Pei, I. M.
I. M. Pei
Born April 26, 1917
Canton (now Guangzhou), China
Architect famous for designing museums and other structures
"At one level my goal is simply to give people pleasure in being in a space and walking around it. But … architecture can reach a level where it influences people to want to do something more with their lives. That is the challenge that I find most interesting."
W hen I. M. Pei retired from full-time work in the 1990s, he was one of the most famous architects of the twentieth century. His building designs feature simple, geometrical forms, like triangles and rectangles. These forms take on dramatic flourishes in Pei's buildings by his use of glass walls, distinctively colored stone, and other eye-catching materials. Pei approaches each project as a unique opportunity to match the look of the building with the purpose for which it will be used and to ensure the building blends with the surrounding environment.
Inspired by gardens and buildings
Ieoh Ming Pei was born on April 26, 1917, in Canton (now Guangzhou), China. He was the second of five children. His father, Tsuyee Pei, came from a wealthy family and worked as an executive with the Bank of China. Pei's mother, Lien Kwun, was a musician. She was devoutly religious and took her son to Buddhist temples in mountain sanctuaries. These trips and the gardens at the Pei family refuge in Suzhou, called "Garden of the Lion Forest," inspired his love of nature.
Pei had a happy childhood, but it was not without disruptions. Because of unrest among warlords, or regional leaders who ruled by force, his family relocated from inland China to the port city of Hong Kong, which was then a British colony, when he was an infant. Pei learned English in Hong Kong, which came in handy when his family moved to Shanghai, China, when he was ten. He enrolled in a school run by English Protestant missionaries. The school was difficult: Students were allowed only a half day a month away from school for recreation. At the age of thirteen, Pei's mother died.
Pei's father hoped his son would study medicine and become a doctor. However, Pei was inspired by modern buildings being erected in Shanghai and decided to study architecture in the United States. In 1935, at the age of seventeen, he boarded the SS Coolidge for an ocean voyage to America.
School and marriage in Boston
Pei began his architectural studies at the University of Pennsylvania but stayed there for only two weeks. The architectural program emphasized drawing, and he was interested in engineering and practical approaches to construction. He transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, just outside of Boston, where he was able to combine architecture and engineering. Upon graduating in 1940, Pei planned to return home, but World War II (1939–45) was underway and China was invaded by Japan.
Pei found architectural work in Boston, and he also traveled to New York City and Los Angeles, California, on projects. In Boston, he met Eileen Loo, a Chinese American who had recently graduated from college. They were married in 1942 and would have four children, Ting, Chien, Li, and Liane.
What's in a Name?
Pei's name, Ieoh Ming, means "to inscribe brightly"—an appropriately descriptive name for someone who went on to design buildings that were appreciated as works of art.
Pei's wife enrolled in the landscape architecture program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Pei won a fellowship, or a special scholarship, to the same school to pursue a master's degree in architecture. The United States was involved in World War II, and in January 1943, Pei left school to work for the National Defense Research Committee in Princeton, New Jersey. Pei was involved in experimental projects in which buildings were destroyed.
Pei returned to Harvard in 1944 and earned his master's degree in architecture in 1946. He was an assistant professor at Harvard for a short time and again considered returning to China. China was embroiled in a civil war, however, and it was dangerous for the Peis to travel there.
In 1948, Pei joined Webb and Knapp, a New York City firm that developed construction projects, as director of architecture. Among other projects, Pei designed a roof garden and dining room for the company headquarters that offered a spectacular view of the New York City skyline. Pei launched his own New York City architectural firm, I. M. Pei & Associates, in 1955.
During the 1950s, Pei was involved in large-scale development projects in Chicago, Denver, and New York City. Through this experience of designing new buildings to be constructed near older structures, Pei developed his sensitivity as to how buildings would relate to the surrounding environment.
The first project to bring widespread recognition to Pei's firm was his design for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. Set in the Rocky Mountains, this was the first project Pei worked on that was not surrounded by other structures. Pei designed the building to blend visually with the surrounding mountain peaks. That project began in 1961 and was competed in 1967.
