110 Facts About IM Pei

Ieoh Ming IM Pei was a Chinese-American architect.

IM Pei was unhappy with the focus at both schools on Beaux-Arts architecture, and spent his free time researching emerging architects, especially Le Corbusier.

IM Pei went on to design Dallas City Hall and the East Building of the National Gallery of Art.

IM Pei 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.

IM Pei won a wide variety of prizes and awards in the field of architecture, 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.

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The younger IM Pei, drawn more to music and other cultural forms than to his father's domain of banking, explored art on his own.

IM Pei studied in St Paul's College in Hong Kong as a child.

When IM Pei was 10, his father received a promotion and relocated with his family to Shanghai.

IM Pei attended St John's Middle School, the secondary school of St John's University that was run by Anglican missionaries.

IM Pei enjoyed playing billiards and watching Hollywood movies, especially those of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin.

IM Pei learned rudimentary English skills by reading the Bible and novels by Charles Dickens.

IM Pei was impressed by the many gardens of Suzhou, where he spent the summers with extended family and regularly visited a nearby ancestral shrine.

IM Pei spoke later of his fondness for the garden's blending of natural and human-built structures.

IM Pei died shortly after his thirteenth birthday, and he was profoundly upset.

IM Pei was accepted in a number of schools, but decided to enroll at the University of Pennsylvania.

IM Pei was fascinated by the representations of college life in the films of Bing Crosby, which differed tremendously from the academic atmosphere in China.

In 1935 IM Pei boarded a boat and sailed to San Francisco, then traveled by train to Philadelphia.

IM Pei was more intrigued by modern architecture, and felt intimidated by the high level of drafting proficiency shown by other students.

IM Pei decided to abandon architecture and transferred to the engineering program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology .

IM Pei was inspired by the innovative designs of the new International Style, characterized by simplified form and the use of glass and steel materials.

IM Pei enrolled in the landscape architecture program at Harvard University, and Pei was thus introduced to members of the faculty at Harvard's Graduate School of Design .

IM Pei was excited by the lively atmosphere and joined the GSD in.

IM Pei spent two and a half years with the NDRC, but revealed few details of his work.

IM Pei returned to Harvard in the autumn of 1945, and received a position as assistant professor of design.

One of IM Pei's design projects at the GSD was a plan for an art museum in Shanghai.

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IM Pei wanted to create a mood of Chinese authenticity in the architecture without using traditional materials or styles.

IM Pei found Zeckendorf's personality the opposite of his own; his new boss was known for his loud speech and gruff demeanor.

Zeckendorf was well connected politically, and IM Pei enjoyed learning about the social world of New York's city planners.

IM Pei's first project for Webb and Knapp was an apartment building with funding from the Housing Act of 1949.

IM Pei's design was based on a circular tower with concentric rings.

IM Pei finally saw his architecture come to life in 1949, when he designed a two-story corporate building for Gulf Oil in Atlanta, Georgia.

IM Pei's designs echoed the work of Mies van der Rohe in the beginning of his career as shown in his own weekend-house in Katonah, New York in 1952.

Soon Pei was so inundated with projects that he asked Zeckendorf for assistants, which he chose from his associates at the GSD, including Henry N Cobb and Ulrich Franzen.

One block away, IM Pei's team redesigned Denver's Courthouse Square, which combined office spaces, commercial venues, and hotels.

IM Pei involved himself in the construction process at Kips Bay, even inspecting the bags of cement to check for consistency of color.

IM Pei designed the Society Hill Towers, a three-building residential block injecting cubist design into the 18th-century milieu of the neighborhood.

IM Pei, helped to set new standards for architecture in Canada in the 1960s.

IM Pei found himself responsible for acquiring new building contracts and supervising the plans for them.

IM Pei had developed a close friendship with Zeckendorf, and both men were sad to part ways.

IM Pei was able to return to hands-on design when he was approached in 1961 by Walter Orr Roberts to design the new Mesa Laboratory for the National Center for Atmospheric Research outside Boulder, Colorado.

IM Pei drove with his wife around the region, visiting assorted buildings and surveying the natural environs.

IM Pei was impressed by the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, but felt it was "detached from nature".

Conceptualization stages were important for IM Pei, presenting a need and an opportunity to break from the Bauhaus tradition.

IM Pei set the complex back on the mesa overlooking the city, and designed the approaching road to be long, winding, and indirect.

IM Pei referred to the NCAR complex as his "breakout building", and he remained a friend of Roberts until the scientist died in.

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IM Pei was recruited to work on a variety of projects, including the S I Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York, the Sundrome terminal at John F Kennedy International Airport in New York City, and dormitories at New College of Florida.

IM Pei's first proposed design included a large glass pyramid that would fill the interior with sunlight, meant to represent the optimism and hope that Kennedy's administration had symbolized for so many in the United States.

The years of conflict and compromise had changed the nature of the design, and IM Pei felt that the final result lacked its original passion.

IM Pei Plan was a failed urban redevelopment initiative designed for downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 1964.

