Pietro Belluschi (1899–1994) was an Italian-American architect, a leading figure of American modernism responsible for more than 1,000 buildings. Born in Ancona, he studied civil engineering in Rome and, from 1923, at Cornell, and then joined the Portland, Oregon, office of A. E. Doyle, where he rose to chief designer and eventually took over the firm. His churches and houses, often in local wood and fitted closely to their sites, helped define a Pacific Northwest regional modernism. From 1951 to 1965 he was dean of architecture and planning at MIT, and in 1972 he received the AIA Gold Medal.
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The Equitable Building (Commonwealth Building) in Portland (1948), a concrete-framed office block clad in aluminium, is considered the first office building with a completely sealed, air-conditioned interior, and made his national reputation. In New York he worked with Walter Gropius on the MetLife Building (1963), then the Pan Am Building. 555 California Street in San Francisco (1969), headquarters of the Bank of America, followed, and with Pier Luigi Nervi he designed the city's Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption (1971), whose saddle roof is made of eight hyperbolic paraboloids.
