Man archetype of designers as embodied in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead.

“The most important change was to recognize there’s a core group of people who’ve been working at the firm almost since the beginning. There’s a tende...

Archinect - News

Rafael Pelli and Gruen Associates push to restore father César’s masterwork San Bernardino City Hall after 52 years

Inspired by Japanese architecture, Pelli Clarke & Partners opens adaptive reuse sake brewery in Hyde Park, New York

Pelli Clarke & Partners​ opens Mori JP Tower, Japan's new tallest building

Pelli Clarke & Partners completes the tallest building in Mexico City

Tower frame on what will be Japan's tallest building has been completed in Tokyo

Rafael Pelli talks about the shifting dynamics of his newly renamed firm

Pelli Clarke & Partners opens Mori JP Tower, Japan's new tallest building