I. M. Pei facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
I. M. Pei
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
.jpg)
Pei in 2006
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
| Born |
Ieoh Ming Pei
April 26, 1917 Guangzhou, Guangdong, Republic of China
|
||||||||||||||||||||
| Died | May 16, 2019 (aged 102) New York City, U.S.
|
||||||||||||||||||||
| Nationality | American | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Alma mater | University of Pennsylvania Massachusetts Institute of Technology (BArch) Harvard University (MArch) |
||||||||||||||||||||
| Occupation | Architect | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Spouse(s) |
Eileen Loo
(m. 1942; died 2014) |
||||||||||||||||||||
| Children | 4 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Awards |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
| Practice |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
| Buildings |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 貝聿銘 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 贝聿铭 | ||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
Ieoh Ming Pei FAIA RIBA ( yoh-_-ming-_-pay; Chinese: 貝聿銘; pinyin: Bèi Yùmíng; April 26, 1917 – May 16, 2019) was a Chinese-American architect.
Contents
Childhood
Ieoh Ming Pei was born on April 26, 1917, to Tsuyee and Lien Kwun, and the family moved to Hong Kong one year later. As a boy, Pei was very close to his mother, a devout Buddhist who was recognized for her skills as a flautist.
Pei studied in St. Paul's College in Hong Kong as a child. When Pei was 10, his father received a promotion and relocated with his family to Shanghai. Pei attended St. John's Middle School, the secondary school of St. John's University that was run by Anglican missionaries. Academic discipline was rigorous; students were allowed only one half-day each month for leisure. Pei enjoyed playing billiards and watching Hollywood movies, especially those of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. He also learned rudimentary English skills by reading the Bible and novels by Charles Dickens.
Shanghai's many international elements gave it the name "Paris of the East". The city's global architectural flavors had a profound influence on Pei.
Soon after the move to Shanghai, Pei's mother developed cancer. She died shortly after his thirteenth birthday, and he was profoundly upset.
In 1935, Pei moved to the United States and enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania's architecture school, but he quickly transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was unhappy with the focus at both schools on Beaux-Arts architecture, and spent his free time researching emerging architects, especially Le Corbusier.
Career
After graduating, Pei joined the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and became a friend of the Bauhaus architects Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. In 1948, Pei was recruited by New York City real estate magnate William Zeckendorf, for whom he worked for seven years before establishing an independent design firm in 1955, I. M. Pei & Associates. In 1966 that became I. M. Pei & Partners, and in 1989 became Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. Pei retired from full-time practice in 1990. In his retirement, he worked as an architectural consultant primarily from his sons' architectural firm Pei Partnership Architects.
Pei's first major recognition came with the Mesa Laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado (designed in 1961, and completed in 1967). His new stature led to his selection as chief architect for the John F. Kennedy Library in Massachusetts. He went on to design Dallas City Hall and the East Building of the National Gallery of Art. He returned to China for the first time in 1975 to design a hotel at Fragrant Hills, and designed Bank of China Tower, Hong Kong, a skyscraper in Hong Kong for the Bank of China fifteen years later. In the early 1980s, Pei was the focus of controversy when he designed a glass-and-steel pyramid for the Louvre in Paris. He later returned to the world of the arts by designing the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, the Miho Museum in Japan, Shigaraki, near Kyoto, and the chapel of the junior and high school: MIHO Institute of Aesthetics, the Suzhou Museum in Suzhou, Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar, and the Grand Duke Jean Museum of Modern Art, abbreviated to Mudam, in Luxembourg.
Death
Pei died in May 2019, at 102 years of age.
Style and method
Pei was known for combining traditional architectural principles with progressive designs based on simple geometric patterns. Circles, squares, and triangles are common elements of his work in both plan and elevation.
Awards and honors
Pei won a wide variety of prizes and awards in the field of architecture, including the AIA Gold Medal in 1979. In 1986, he was one of twelve recipients of the Medal of Liberty. Pei was awarded the first Praemium Imperiale for Architecture in 1989, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, in 2003. In 1983, he won the Pritzker Prize, which is sometimes referred to as the Nobel Prize of architecture.
Pei was also an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.
Personal life
Pei's wife of over 70 years, Eileen Loo, died on June 20, 2014. Together they had three sons, T'ing Chung (1945–2003), Chien Chung (b. 1946; known as Didi), and Li Chung (b. 1949; known as Sandi); and a daughter, Liane (b. 1960). T'ing Chung was an urban planner and alumnus of his father's alma mater MIT and Harvard. Chieng Chung and Li Chung, who are both Harvard College and Harvard Graduate School of Design alumni, founded and run Pei Partnership Architects. Liane is a lawyer.
In 2015, Pei's home health aide, Eter Nikolaishvili, grabbed Pei's right forearm and twisted it, resulting in bruising and bleeding and hospital treatment. Pei alleges that the assault occurred when Pei threatened to call the police about Nikolaishvili. Nikolaishvili agreed to plead guilty in 2016.
Pei celebrated his 100th birthday on April 26, 2017. He died at his Manhattan apartment on May 16, 2019, at the age of 102. He was survived by his three adult children, seven grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.
Images for kids
-
As a child, Pei found the Shizilin Garden in Suzhou to be "an ideal playground".
-
Pei describes the architecture of Shanghai's Bund waterfront area (seen here in a 2006 photo) as "very much a colonial past".
-
Pei's first project (1949) 131 Ponce de Leon Avenue, Atlanta
-
Pei wanted the open spaces and buildings of L'Enfant Plaza to be "functionally and visually related" to one another.
-
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".
-
As with NCAR, Pei combined elements of cubism and natural harmony when designing the dormitories at New College of Florida in the mid-1960s.
-
Pei considered the John F. Kennedy Library "the most important commission" in his life.
-
Providence's Cathedral Square, modeled after the Greek Agora marketplace
-
Pei wanted his design for Dallas City Hall to "convey an image of the people".
-
The disastrous failure of windows on the Hancock Tower required replacing them with plywood; some called it "the world's tallest wood building".
-
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University
-
Time magazine headlined its review of Pei's design for the East Building "Masterpiece on the Mall".
-
Critic Richard Hennessy complained in Artforum about the East Building's "shocking fun-house atmosphere".
-
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.
-
Pei said of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center: "The complications exceeded even my expectations."
-
Pei was acutely aware, as he said, that "the history of Paris was embedded in the stones of the Louvre."
-
Although he usually designed entirely by hand, Pei used a computer to "confirm the spaces" for the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas.
-
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".
-
Pei's tunnel through a mountain leading to the Miho Museum was partly inspired by a story from fourth-century Chinese poet Tao Yuanming.
-
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
