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Ieoh Ming Pei

By Anonymous
✿ I.M. Pei ✿

I.M. Pei

Biography

I.M. Pei, or Ieoh Ming Pei, was born in Guangzhou, China in 1917. He is an absolute legend but for some reason I have never heard of him... He has won many awards such as the AIA Award, the Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Pritzker Prize, worked on many famous large-scale projects, and worked alongside Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. Pei was the son of a banker and came from a privileged background. Fun fact- what inspired him to pursue higher education overseas were Bing Crosby's films, which romanticized and glamorized the college experience! Pei moved to the United States in 1935 for educational purposes, and studied at University of Pennsylvania for architecture then transferred to Massachusetts Institute of Technology for engineering. He then went back to studying architecture after the dean of architecture recognized his talent and encouraged him to pursue it. Later on in his life, Pei studied at Harvard Graduate School of Design and eventually taught there. 

After Pei graduated, William Zeckendorf asked him to join his firm, known as Webb and Knapp. With this experience, Pei quickly rose to working on big projects, something that is rare among architects. He was successful in creating his own firm later, I.M. Pei & Associates in 1955 with Henry Cobb and Eason Leonard. Pei's personality is described as charming, intense, competitive, and highly ambitious. 

Work

Pei felt strongly against the Beaux-Arts (ancient Greek and Roman style) that was being taught at his schools, as he was much more into modernist style and that of Le Corbusier. I.M. Pei was also heavily influenced by Wright, and the use of glass and steel in architecture. Pei's style was, of course, modern, and sculptural with its simple geometry and grand scale. His architecture is described as having a commanding presence yet strangely feels warm- something that is difficult to attain in modernist style.


Pei's most famous project was the French-style glass pyramid at the Louvre. It caused a lot of controversy and some people really hated it with their guts, claiming that such an addition would "deface" the museum. Regardless, President Mitterrand, who had commissioned the work, stood behind Pei, and clearly his push for the glass pyramid paid off. It is an iconic mark of Paris and is instantly recognizable to any art lover. 


The Museum of Islamic Art is another example of Pei's simple yet powerful geometry. Pei admitted he had no prior familiarity with Islamic art/culture, so went on a tour to research their visual language, visiting mosques in Spain, Syria, and Tunisia. In his design he blended modernism with an aesthetic that would match what it was about and the location it was in. The boxes imply movement and create very interesting and bold angles, and speaks volumes with its neutral colors and play between shadows and light. 

Interestingly enough, Pei was praised by an architect critic as someone who "was one of the few architects who were equally attractive to real estate developers, corporate chieftains and art museum boards (often made up of members of the first two)." He was both design- and business-minded, and had a cool power of swaying those with large pockets. And perhaps because of this power, he was involved in countless more projects all over the globe- the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, the Bank of China, the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, the East Building of the National Gallery of Art, the Suzhou Museum, and the Meyerson Symphony

References

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/02/classified/paid-notice-deaths-pei-t-ing-chung.html
https://www.pcf-p.com/about/i-m-pei/
http://www.pcf-p.com/a/f/fme/imp/b/b.html
https://fortune.com/2019/05/19/im-pei-architect-death/


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