Román Fresnedo Siri (1903–1975) was a Uruguayan architect best known for major civic buildings in South America and the United States. Born in Salto, he studied architecture at the University of the Republic in Montevideo from 1923 to 1930. An admirer of Frank Lloyd Wright's organic architecture, he was among the Latin American winners of the Museum of Modern Art's 1940 Organic Design competition. As chief architect of the national power company UTE he designed its headquarters in Montevideo, the Palacio de la Luz, gold medallist at the 1948 Pan American Congress of Architecture.
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With Mario Muccinelli he won the 1938 competition for the Faculty of Architecture, University of the Republic (1946), in Montevideo, an early landmark of Latin American modernism declared a national historic monument in 2000. The Hipodromo do Cristal in Porto Alegre (1959), won in a 1951 international competition, is among his most notable works for its flamboyant design and engineering. The Pan American Health Organization Headquarters in Washington (1965), also won in competition, opened that September: a curved office block that echoes the Montevideo faculty, with a circular council chamber for 400 delegates.
