En 1993 Pelli ganó el concurso internacional para la elaboración del Master Plan de Abandoibarra, en Bilbao, donde hizo la torre Iberdrola. / In 1993 Pelli won the international competition for the Abandoibarra masterplan in Bilbao, where the Iberdrola tower was built.
YB: You have said many times that you don’t believe in the sprawling city because it is dramaticallyunsustainable, urging densification. You have also said that tall buildings are sustainable because they group many needs in one place, reducing car travel. - What I don’t say, and I can say it here because we are architects, is that all this is to solve the problem of overpopulation. We are too many, and if we continuegrowing there’s no solution. We are exterminating entire species of animals; we are destroying rainforests, wecommit atrocities because we continue growing. And if cities grow, it is of course better to be denser in heightthan to continue to spread and people need to use cars. EB: As for Los Angeles, where your career began, I would like to ask you about two recently made buildings, that are not yours: Gehry's Disney Hall and Moneo’s Cathedral. - Well ... the Cathedral is quite slack. We are friends with Moneo, but it’s not one of his best buildings. You enter and there is no spiritual fervor or sensitivity one expects to find. What has saved the Cathedral are its many parishioners, especially Mexicans. The Disney Hall is great, Frank Gehry’s control is fantastic; well, not as good as the Guggenheim in Bilbao, by far his best work.
EB: Having been dean at Yale for several years and with all the knowledge you have of the international architectural practice, where do you think architecture is going, what paths do you foresee in a society that changes so much? - And it continues to change ... The truth is, it’s very difficult to know what will happen in 10 years, at most we can see what will happen at the end of this year. The game of trying to predict is not for me, it’s for Nostradamus. I always say that there's one thing I know well about the future: it won’t be as we imagine it today, that's for sure. MP: Which of today's architects interest you worldwide? - There are two types of architects that interest me. One is my old friends, such as Richard Rogers, Norman Foster, Renzo Piano, etc., etc., who are still doing a very good job. But what fascinates me more is when I open the magazines and I see someone young with a fantastic work and in different parts of the world... How capable are young architects today, much more than we were.
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