Prestigious library and museum commissions
Pei's growing reputation earned him a prestigious assignment in 1964. A year after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (1917–1963; served 1961–63), Kennedy's widow, Jacqueline (1929–1994), selected Pei to design the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library Complex in Boston. The project went through three different design phases, the site was changed three times, and fifteen years passed before the complex was completed in 1979, but it was well worth the effort and patience Pei exerted. The Library was roundly praised
when completed and earned Pei a gold medal from the American Institute of Architects.
During this period, Pei won another major commission, this one from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Pei was to design a new structure (the East Building) to complement the existing National Gallery of Art (now called the West Building). The project was complicated: the available site was an unusual trapezoidal piece of land among a crowd of dignified buildings that formed the National Mall, and nearby was Capitol Hill, where the U.S. Congress meets. (A trapezoid is a four-sided figure in which only two of the sides are parallel.)
Pei began his design by sketching a diagonal line across a trapezoid to produce two triangles. In the final design, one triangle formed an exhibition hall, and the other housed offices, a library, and a research center. The buildings are connected through a sky-lit central court with several bridges at various floor levels. The repeated triangle pattern appears throughout the design, from pieces of marble laid in the floor to steel frames that hold skylights. The National Gallery project, which took ten years to complete (1968 to 1978), made Pei one of the best-known architects in America. Pei succeeded in adding a visually striking new building that blended with the impressive structures surrounding it.
Some of Pei's Notable Projects
1952–56: Mile High Center, Denver, Colorado
1957–62: Kips Bay Plaza, New York City
1961–66: University Plaza, New York University, New York City
1961–67: National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado
1964–79: John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts
1966–69: Bedford-Stuyvesant Superblock, Brooklyn, New York
1966–71: Cleo Rogers Memorial Library, Columbus, Ohio
1966–77: Municipal Center, Dallas, Texas
1968: Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York
1968–73: Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
1968–78: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (east wing)
1970: Wilmington Tower, Wilmington, Delaware
1970–76: Overseas-Chinese Banking Corporation Headquarters, Singapore, China
1977–81: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts (west wing)
1978–82: Texas Commerce Tower/United Energy Plaza, Houston, Texas
1979–82: Fragrant Hill Hotel, Beijing, China
1982–89: Meyerson Symphony Center, Dallas, Texas
1982–89: Bank of China, Hong Kong
1983–89: Le Grand Louvre (including the Pyramide), Paris, France (expansion: Phase I)
1988–90: Sinji Shumeikai Bell Tower, Shiga, Japan
1991–95: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland, Ohio
1999–2003: German Historical Museum, Berlin, Germany
International recognition
Pei's reputation spread overseas. He was commissioned to design a bank building in Singapore in 1976. During the 1980s, he returned to China for the first time since he left in 1935 to design the Fragrant Hill Hotel near Beijing. Completed in 1983, the hotel blends modern forms and traditional Chinese architecture. For inspiration, Pei drew on his childhood memories of the Garden of the Lion Forest. That led him to include a courtyard, gardens of various sizes, and lotus-shaped windows in the hotel. Pei wanted to contribute more to growth and improvement in his native land. When he received the prestigious Prizker Architecture Prize in 1983, he used the $100,000 award to establish a scholarship fund for Chinese men and women to study architecture in the United States.
Pei was soon involved in another deeply personal project in Asia. He was commissioned to design the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong, which was completed in 1989. The bank had first opened a branch office in Hong Kong in the 1920s—and Pei's father was the first bank manager there. Because Hong Kong is small and land is costly, Pei had to design a skyscraper, but the building had to be able to withstand typhoon winds. In a 1996 interview with Technology Review magazine, Pei described how he arrived at the solution for this challenge: "I thought about the triangle, which is the strongest structural form. If the building could essentially consist of shafts with triangular cross sections, it would automatically be very, very rigid. So I made some three-sided sticks and played with them at home, combining them in various arrangements."
Pei began what he called "the greatest challenge and the greatest accomplishment of my career" in 1983 when he was commissioned to expand the most famous art museum in the world—the Louvre, in Paris, France. Before accepting the job, he conducted four months of secret research. He visited the Louvre several times to evaluate what needed to be done to better accommodate the millions of people who toured the museum each year. He wanted to preserve and respect the classic, seventeenth-century design, but also take advantage of advances in modern architecture.
