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.”

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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...

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