ABSTRACT
Bill Pedersen draws to represent his thoughts and to articulate conceptual comparisons. In his early education, the St. Paul native attended a school that focused primarily on Latin and math, with very little in the way of visual studies. But in architecture school at the University of Minnesota, he spent a tremendous amount of time with sketch pad and pencil. He was inspired there, and later in graduate school at MIT, by the artistic abilities of Eero and Eliel Saarinen, as well as by Hugh Ferriss, Otto Wagner, and Ralph Rapson. Sketching is a comfortable way for Pedersen to create too not in a precise exercise, but rather as a gestural one. During his career with Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF), Pedersen has received seven National Design Awards for work he has directed. He received recognition from the Council for Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) for the Shanghai World Financial Center as the 'Best Tall Building in the World'.
