I.M. Pei Biography

Quick Facts

NAME: Ieoh Ming Pei
OCCUPATION: Architect
BIRTH DATE: April 26, 1917 (Age: 94)
EDUCATION: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University
PLACE OF BIRTH: Canton, Guangzhou, China

ZODIAC SIGN: Taurus

more about I.M.

Best Known For

I.M. Pei is a Chinese-born American architect, perhaps best known for his controversial glass pyramid in the courtyard at the Louvre Museum in Paris.

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I.M. Pei

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Synopsis

I.M. Pei is a Chinese-born U.S. architect. He spent ten years working for a firm in New York before founding Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. His designs are modern and include the National Center for Atmospheric Research building and the East Building of the National Gallery of Art in D.C. He perhaps best known for his controversial glass pyramid in the courtyard at the Louvre Museum in Paris.

Quotes

I believe that architecture is a pragmatic art. To become art it must be built on a foundation of necessity.

– I.M. Pei

Profile

(born April 26, 1917, Guangzhou, China) Chinese-born U.S. architect. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1935 and studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. After working for the architectural firm of Webb & Knapp, he formed his own partnership in 1955. Early in his career he created the Mesa Laboratory building for the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colo. (1968), which mimics the broken silhouettes of the surrounding peaks. His innovative East Building of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1978), was hailed as one of his finest achievements. Other works include Boston's John Hancock Tower (1973), Beijing's Fragrant Hill Hotel (1982), a controversial glass pyramid for a courtyard at the Louvre Museum, Paris (1989), and the Suzhou Museum (2006) in China. Pei's designs represent an elaboration on the rectangular forms and irregular silhouettes of the International Style but with a uniquely skillful arrangement of geometric shapes and a dramatic use of varied materials, spaces, and surfaces; in his Miho Museum (1997) in Shiga, Japan, for example, he achieved a harmony between the building, much of it underground, and its mountain environment. In 1983 Pei received the Pritzker Architecture Prize.