442: Meet the Chinese American architect behind the Louvre’s glass pyramid

When Ieoh Ming (I.M.) Pei (1917-2019) was famously tasked with redesigning the entrance to the Louvre in Paris, he faced the challenge of merging the past with the future. As a visionary who believed, “Architecture is the very mirror of life. You only have to cast your eyes on buildings to feel the presence of the past, the spirit of a place; they are the reflection of society,” Pei saw buildings as part of history, culture, and progress. His bold and modern approach on contemporary design honors and elevates tradition.

Born to former governor and prominent figure in the modern Chinese banking system Tsuyee Pei, and Aileen Chiang Pei in Guangzhou, China in 1917, I.M. Pei came from an educated family. When he was 1 year old they moved to Hong Kong and then to Shanghai when he was 10 years old—though as a child, he often visited his ancestral home in Suzhou, China during the holidays.

In 1935, when Pei was 18, he came to the United States and enrolled initially at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia. He then transferred to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, as a student of architectural engineering and graduated in 1939.

As a student at MIT, while browsing the school’s library, he discovered the writings of Le Corbusier, a Swiss French architect and designer, and pioneer of modern architecture design. In 1935, Pei was able to study for two full days with Corbusier when he visited his alma mater. Pei considered that time “the most important days (in) his architectural education.”

In 1938, he met Eileen Loo, a student at Wellesley College, whom he married in 1942. They had plans to return to China after getting married, but were unable to due to the outbreak of World War II. They went on to have three sons and one daughter. Over the next few years, Pei had several architectural contractual jobs in Boston, New York City, and Los Angeles.

From 1948-56, he was an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he received a master’s degree in 1946. In 1948, he accepted a position as director of architecture at Webb & Knapp, Inc., a real estate development firm, which resulted in projects for him in Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh, and other major cities.

In 1954 Pei became a U.S. citizen and a year later founded his architecture firm, I.M. Pei & Associates, which became I.M. Pei & Partners in 1966. His firm received the 1968 Architectural Firm Award of The American Institute of Architects.

In 1968, he commissioned one of his most prominent projects, the East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., where he solved the problem of the building's irregular shape by utilizing triangles. The building opened to the public in 1978, and he referred to this success as one of his most important works at that time of his career. Many architecture students visit the East Building to see the sharp 19.5-degree corner, known as the “Knife Edge” and touch the carving of Pei’s name in the atrium. If you visit, you can see the lingering marks from these students’ hands.

Former French President François Mitterand and Émile Biasini, who Mitterand assigned as project manager to renovate and reorganize the Louvre museum in Paris, both visited the East Building in the early 1980s. They saw the glass “crystals” Pei had created on the plaza and wanted him as the architect for their project's extension. Their goal was to have an entrance that was new, central, modernized, and accommodating for the millions of visitors to the museum guests.

Pei’s solution to organize visitor circulation meant creating a large and airy glass pyramid highlighting the circular central underground lobby that provides access to the museum’s three wings. The pyramid also acts as a skylight, which at first was controversial, but over time became celebrated as one of Pei’s and Paris’s most iconic structures.This new design welcomed new exhibition spaces, a ticket office, an auditorium, a shopping center that connected to the nearest Metro station, and other facilities.

In 1983 Pei was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize for his renown works and global recognition over the previous three decades. He designed more than 50 projects—many of which were world renown. The prize was established in 1979 and is commonly known as the Nobel Prize of architecture. It includes $100,000 and a bronze sculpture by Henry Moore. Pei used his prize money to establish a scholarship fund for Chinese students to study architecture in the United States provided that they return to China to practice their profession.

Pei was also awarded the Gold Medal for Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Institute of Architects (A.I.A.) in 1979, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1993, and the Royal Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2010, among many others. 

His other works in the United States include the West Wing of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the New York City Convention and Exhibition Center (now known as the Javits Center), the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library in Dorchester, Massachusetts, and the Texas Commerce Tower (now known as the JPMorgan Chase Tower) in Houston. Abroad, two of his well-known office complexes are The Gateway and the Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation in Singapore and the headquarters for the Bank of China in Hong Kong.

His designs emphasized natural light, geometry, and modernism. He continued working into his 80s and at this age masterfully managed another famous project, the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar. Pei died in Manhattan shortly after his 102nd birthday on May 16, 2019 marking an end to an architectural era.