Mr. Viñoly, who was raised in Argentina, started his profession within the late Sixties as a part of a crew commissioned for institutional tasks in Buenos Aires together with a labor union headquarters and an annex to the parliament advanced. They have been beginning their largest enterprise but — the 50,000-capacity Mendoza Stadium (now Malvinas Argentinas Stadium) and broadcast heart for the 1978 World Cup soccer event — when a army dictatorship toppled the elected authorities of Isabel Perón in a 1976 coup.

For the junta, the World Cup was seen as a possibility to garner worldwide legitimacy regardless of mounting proof of sweeping “soiled battle” atrocities together with leftist opponents detained or “disappeared.” Mr. Viñoly was now accountable to the army rulers over the competitors of the venue.

Simply earlier than the World Cup, Mr. Viñoly’s private library was searched by authorities. He and his household felt they have been not secure and left the nation. First, Mr. Viñoly took a visitor lecturer publish on the Harvard Graduate College of Design, after which completely settled in New York in 1979.

Mr. Viñoly stated his choice on architectural “openness” was a response to the paranoia and the enforced obedience he noticed below the junta. An indicator of his designs is what he referred to as a “new sort of civil house” of grand halls and areas. “You may’t keep away from seeing different folks,” he stated. “There aren’t any boundaries.”

Mr. Viñoly referred to as himself a disciple of the “unglamorous” facet of structure by emphasizing perform and practicality over extra embellished architectural statements.

“One of many issues I see in structure right this moment is that you simply get fascinated by this ‘wow’ issue,” he stated. “That’s one thing that passes in 15 seconds.”

“I’ve a powerful adherence to the notion of restraint … however structure isn’t style,” he added.

Not the whole lot got here collectively with out criticism, nevertheless. He headed a design crew that was runner-up within the competitors to rebuild the World Commerce Middle website in New York. The crew’s idea of two spires, encased in latticework like metal skeletons, was deemed by some as too somber and harking back to the dual towers destroyed within the Sept. 11, 2001, assaults.

In London, his rotund design for 20 Fenchurch Avenue was shortly dubbed the “Walkie Talkie” for its handset-like swoop. “It feels bloated, not elegant,” complained structure reviewer Rowan Moore within the Guardian. Summer time daylight off the 38-story constructing may bake streets under — an analogous drawback that first plagued Mr. Viñoly’s Las Vegas resort and spa, the Vdara, which magnified solar beams right into a scorching no-go zone.

Despite the fact that Mr. Viñoly didn’t carry the general public title recognition of some friends, reminiscent of I.M. Pei or Frank Gehry, his work reshaped cityscapes seen by tens of tens of millions of individuals every day.

The 197-foot wall of laminated glass and curving roofline of the Tokyo Worldwide Discussion board, opened in 1997, has grow to be as a lot part of the town’s material because the towering colonnades at New York’s Lincoln Middle, the place Mr. Viñoly designed the Jazz at Lincoln Middle corridor. On the opposite facet of Central Park, is his 432 Park Avenue stands like an almost 1,400-foot obelisk.

Any huge mission “solely turns into human when folks make it human,” Mr. Viñoly advised Newsweek in 1997. “That’s not one thing the architect can determine. It’s one thing that has to occur by itself.”

Mr. Viñoly affected a semi-nerdy demeanor with an affinity for well-worn loafers and a bent to put on a number of glasses — generally as many as 4 — with some balancing on his head or dangling on a string from his neck.

He as soon as described his regular workday as spending the morning on the piano (he was an completed younger pianist and as soon as thought-about a profession in music), then strolling to the workplace; a late dinner — probably made by their chef — after which watching slightly tv along with his spouse.

“I put on these grey sweatpants which can be 35 or 40 years previous,” he advised the New York Instances. “They’re like a part of my pores and skin. I don’t wash them an excessive amount of, as a result of they’d disintegrate.”

But, he additionally was recognized to demand a relentless work schedule in crunch occasions.

Throughout the design competitors for the Tokyo Worldwide Discussion board, Mr. Viñoly hit a psychological roadblock on the way to incorporate the arc of rail tracks with the straight-line geometry of surrounding streets. He determined to take a break along with his spouse in Paris. On the flight, he observed the curving latitude strains of the Pan Am brand on all sides of the equator. It solved his drawback: parabola-like sweeps for the tracks.

He instantly flew again from New York for round the clock revisions along with his crew.

“His concern was that some faculties have been dropping the craftsmanship and technical data and structure was being too conceptual,” stated Amir Kripper, a Boston-based architect who was born in Uruguay and has carefully adopted Mr. Viñoly’s profession. “His method was rather more sensible and believed the position of the architect is about offering an fascinating architectural answer.”

Different landmark tasks dotted the globe: The cello-shaped Kimmel Middle for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia; the angular Cleveland Museum of Artwork; the New York College campus in Abu Dhabi, and the Carrasco Airport close to Montevideo, Uruguay, rendered like a flying saucer about to take to the sky.

Within the Washington space, his title is hooked up to websites together with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s biomedical analysis campus in Chevy Chase, Md., and the deliberate condominium improvement often called Wharf Parcel 9. (His proposal for a resigned plaza on the Kennedy Middle was accepted in 2004 and later shelved.)

Mr. Viñoly may appear most perplexed when he didn’t have a clean canvas.

He struggled to grasp the collective nostalgia for the brooding smokestacks and hulking brick turbine chambers of London’s Battersea energy station, a former coal-powered goliath on the Thames. Preservations had gained the battle for the location to stay largely intact.

A grasp plan he proposed created a industrial and retail advanced. In Mr. Viñoly’s twist on the plant’s polluting previous, he added plans for a zero-carbon footprint. In a uncommon about-face, Mr. Viñoly appeared worn down the London quarrels over the mission and ultimately stepped apart — pissed off over the love for the previous smoke belcher.

“It’s like preserving Dracula, by some means,” he stated.

Rafael Viñoly Beceiro was born June 1, 1944, in Montevideo, Uruguay, and the household moved when he was younger to Buenos Aires, the place his mom was a arithmetic instructor and his father was a movie and theater director.

Mr. Viñoly graduated in 1969 from the School of Structure and Urbanism of the College of Buenos Aires and later shaped an architectural agency with 5 associates.

His profession in Argentina was bookended by upheaval. Whereas at college, a army coup in 1966 toppled the federal government and troopers stormed the campus. That regime fell in 1973, bringing within the populist administrations of Juan Perón after which his widow Isabel till they have been ousted by the army in 1976.

”The World Commerce Middle mission made me rehash all these items that occurred 30 years in the past in a really highly effective approach,” he advised the New York Instances in 2003, wanting again on Argentina.

Apart from his son Román, a director on the structure agency based by his father, survivors embody Mr. Viñoly’s spouse Diana; stepsons Nicolás and Lucas; a brother; and three grandchildren.

Mr. Viñoly typically drew connections between his two passions, music and structure. He stated he may hearken to a Bach fugue or a Thelonious Monk jazz association and all the time discover one thing new.

“That’s what I feel good structure is,” he stated. “It’s like good music.”