Pei's solution was both classical and modern—a large pyramid made of glass. Visitors pass through the pyramid and descend to an underground entrance lobby. They can then enter each wing of the museum through a series of corridors. The visual beauty of the original building was not only preserved, but visitors were now also able to view it through the glass of the pyramid—as a work of art might be seen in a museum. A main pyramid was constructed with 698 panes of glass, and three satellite pyramids stand nearby.
Rockin' in his seventies
Pei designed dozens of other structures during his career. Among the most intriguing was his commission for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which opened in 1995 and was significant to the revitalization of downtown Cleveland, Ohio. A jazz fan all his life, Pei realized that he needed to familiarize himself with the music in order to capture the spirit of rock and roll in his design. "The problem was that I didn't like the music," Pei told Technology Review. "My children loved it, but I never did. And yet, since I was selected to do the project, I had to learn about the music. So I went to Graceland to see Elvis Presley's home. I went to Louisiana to listen to jazz and rhythm and blues. And then I began to understand the rich roots of rock and roll."
The spirit Pei determined to capture was a sense of rebellion, of breaking away from tradition, with a dimension of energy. He designed a six-story central tower and an adjacent, 117-foot-high triangular glass wall. "The generation that made rock music was much more transparent [straightforward] about their ideas than my generation," Pei told Michael J. Crosbie in an interview with Progressive Architecture magazine. Pei symbolized that transparency though the wall of glass. "These are the things I tried to imbue [build into] in the building's design—a sense of tremendous youthful energy, rebellion, flailing about," Pei explained to Technology Review magazine in 1995. "Part of the museum is a glass tent leaning on a column in the back. All the other forms—wings—burst out of that tent. Their thrusting out has to do with rebellion. This, for me, is an expression of the musical form of rock and roll." The museum also features state-of-the-art lighting and multimedia displays.
Pei on Critics
"I welcome critics because they are bound to have good reasons for their concerns," Pei told Technology Review magazine in a 1995 interview. "But rather than generalizing about my work, they should look at each project by itself. The basic challenges in building design differ from project to project, and critics have to understand those—where a project is built, and why."
In 1990, Pei retired from the firm he had founded and began to work independently. Along with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Pei's projects in the 1990s included the private Miho Museum in Japan, which opened in 1997. Located in the Shigaraki Mountains on a nature preserve, the museum was named after Mihoko Koyama, the spiritual leader of the Shinji Shumeikai religious group. In some ways, this project allowed Pei to come full circle in his life, to connect his early love of nature he discovered in Buddhist sanctuaries and his family's Garden of the Lion Forest with an artistic view of structures that inspired him to become an architect. Not surprisingly, when he is not designing buildings, Pei enjoys gardening around his home in Katonah, New York.
—Roger Matuz
For More Information
Books
Pei, I. M., and Von Boehm, Gero. Conversations with I. M. Pei: Light Is the Key. New York: Prestel, 2000.
Wiseman, Carter. I. M. Pei, A Profile in American Architecture. Rev. ed. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001.
Periodicals
Crosbie, Michael J. "Raising Rock's Reliquary." Progressive Architecture (February 1995): pp. 62–65.
"I. M. Pei: A Feeling for Technology and Art." Technology Review (April 1995): pp. 59–62.
Web Sites
"Architect: I. M. Pei." Great Buildings.http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/I._M._Pei.html (accessed on March 23, 2004).
"I. M. Pei." Pei Cobb Freed & Partners.http://www.pcfandp.com/a/f/fme/imp/b/b.html (accessed on March 23, 2004).
I. M. Pei
I. M. Pei
Chinese-American architect, I. M. Pei (born 1917), directed for nearly 40 years one of the most successful architectural practices in the United States. Known for his dramatic use of concrete and glass, Pei counted among his most famous buildings the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. the John Hancock Tower in Boston, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland, Ohio.
