Acclaimed by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 1991 as one of the ten most influential living American architects, Cesar Pelli (born 1926) has designed some of the most remarkable buildings--ranging from high-rise office towers to private homes--in the late 20th century.

Chief among Pelli's award-winning achievements are the San Bernardino City Hall in San Bernardino, California; the Pacific Design Center Phases I and II in Los Angeles, California; the United States Embassy in Tokyo, Japan; and the World Financial Center and Winter Garden at Battery Park, New York, which has been hailed as one of the ten best works of American architecture designed since 1980.

Though Pelli trained as a modern architect in the 1950s and was influenced by Eero Saarinen, he remains unclassifiable. His structures have been praised by Douglas Davis in a 1986 Newsweek article as "lyrical, technically sophisticated buildings that are neither `modern' nor `postmodern.' Each...