World famous Architect and Founder, Committee of 100
I.M. Pei made a career of bridging cultures. His work—”a careful balance of the cutting edge and the conservative”—placed modernism in a harmonious continuum with the architecture of the past rather than breaking from it. His architecture is found throughout the world, but he is best known for his many museums, notably at the Louvre and the East Building of the National Gallery of Art.
In Paris, Pei turned French dismay into admiration with the Louvre’s now-iconic glass pyramid, which formed the museum’s new main entrance and connected three massive wings built over eight centuries. In Washington D.C., he designed the East Building of the National Gallery of Art, a geometric work rendered in Tennessee marble to harmonize with the original Roman Pantheon-inspired West Building.
Born in Guangzhou on April 26, 1917, Ieoh Ming Pei was the son of Lien Kwun, a calligrapher and flutist, and Tsuyee Pei, manager of the local branch of the Bank of China. He was first drawn to architecture when he saw the construction of a twenty-two-story hotel in Shanghai. “I couldn’t resist looking into the hole,” he said. “That’s when I knew I wanted to build.”
Pei came to the United States to study architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, but soon transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he graduated in 1939. When his father grew concerned about the threat of civil war, Pei pursued a master’s degree at the Harvard Graduate School of Design rather than return to China. At Harvard, Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus School, influenced him with principles of European modernism.
Where contemporaries would count themselves lucky to even design single-family homes after graduation, Pei oversaw high-rise buildings in major cities, working for New York developer William Zeckendorf. Pei used that experience to start his own firm.
Pei was “gentle in demeanor but forceful in his convictions,” according to David Childs, a consulting design partner with competing architectural firm SOM. He earned the American Institute of Architects’ Gold Medal in 1979 and the Pritzker Prize in 1983 for work “characterized by its faith in modernism, humanized by its subtlety, lyricism, and beauty.”
Pei became an American citizen after the Communist takeover of China, but he never let go of his emotional ties to his birthplace. All his children received Chinese names, and he used his $100,000 Pritzker Prize winnings to establish a scholarship fund for Chinese architecture students.
When the bloody events of Tiananmen Square occurred in 1989, Pei penned a New York Times op-ed piece that roused the public. More than 300 messages came to his desk seeking his perspective. By then, his triumph at the Louvre had made Pei the most famous Chinese architect in the world, holding influence within the Chinese American community and beyond.
At a time when Americans had little understanding of China, then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger urged Pei to build bridges outside of architecture. By June 1990, Pei formed a group of Chinese Americans to address critical issues facing the Chinese community and foster positive U.S.-China relations. The first Committee of 100 included luminaries like cellist Yo-Yo Ma, investment banker Henry S. Tang, philanthropist Oscar Tang, physicist Chien-Shiung Wu, and strategic marketer Shirley Young.
I. M. Pei died on May 16, 2019 at 102 years old, having influenced a generation of architects from Renzo Piano to David Adjaye and legions of Chinese Americans. In architecture as in advocacy, Pei found ways to connect cultures and places to people.
