Celebrating Asian American And Pacific Islander Heritage Month: I.M. Pei
Louvre Pyramid, Paris, Photo: Pei Cobb Freed & Partners
The hand of man joined with nature becomes the essence of creativity. I. M. Pei
Against the Parisian sky, the modernist Louvre Pyramid contrasts with the palace's French Renaissance architecture—the Chinese-American architect I. M. Pei designed the structure composed of glass segments and metal poles in 1983. Ieoh Ming Pei (1917-2019) was born in Canton (now Guangzhou), China, into a wealthy family from the scholar-gentry class. His father, Tsuyee, became a prominent banker in Shanghai, but the younger Pei took after his artistic mother, Lien Kwun. Together, they traveled to Suzhou, visiting its Classical Gardens, including their ancestral Garden of the Lion Forest. The Buddhist rockery influenced Pei, who later designed the Suzhou Museum.
I.M. Pei, Photo: Josef Astor
Pei immigrated to the United States at 18 to study architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. He transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but both schools' focus on Beaux-Arts architecture led him to research emerging architects, including Le Corbusier. Pei met the Swiss-French architect at MIT in 1935, a pivotal point in his education. He studied with Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius and his protégé Marcel Breuer at Harvard Graduate School of Design. For his architecture thesis, Pei designed a Shanghai art museum. The proposal combined traditional Chinese design with modern elements, exploring light, environment, and physical space.
Gropius praised his student's design and later published it in the February 1950 issue of L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui. After graduating, Pei taught for two years at Harvard before accepting the position of director of architecture at the real estate development firm Webb & Knapp. He founded I. M. Pei & Associates in 1955. Throughout his prolific career, the Pritzker Prize-winning architect examined the relationship between the built environment and the natural world. "There are differences in the world, such as climate, history, culture, and life. All these things must play a part in the architectural expression," he said.
