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Who

Bill Pedersen is the co-founder of Kohn Pedersen Fox, an architecture firm that specializes in office complexes and exceedingly tall skyscrapers.

Backstory

In 1976, Minnesota native Bill Pedersen teamed up with architects Eugene Kohn and Sheldon Fox to start KPF. The trio first gained notice in the early 1980s when they designed a 36-story Chicago office tower at 333 Wacker Drive. The firm has landed a steady stream of corporate commissions ever since, and Pedersen has established himself as a master of the skyscraper. Some highlights on Pedersen's CV: Procter & Gamble's sprawling world headquarters in Ohio, which was completed in the mid-'80s; the World Bank's headquarters in Washington D.C.; and the Gannett/USA Today headquarters in Virginia, completed in 2002. One of Pedersen's most devoted clients over the years has been ABC: he's designed a handful of buildings for the media behemoth, including two towers in the West 60s that critic Paul Goldberger described as the "best paradigm for urban corporate architecture in the 90s." More recently, KPF designed the commercial tower 505 Fifth Avenue, located on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street.

Of note

Pedersen is currently architecting the 101-story World Financial Centre in Shanghai. When the Centre is topped off in 2008, it'll be the tallest building in China (and one of the tallest buildings in the world). He's also now at work on a rare residential project, 122 Greenwich Avenue, an Aby Rosen- and Michael Fuchs-developed condo building in the West Village with an ever-so-slightly undulating façade.

For the record

KPF was the firm tapped to design the doomed-from-the-start West Side Stadium, the would-be home of the New York Jets. Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff eviscerated Pedersen's proposed design, calling it "an enormous shoebox" and "a parody of late capitalist consumerism." Not that it mattered: Although militantly championed by Mayor Bloomberg and Dan Doctoroff, the stadium was scrapped in July 2005.

Personal

Pedersen and his wife Elizabeth live in the Beresford, where their neighbors include Jerry Seinfeld, Helen Gurley Brown, John McEnroe, and Lew Frankfort. In what must make for awkward elevator conversation, New Yorker architecture critic Paul Goldberger—who has both complimented and criticized Pedersen's work—lives there, too.