Rafael Viñoly (1944–2023) was a Uruguayan-born architect based in New York. Born in Montevideo and raised in Buenos Aires, he studied at the University of Buenos Aires and in 1964 co-founded a practice there that became one of the largest in South America. He moved to the United States in 1978 and in 1983 founded Rafael Viñoly Architects in New York. Admirers called him "a serene functionalist and a master of institutional design"; New York magazine's Curbed remembered him as "prolific and polarizing".
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The Tokyo International Forum (1996), won in a 1989 international competition, brought him to international prominence; the New York Times critic Herbert Muschamp called it "a monument to the idea of openness". 20 Fenchurch Street in London (2014), nicknamed the "Walkie-Talkie", widens as it rises to a three-floor sky garden. Its curved façade focused sunlight hot enough to melt cars on the street below, and in 2015 it won the Carbuncle Cup for the worst new building in the UK. In Uruguay the Laguna Garzón Bridge (2015) splits the road into a ring of separate lanes to cross a sensitive coastal lagoon.
Tokyo International Forum1996 · Tokyo
Carrasco International Airport2009 · Montevideo
Colección de Arte Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat2008 · Buenos Aires
20 Fenchurch Street2014 · London
Laguna Garzón Bridge2015 · Laguna Garzón