I. M. Pei

Ieoh Ming Pei (April 26, 1917 – May 16, 2019) was a Chinese-American architect. He was born in Guangzhou to a family that had long been part of the scholar-gentry class, and as a child he found inspiration in the garden villas of Suzhou. In 1935, Pei left for the United States, first studying architecture at the University of Pennsylvania before quickly moving to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dissatisfied with the Beaux-Arts approach at both schools, he used his free time to study emerging architects, particularly Le Corbusier.

After finishing at MIT, Pei attended the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he became friends with faculty members Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer, both former Bauhaus teachers. From 1948, he worked as an in-house architect for New York real estate developer William Zeckendorf. In 1955, he founded his own firm, I. M. Pei & Associates, which was renamed I. M. Pei & Partners in 1966 and later Pei Cobb Freed & Partners in 1989. He retired from full-time practice in 1990, but continued as a consultant, mainly working with his sons’ firm, Pei Partnership Architects.

Pei first gained major recognition for the Mesa Laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, designed in 1961 and completed in 1967. This success 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 in 1975 for the first time to design a hotel at Fragrant Hills, and fifteen years later designed the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong. In the early 1980s, his glass-and-steel pyramid for the Louvre in Paris sparked controversy. He also designed the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, the Miho Museum in Japan, the chapel of the MIHO Institute of Aesthetics, the Suzhou Museum, the Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar, and the Grand Duke Jean Museum of Modern Art in Luxembourg.

Pei received numerous awards, including the AIA Gold Medal in 1979, 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, often called the Nobel Prize of architecture.

Pei’s family roots go back to the Ming dynasty, when they moved from Anhui to Suzhou. They made their fortune in medicinal herbs and joined the scholar-gentry. Pei was born on April 26, 1917, to Tsuyee and Lien Kwun. The family moved to Hong Kong a year later and eventually had five children. As a boy, Pei was close to his mother, a devout Buddhist and skilled flautist, who took him—but not his siblings—on meditation retreats. His relationship with his father was respectful but distant. Though the family was wealthy, Pei said his father was not artistically inclined, so Pei explored art on his own, saying, “I have cultivated myself.”

Pei attended St. Paul’s College in Hong Kong. When he was 10, his father’s promotion moved the family to Shanghai, where Pei went to St. John’s Middle School, run by Anglican missionaries. The school was strict, with only one half-day off each month. He enjoyed billiards and Hollywood movies, especially those of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, and learned basic English from the Bible and Charles Dickens novels.

Shanghai’s international character, with its mix of architectural styles from The Bund to the Park Hotel, deeply influenced Pei. He also spent summers with extended family in Suzhou, visiting gardens like the Shizilin Garden, built in the 14th century and owned by his uncle. He later recalled how the garden blended natural and man-made elements.

Soon after moving to Shanghai, Pei’s mother developed cancer and was given opium for pain; Pei prepared her pipe. She died shortly after his thirteenth birthday, leaving him deeply upset. The children were sent to live with relatives, as their father became absorbed in work. Pei said, “My father began living his own separate life pretty soon after that.” His father later married a woman named Aileen, who moved to New York later in life.

As Pei finished secondary school, he decided to attend university. He was accepted by several schools but chose the University of Pennsylvania, partly because of his experiences in Shanghai.