Ieoh Ming Pei was born in Canton, China, on April 26, 1917. His early childhood was spent in Canton and Hong Kong, where his father worked as director of the Bank of China. In the late 1920s the Pei family moved to Shanghai, where I. M. attended St. Johns Middle School. His father, who had many British banking connections, encouraged his son to attend college in England, but I. M. decided to emigrate to the United States in order to study architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. Upon his arrival in 1935, however, he found that the University of Pennsylvania's curriculum, with its heavy emphasis on fine draftsmanship, was not well suited to his interest in structural engineering. He enrolled instead in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
While at M.I.T. Pei considered pursuing a degree in engineering, but was convinced by Dean William Emerson to stick with architecture. Pei graduated with a bachelor's degree in architecture in 1940, winning the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal and the Alpha Rho Chi (the fraternity of architects). He was immediately offered the prestigious Perkins Traveling Fellowship. Pei considered going to Europe or returning to China, but with both regions engulfed in war, he decided to remain in Boston and work as a research assistant at the Bemis Foundation (1940-1941).
From Professor to Architect
With America's entry into World War II, Pei obtained a position at the Boston engineering firm of Stone and Webster, where he designed structures for national defense projects (1941-1942). In this capacity he had the opportunity to work extensively with concrete, a material that he was later to use successfully in his own work.
In 1942 Pei married Eileen Loo, a Chinese student recently graduated from Wellesley College. After the wedding Pei left his job at Stone and Webster and moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Eileen enrolled in Harvard's Graduate School of Landscape Architecture. Through her, Pei was introduced to the Harvard Graduate School of Design, which had recently come under the direction of Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. Excited by the chance to work with these two leading exponents of the modern International Style, Pei enrolled in the summer of 1942. Here, in the company of such figures as Philip Johnson, Pei was introduced to the work of Europe's most progressive architects. He absorbed their ideas about designing unornamented buildings in abstract shapes—buildings that frankly exposed their systems of support and materials of construction.
Pei's work at Harvard was interrupted in early 1943 when he was called to serve on the National Defense Research Committee in Princeton, New Jersey. He maintained his contacts in Cambridge, however, and between 1943 and 1945 formed informal partnerships with two other students of Gropius, E. H. Duhart and Frederick Roth. With these men, Pei designed several low-cost modernistic houses that were intended to be built of prefabricated plywood panels and "plug-in" room modules. Several of these designs were awarded recognition in Arts and Architecture magazine and thus served to give Pei his first national exposure.
Although he continued to work for the National Defense Research Committee until 1945, Pei returned to Harvard in 1944. The following year he obtained a lectureship on the faculty of the Graduate School of Design. In 1946, having obtained his master's degree in architecture, Pei was appointed assistant professor. While teaching, he worked in the Boston office of architect, Hugh Stubbins (1946-1948).
Pei's career as a Harvard professor ended in 1948 when, at the age of 31, he was hired to direct the architectural division of Webb and Knapp, a huge New York contracting firm owned by the real estate tycoon William Zeckendorf. A bold developer with tremendous capital, Zeckendorf specialized in buying run-down urban lots and building modern high rise apartments and offices. As architect of Webb and Knapp, Pei oversaw the design of some of the most extensive urban development schemes of the post-war era, including the Mile High Center in Denver and Hyde Park Redevelopment in Chicago (both 1954-1959). These projects gave Pei the opportunity to work on a large scale and with big budgets. Moreover, he learned how to negotiate compromises with community, business, and government agencies. In his words, he learned to consider "the big picture."
His Own Architectural Firm
By mutual agreement, Pei and his staff of some 70 designers split from Webb and Knapp in 1955 to become I. M. Pei & Associates, an independent firm, but one which still initially relied on Zeckendorf as its chief client. It was for Zeckendorf, in fact, that Pei and his partners designed some of their most ambitious works—Place Ville Marie, the commercial center of Montreal (1956-1965); Kips Bay Plaza, the Manhattan apartment complex (1959-1963); and Society Hill, a large housing development in Philadelphia (1964).
