Rafael Viñoly
FAIA, JIA, SCA, FRIBA


In Rafael Viñoly’s nearly forty years of practice in the United States, Latin America, East Asia and Europe, his work has always been driven by the belief that the essential responsibility of architecture is the elevation of the public realm. As in his much-publicized proposal for the World Trade Center site, his deepest focus has been on maximizing the opportunity for the real civic investment generated by every construction project.

Viñoly was born in Uruguay in 1944 and by the age of 20 was a founding partner of Estudio de Arquitectura, which would become one of the largest design studios in Latin America. His celebrated early work transformed the landscape of Argentina, where this practice was based. In 1978 Viñoly moved to the United States with his family and, after serving briefly as a guest lecturer at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, he permanently settled in New York City in 1979.

In 1983, Viñoly founded Rafael Viñoly Architects PC, a New York City-based firm with offices in Lower Manhattan and London that employs over 170 people. Through this highly developed entity, Viñoly has completed many critically acclaimed public sector buildings as well as private and institutional commissions. His first major New York project was the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, which was completed in 1988. In 1989, he won an open international competition to design the largest and most important cultural complex in Japan, the Tokyo International Forum. Completed in 1996, this design secured Viñoly’s reputation as an architect of great imagination and immense professional rigor with a proven capacity to create beloved civic and cultural spaces. The opening of the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia in 2001 marked a similar success in the United States. The building, home to the Philadelphia Orchestra, one the country’s oldest and most cherished cultural institutions, has already established itself as a favorite civic gathering space in the heart of the city.

Viñoly’s work is marked by a sustained structural originality, which transcends the passing fads of architectural movements. At home with both large- and small-scale projects, his recent work ranges from university buildings such as the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University to leading edge biomedical and nanosystems research facilities such as the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Janelia Farm Research Campus in Virginia, the Porter Neuroscience Research Center at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland, and the University of California, Los Angeles, Nanosystems Research Institute. His work also encompasses courthouses, private residences, athletic facilities, and performing arts venues such as the new home for Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City and the Leicester City Theatre and Performing Arts Centre in the United Kingdom. Among Viñoly’s museum projects are the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Children’s Museum and the recently completed Nasher Museum at Duke University.

In addition to his many successes in competitions - including his selection for the expansion of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts - Viñoly’s work has been recognized in the world’s leading design publications and by numerous design excellence awards. Viñoly became a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1993 and is a member of the Japan Institute of Architects. He lectures widely in the United States and abroad.