I. M. Pei facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
I. M. Pei
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Pei in 2006
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| Born |
Ieoh Ming Pei
April 26, 1917 Guangzhou, Guangdong, Republic of China
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| Died | May 16, 2019 (aged 102) New York City, U.S.
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| Nationality | American | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Alma mater | University of Pennsylvania Massachusetts Institute of Technology (BArch) Harvard University (MArch) |
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| Occupation | Architect | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Spouse(s) |
Eileen Loo
(m. 1942; died 2014) |
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| Children | 4 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Awards |
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| Practice |
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| Buildings |
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| Chinese name | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 貝聿銘 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 贝聿铭 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Ieoh Ming Pei (born April 26, 1917 – died May 16, 2019) was a famous Chinese-American architect. He designed many well-known buildings around the world. His work often combined old architectural ideas with new, simple shapes.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Ieoh Ming Pei was born on April 26, 1917. His family moved to Hong Kong a year later. As a boy, Pei was very close to his mother. She was a devout Buddhist and a talented flautist.
Pei went to St. Paul's College in Hong Kong. When he was 10, his family moved to Shanghai. He then attended St. John's Middle School. This school was run by Anglican missionaries.
School was very strict, with little free time. Pei enjoyed playing billiards and watching Hollywood movies. He especially liked films by Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. He also learned English by reading the Bible and novels by Charles Dickens.
Shanghai was known as the "Paris of the East" because of its many international styles. The city's diverse architecture greatly influenced Pei.
Sadly, Pei's mother died from cancer shortly after his thirteenth birthday. This was a very upsetting time for him.
In 1935, Pei moved to the United States. He first enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania's architecture school. However, he soon transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He didn't like that both schools focused on Beaux-Arts architecture. Instead, he spent his free time studying modern architects like Le Corbusier.
Career Highlights
After graduating, Pei joined the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD). There, he became friends with famous architects Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. In 1948, a New York City real estate leader named William Zeckendorf hired Pei.
Pei worked for Zeckendorf for seven years. In 1955, he started his own design firm, I. M. Pei & Associates. This firm later became I. M. Pei & Partners in 1966. In 1989, it changed to Pei Cobb Freed & Partners.
Pei stopped working full-time in 1990. After retiring, he continued to work as an architectural consultant. He often helped his sons at their architectural firm, Pei Partnership Architects.
Pei first became widely known for the Mesa Laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado. He designed it in 1961, and it was finished in 1967. Because of this success, he was chosen to design the John F. Kennedy Library in Massachusetts.
He also designed the Dallas City Hall and the East Building of the National Gallery of Art. In 1975, he returned to China to design a hotel at Fragrant Hills. Fifteen years later, he designed the Bank of China Tower, Hong Kong, a tall skyscraper.
In the early 1980s, Pei faced some debate for his design of a glass pyramid for the Louvre in Paris. Despite the controversy, the Louvre Pyramid became one of his most famous works.
He continued to design many art-related buildings. These include the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, the Miho Museum in Japan, and the Suzhou Museum in Suzhou. He also designed the Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar and the Grand Duke Jean Museum of Modern Art in Luxembourg.
Architectural Style
Pei was known for mixing traditional building ideas with modern designs. He often used simple geometric shapes like circles, squares, and triangles in his work. These shapes could be seen in both the layout and the look of his buildings.
Awards and Recognition
Pei received many important awards for his architecture. In 1979, he won the AIA Gold Medal. He was also given the Medal of Liberty in 1986.
In 1989, he received the first Praemium Imperiale for Architecture. In 1983, he won the Pritzker Prize. This award is often called the "Nobel Prize of architecture."
Pei was also chosen as a member of important groups like the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Personal Life
Pei's wife, Eileen Loo, passed away in 2014. They were married for over 70 years. They had three sons: T'ing Chung, Chien Chung (known as Didi), and Li Chung (known as Sandi). They also had a daughter named Liane.
His sons, Chien Chung and Li Chung, are also architects. They founded and run Pei Partnership Architects. His daughter, Liane, is a lawyer.
Pei celebrated his 100th birthday on April 26, 2017. He passed away in his Manhattan apartment on May 16, 2019, at the age of 102. He was survived by his three children, seven grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.
Death
I. M. Pei died in May 2019, at 102 years old.
Images for kids
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As a child, Pei found the Shizilin Garden in Suzhou to be "an ideal playground".
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Pei describes the architecture of Shanghai's Bund waterfront area (seen here in a 2004 photo) as "very much a colonial past".
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Pei's first project (1949) 131 Ponce de Leon Avenue, Atlanta
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Pei wanted the open spaces and buildings of L'Enfant Plaza to be "functionally and visually related" to one another.
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Pei said he wanted the Mesa Laboratory of the National Center for Atmospheric Research to look "as if it were carved out of the mountain".
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As with NCAR, Pei combined elements of cubism and natural harmony when designing the dormitories at New College of Florida in the mid-1960s.
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Pei considered the John F. Kennedy Library "the most important commission" in his life.
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Providence's Cathedral Square, modeled after the Greek Agora marketplace
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Pei wanted his design for Dallas City Hall to "convey an image of the people".
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The disastrous failure of windows on the Hancock Tower required replacing them with plywood; some called it "the world's tallest wood building".
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Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University
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Time magazine headlined its review of Pei's design for the East Building "Masterpiece on the Mall".
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Critic Richard Hennessy complained in Artforum about the East Building's "shocking fun-house atmosphere".
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Pei was surprised by public resistance to his traditional design of the hotel at Fragrant Hills in China. "Many people thought I was being reactionary," he said.
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Pei said of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center: "The complications exceeded even my expectations."
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Pei was acutely aware, as he said, that "the history of Paris was embedded in the stones of the Louvre."
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Pei decided that a pyramid was "most compatible" with the other structures at the Louvre, complementing their roofs' faceted planes.
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Although he usually designed entirely by hand, Pei used a computer to "confirm the spaces" for the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas.
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One staff member sympathized with Pei's frustrations with the lack of organization at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, admitting that he was "operating in a vacuum".
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Pei's tunnel through a mountain leading to the Miho Museum was partly inspired by a story from fourth-century Chinese poet Tao Yuanming.
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The Macao Science Center in Macau, designed by Pei Partnership Architects in association with I. M. Pei.
See also
In Spanish: Ieoh Ming Pei para niños
- List of I. M. Pei projects