In terms of style, Pei's work at this time was strongly influenced by Mies van der Rohe. Certainly the apartment towers at Kips Bay and Society Hill owe much to Mies' earlier slab-like skyscrapers sheathed in glass grids. But unlike Mies, who supported his towers with frames of steel, Pei experimented with towers of pre-cast concrete window frames laid on one another like blocks. This system proved to be quick to construct and required no added fireproof lining or exterior sheathing, making it relatively inexpensive. The concrete frames also had the aesthetic advantage of looking "muscular" and permanent. Soon Pei acquired a reputation as a pragmatic, cost-conscious architect who understood the needs of developers and had the ability to produce solid-looking no-nonsense buildings.
During the 1960s Pei continued to build Miesian "skinand-bones" office and apartment towers (the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in Toronto and 88 Pine Street in New York, were both completed in 1972), but he also began to get commissions for other types of buildings that allowed him more artistic expression. Among the first of these was the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado (1961-1967). For this project Pei borrowed ideas from the work of Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn to create a monumental structure of exposed concrete. Distinguished by a series of unusual hooded towers, and photogenically situated against the backdrop of the Rocky Mountains, the NCAR complex helped to establish Pei as a designer of serious artistic intent. Film enthusiasts remember this building as the setting for the Woody Allen film, Sleeper. In 1964 his stature increased when he was chosen to design the John F. Kennedy Library, although the building's dedication would be 15 years later, due to rigorous work and study.
Pei's reputation as artist-architect was further enhanced with his design for the Everson Museum of Art at Syracuse University in New York (1962-1968). Again Pei turned to reinforced concrete, this time molded into four monolithic gallery blocks, boldly cantilevered and arranged in a pinwheel manner around a large interior court. The design met with considerable acclaim, and Pei was soon asked to design one art museum after another: the Des Moines Art Center in Iowa (1968); the Mellon Art Center in Wallingford, Connecticut (1972); the University of Indiana Art Museum in Bloomington (1980); the west wing of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (1981); and the Portland Museum of Art in Maine (1983).
Triangles and Curtains of Glass
Of his many museums, Pei became best known for the East Wing of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. (1968-1978). Located on a prominent but oddly shaped site, Pei cleverly divided the plan into two triangular sections—one containing a series of intimate gallery spaces and the other housing administrative and research areas. He connected these sections with a dramatic sky-lit central court, bridged at various levels by free-floating passageways. Technological innovation is evident on the exterior, where space-age neoprene gaskets have been inserted between the blocks of marble to prevent cracks from developing in the walls. The overall design so impressed noted critic Ada Louise Huxtable that she declared in 1974, "I. M. Pei … may very likely be America's best architect."
Unlike so many other students of Gropius and the International Style, Pei showed concern that his buildings were "contextual, " that they fit into their pre-existing architectural environments. The East Wing, for instance, was carefully related in height to the older main block of the National Gallery, and it was sheathed in similarly colored marble. For the apartments he built in Philadelphia during the 1950s Pei used brick, the city's traditional building material. And for his projects in China, such as the Luce Chapel at Taunghai University in Taiwan (1964) and the Fragrant Hill Hotel near Beijing (1983), he incorporated architectural forms and details indigenous to the Orient.
Although his reputation was slightly tarnished in the mid-1970s when plates of glass mysteriously fell out of his John Hancock Tower in Boston (1973), Pei was still considered a master of curtain glass construction in the 1980s. He demonstrated this again in the glass-sheathed Allied Bank Tower in Dallas (1985) and later worked on a well-publicized glass pyramid built in the courtyard of the Louvre Museum in Paris (1987). But his magnificent work in glass would not stop there. In September of 1995, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum was dedicated in Cleveland, Ohio. In an interview with Technology Review, Pei explained the concept. "These are the things I tried to imbue in the building's design—a sense of tremendous youthful energy, rebellion, flailing about. Part of the museum is a glass tent leaning on a column in the back. All the other forms—wings—burst out of the tent. Their thrusting out has to do with the rebellion. This, for me, is an expression of the musical form of rock and roll."
A man of gracious character and tact, Pei managed to preserve lasting associations with the other members of his firm, thereby fostering one of the most stable, quality-conscious practices in the country. Moreover, he maintained the trust and patronage of countless corporations, real estate developers, and art museums. Among his numerous awards he placed personal significance on receiving the Medal of Liberty from President Ronald Reagan at the Statue of Liberty. To him, it was a symbol of acceptance and respect from the American people.
