The final project of César Pelli—the architect behind major buildings such as San Francisco’s Salesforce Tower, Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas Towers, and Los Angeles’s Pacific Design Center—has been completed. But unlike these large-scale skyscrapers and monumental buildings that catapulted him to fame, it’s a modestly sized space that melts into the landscape.
For Pelli, who died in 2019 at the age of 92, it’s a poignant final work for both its location and for its subject matter. Located in northwestern Argentina, the museum is dedicated fully to Lola Mora (1886–1936), a Beaux Arts sculptor who was one of Argentina’s most famous artists before a conservative government ended her career. The Lola Mora Cultural Center has been designed to display her most significant works: six marble sculptures depicting human virtues that were created to stand outside Argentina’s National Congress building in Buenos Aires. Located in the provincial capital of San Salvador de Jujuy, not far from the city where both Mora and Pelli were born, the museum frames these sculptures and brings Mora’s nearly forgotten story to life.
“César was really thrilled by the opportunity. And it meant a lot to him,” says Rafael Pelli, the late architect’s son and a partner at the firm Pelli Clarke & Partners. “He worked until the end. But as he diminished his workload, it was just on stuff in Argentina. . . . This is probably the one that had the greatest meaning for him personally, and I think probably has the greatest resonance within Argentina.”
The museum is a relatively small, 32,000-square-foot facility. Its fanning, leaflike form guides visitors to a curved panoramic gallery, where the six sculptures sit in front of a wall of windows. Fully wrapped in glass, the main gallery floats visitors up into the canopy of the surrounding forest before bringing them face-to-face with the art. After more than a century, all six sculptures can finally be seen together.
Commissioned in 1903, the sculptures depict human figures and a pair of growling lions in the style of ancient Greek sculpture, each representing virtues like liberty, progress, and justice. One, a seated female figure wearing a crown, is holding a sharp sword. Another crowned female figure stands defiantly, the broken links of a chain in each hand. Installed at a moment of progress in Argentina, the sculptures were removed from the Congress building just 15 years later. “There was a change in government, as often happens, and then there’s a different opinion about a lot of things,” Rafael Pelli says, noting that the incoming administration was “very conservative.”
“They didn’t mind men sculpting nude figures, but they didn’t want a woman sculpting nude figures,” Pelli adds. “They thought it was scandalous and inappropriate. And they basically put an end to her sculpting career.”
The sculptures were scattered and left outdoors, where they began to decay. About a decade ago, the governor of the province of Jujuy set out to reunite them and bring them indoors. He reached out to César Pelli personally to commission the museum.
Pelli embraced the project and developed its main concept. He deputized longtime collaborators and fellow Argentines Susana La Porta Drago and her husband, Axel Zemborain, to lead the project.
“[Mora] was underappreciated in her time, and I think that that was something that really fascinated César about her story,” says La Porta Drago. “What really intrigued us all very much is how she was capable of bouncing back and reinventing herself.”
After Mora’s sculptures were banished from Buenos Aires and her sculpting career was effectively ended in 1918, she pivoted. For a time she worked as a city planner in Argentina, and also as an artist and writer. Later she delved into research and became an entrepreneur, exploring the northern provinces of Argentina and launching shale oil mining operations. “She was really trying to push the limit, as if trying to push the limit of sculpture was not enough,” La Porta Drago says. “Being a woman in that age and working on mining was quite outrageous.”
This venture did not pan out, and left Mora deeply in debt. She died in relative obscurity in 1936. La Porta Drago says César Pelli was inspired by Mora’s life story, and the local governor’s effort to honor her artistic contribution.
But there was one point of conflict as the project took shape. “César didn’t want the sculptures to be in an enclosed space,” La Porta Drago says. “There was a lot of pushback.” The governor had to press his case to César Pelli, showing several documents from experts arguing that the sculptures would deteriorate if they were left outdoors.
Pelli relented, but not before altering the design to put the sculptures as close to the outdoors as possible. He designed the curving gallery as a wall of glass, cantilevered over a hillside and nudging right up against a vast canopy of massive trees. “The concept was the sculptures have to be always against the green. They have to be sitting against the landscape,” La Porta Drago says.
Pelli Clarke & Partners worked closely with the landscape architecture firm Balmori Associates, not coincidentally a firm founded by César Pelli’s late wife, Diana Balmori. “Because César understood the importance of landscape and Balmori understood that, we knew that the trees were untouchable,” La Porta Drago says. The museum’s leaflike plan was shaped by bending it around the existing trees. “For him, it was essential to understand the site.”
Despite his limited involvement in the day-to-day workings of his firm during his final years, César Pelli’s fingerprints are all over the design of the museum. But La Porta Drago says some changes were made posthumously. The most notable change is the addition of a central tower, which holds wind turbines. Though the winds in this area are not significant and the turbines provide maybe 5% of the museum’s energy, the local governor called on La Porta Drago and Zemborain to add some kind of vertical element to the project. Positioned on the top of a hill, it is otherwise virtually invisible to much of the town below. “I think it works out very nicely,” La Porta Drago says.
And La Porta Drago and Zemborain’s addition may not be so far from what César Pelli himself would have proposed, according to his son Rafael. “They spent 30 years working with César,” Rafael Pelli says. “There was a really deep understanding of César’s beliefs and philosophies. In the studio, he was a teacher all his life, but he always gave us a lot of rope to propose things. It was very easy to have him in your mind, to know what he would want, what he wouldn’t want, and how to follow through in his spirit.”