When not designing buildings, Pei enjoyed gardening around his home in Katonah, New York. He had four children, two of whom worked as architects in his busy office on Madison Avenue.
Further Reading
There is still no monograph on Pei. The best single presentation of his work remains Peter Blake and others, "I. M. Pei and Partners, " Architecture Plus 1 (February and March 1973). For biographical information and a fine appraisal of his buildings see Paul Goldberger, "The Winning Ways of I. M. Pei, " New York Times Magazine (May 20, 1979). Also helpful are a number of recorded interviews; the two best are Andrea O. Dean, "Conversations: I. M. Pei, " Journal of the American Institute of Architects (June 1979) and Barbaralee Diamonstein, monstein, "I. M. Pei: 'The Modern Movement Is Now Wide Open', " Art News 77 (Summer 1978). See also Paul Heyer, Architects on Architecture (1966).
A chronological list of Pei's major works appears in the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Architects (1983). Articles on individual buildings can be found in either the Art Index or the Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals. Ada Louise Huxtable offers a critic's view of some of Pei's buildings in her book Kicked a Building Lately? (1976). Pei himself wrote very little, but see two articles by him: "Standardized Propaganda Units for the Chinese Government, " Task 1 (1942), and "The Sowing and Reaping of Shape, " Christian Science Monitor (March 16, 1978). □
Pei, I. M.
I. M. Pei
Born: April 26, 1917
Canton, China
Chinese-born American architect
Chinese American architect, I. M. Pei, directed for nearly forty years one of the most successful architectural practices in the United States. Known for his dramatic use of concrete and glass, Pei counts among his most famous buildings the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the John Hancock Tower in Boston, Massachusetts, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland, Ohio.
Childhood
Ieoh Ming Pei was born in Canton, China, on April 26, 1917. His early childhood was spent in Canton and Hong Kong, where his father worked as director of the Bank of China. In the late 1920s, after the death of Pei's mother, the family moved to Shanghai, China, where Pei attended St. Johns Middle School. His father, who had many British banking connections, encouraged his son to attend college in England, but Pei decided to move to the United States in order to study architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. As a youth, Pei watched the growing cityscape in Shanghai, which planted the seeds for his love of architecture. Upon his arrival in 1935, however, he found that the University of Pennsylvania's course work, with its heavy emphasis on fine draftsmanship, was not well suited to his interest in structural engineering. He enrolled instead in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, Massachusetts.
While at MIT, Pei considered pursuing a degree in engineering, but was convinced by Dean William Emerson to stick with architecture. Pei graduated with a bachelor's degree in architecture in 1940, winning the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal and the Alpha Rho Chi (the fraternity of architects). Pei considered going to Europe or returning to China, but with both regions engulfed in war, he decided to remain in Boston and work as a research assistant at the Bemis Foundation (1940–1941).
From professor to architect
In 1942 Pei married Eileen Loo, a Chinese student recently graduated from Wellesley College. After the wedding Pei moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Eileen enrolled in Harvard's Graduate School of Landscape Architecture. Through her suggestion, Pei enrolled in the Harvard Graduate School of Design in the summer of 1942. There Pei was introduced to the work of Europe's leading architects. He absorbed their ideas about designing unadorned (without decorations) buildings in abstract shapes—buildings that exposed their systems of support and materials of construction.
Pei's work at Harvard was interrupted in early 1943 when he was called to serve on the National Defense Research Committee in Princeton, New Jersey. He maintained his contacts in Cambridge, however, and between 1943 and 1945 formed informal partnerships with two other students of Walter Gropius (1883–1969), E. H. Duhart and Frederick Roth. With these men, Pei designed several low-cost modern houses that were intended to be built of prefabricated (built in advance) plywood panels and "plug-in" room modules. Several of these designs were awarded recognition in Arts and Architecture magazine and thus served to give Pei his first national exposure.
In 1946 Pei was appointed assistant professor after obtaining his master's degree in architecture. While teaching, he worked in the Boston office of architect Hugh Stubbins from 1946 to 1948. Pei's career as a Harvard professor ended in 1948 when, at the age of thirty-one, he was hired to direct the architectural division of Webb and Knapp, a huge New York City contracting firm owned by the wealthy businessman William Zeckendorf. A bold developer with tremendous capital (money from business), Zeckendorf specialized in buying run-down urban lots and building modern high rise apartments and offices.
As architect of Webb and Knapp, Pei oversaw the design of some of the most extensive urban development schemes in the mid-twentieth century, including the Mile High Center in Denver, Colorado, and Hyde Park Redevelopment in Chicago, Illinois (both 1954–1959). These projects gave Pei the opportunity to work on a large scale and with big budgets. Moreover, he learned how to work with community, business, and government agencies. In his words, he learned to consider "the big picture."
His own architectural firm
By mutual agreement, Pei and his staff of some seventy designers split from Webb and Knapp in 1955 to become I. M. Pei & Associates, an independent firm, but one which still initially relied on Zeckendorf as its chief client. It was for Zeckendorf, in fact, that Pei and his partners designed some of their most ambitious works—Place Ville Marie, the commercial center of Montreal, Canada, (1956–1965); Kips Bay Plaza, the Manhattan, New York, apartment complex (1959–1963); and Society Hill, a large housing development in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1964).
In terms of style, Pei's work at this time was strongly influenced by Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969). Certainly the apartment towers at Kips Bay and Society Hill owe much to Mies's earlier slab-like skyscrapers sheathed in glass grids. But unlike Mies, who supported his towers with frames of steel, Pei experimented with towers of pre-cast concrete window frames laid on one another like blocks. This system proved to be quick to construct and required no added fireproof lining or exterior sheathing, making it relatively inexpensive. The concrete frames also had the aesthetic (having to do with appearance) advantage of looking "muscular" and permanent.
During the 1960s Pei continued to build "skin-and-bones" office and apartment towers, but he also began to get commissions for other types of buildings that allowed him more artistic expression. Among the first of these was the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado (1961–1967). Distinguished by a series of unusual hooded towers, and photogenically (having to do with photo-like qualities) situated against the backdrop of the Rocky Mountains, the NCAR complex helped to establish Pei as a designer of serious artistic intent.
Triangles and curtains of glass
Of Pei's many museums, he became best known for the East Wing of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. (1968–1978). Located on a distinct but oddly shaped site, Pei cleverly divided the plan into two triangular sections—one containing a series of intimate gallery spaces and the other housing administrative and research areas. He connected these sections with a dramatic sky-lit central court, bridged at various levels by free-floating passageways. Technological advances are seen on the exterior, where space-age rubber gaskets have been inserted between the blocks of marble to prevent cracks from developing in the walls.
Although Pei's reputation was slightly tarnished in the mid-1970s when plates of glass mysteriously fell out of his John Hancock Tower in Boston, Pei was still considered a master of curtain glass construction in the 1980s. He demonstrated this again in the glass-sheathed Allied Bank Tower in Dallas (1985) and later worked on a well-publicized glass pyramid built in the courtyard of the Louvre Museum in Paris (1987). But his magnificent work in glass would not stop there. In September of 1995, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum was dedicated in Cleveland, Ohio.
Among Pei's numerous awards, he places personal significance on receiving the Medal of Liberty from President Ronald Reagan (1911–) at the Statue of Liberty. To him, it is a symbol of acceptance and respect from the American people. When not designing buildings, Pei enjoys gardening around his home in Katonah, New York. He has four children, two of whom work as architects in his busy office on Madison Avenue.
For More Information
Cannell, Michael T. I. M. Pei: Mandarin in Modernism. New York: Carol Southern Books, 1995.
Suner, Bruno. Pei. Paris: Hazan, 1988.
Wiseman, Carter. I. M. Pei: A Profile in American Architecture. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1990.
Pei, Ieoh Ming
Bibliography
Cannell (1995);
Kalman (1994);
Jodidio (1993, 1996);
U. Kretzschmar (ed.) (2003);
Suner (1988);
Jane Turner (1996);
Wiseman (1990, 2001)