In 1976, IM Pei designed a distinctive modern penthouse that was added to the roof of architect William Lee Stoddart's historic Lamar Building, designed in 1916.

IM Pei spoke of creating "a public-private dialogue with the commercial high-rises".

IM Pei himself considered the project a success, even as he worried about the arrangement of its elements.

IM Pei took to the project with vigor, and set to work with two young architects he had recently recruited to the firm, William Pedersen and Yann Weymouth.

Mellon and IM Pei both expected large crowds of people to visit the new building, and they planned accordingly.

IM Pei hoped the lobby would be exciting to the public in the same way as the central room of the Guggenheim Museum is in New York City.

Ada Louise Huxtable wrote in The New York Times that IM Pei's building was "a palatial statement of the creative accommodation of contemporary art and architecture".

IM Pei was favorably received, returned the welcome with positive comments, and a series of lectures ensued.

IM Pei noted in one lecture that since the 1950s Chinese architects had been content to imitate Western styles; he urged his audience in one lecture to search China's native traditions for inspiration.

In 1978, IM Pei was asked to initiate a project for his home country.

IM Pei's design included a large central atrium covered by glass panels that functioned much like the large central space in his East Building of the National Gallery.

Younger Chinese who had hoped the building would exhibit some of Cubist flavor for which IM Pei had become known were disappointed, but the new hotel found more favour with government officials and architects.

IM Pei worked with an expert from Suzhou to preserve and renovate a water maze from the original hotel, one of only five in the country.

IM Pei was meticulous about the arrangement of items in the garden behind the hotel; he even insisted on transporting 230 short tons of rocks from a location in southwest China to suit the natural aesthetic.

An associate of IM Pei's said later that he never saw the architect so involved in a project.

The problems continued for months, until IM Pei had an uncharacteristically emotional moment during a meeting with Chinese officials.

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IM Pei later explained that his actions included "shouting and pounding the table" in frustration.

IM Pei began scrubbing floors with his wife and ordered his children to make beds and vacuum floors.

IM Pei finally agreed that a new construction project was not only possible, but necessary for the future of the museum.

IM Pei thus became the first foreign architect to work on the Louvre.

IM Pei proposed a central entrance, not unlike the lobby of the National Gallery East Building, which would link the three major wings around the central space.

IM Pei found the pyramid shape best suited for stable transparency, and considered it "most compatible with the architecture of the Louvre, especially with the faceted planes of its roofs".

IM Pei resigned from his post, complaining that the project was "unfeasible" and posed "architectural risks".

IM Pei demanded a method of glass production that resulted in clear panes.

Opening of the Louvre Pyramid coincided with four other projects on which IM Pei had been working, prompting architecture critic Paul Goldberger to declare 1989 "the year of IM Pei" in The New York Times.

At the age of 72, IM Pei had begun thinking about retirement, but continued working long hours to see his designs come to light.

IM Pei did and, although it would be his first concert hall, the committee voted unanimously to offer him the commission.

IM Pei proposed a shoebox auditorium, used in the acclaimed designs of top European symphony halls such as the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and Vienna Musikverein.

IM Pei drew inspiration for his adjustments from the designs of the German architect Johann Balthasar Neumann, especially the Basilica of the Fourteen Holy Helpers.

IM Pei sought to incorporate some of the panache of the Paris Opera designed by Charles Garnier.

IM Pei's design placed the rigid shoebox at an angle to the surrounding street grid, connected at the north end to a long rectangular office building, and cut through the middle with an assortment of circles and cones.

IM Pei admitted that he did not completely know how everything would come together.

IM Pei then spoke with his father at length about the proposal.

IM Pei felt that his design for the Bank of China Tower needed to reflect "the aspirations of the Chinese people".

IM Pei wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times titled "China Won't Ever Be the Same, " in which he said that the killings "tore the heart out of a generation that carries the hope for the future of the country".

The staff had begun to shrink, and IM Pei wanted to dedicate himself to smaller projects allowing for more creativity.

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The combination of off-centered wraparounds and angled walls was, IM Pei said, designed to provide "a sense of tumultuous youthful energy, rebelling, flailing about".

The New York Times called it "a fine building", but IM Pei was among those who felt disappointed with the results.

IM Pei was disappointed with the alterations, but remained involved in the building process even during construction.

In 1995, IM Pei was hired to design an extension to the Deutsches Historisches Museum, or German Historical Museum in Berlin.

IM Pei described the glass cylinder addition as a "beacon, " and topped it with a glass roof to allow plentiful sunlight inside.

IM Pei had difficulty working with German government officials on the project; their utilitarian approach clashed with his passion for aesthetics.

IM Pei worked at this time on two projects for a new Japanese religious movement called Shinji Shumeikai.

IM Pei was approached by the movement's spiritual leader, Kaishu Koyama, who impressed the architect with her sincerity and willingness to give him significant artistic freedom.

IM Pei was unfamiliar with the movement's beliefs, but explored them in order to represent something meaningful in the tower.

IM Pei visited the site in Shiga Prefecture, and during their conversations convinced Koyama to expand her collection.

When designing the exterior, IM Pei borrowed from the tradition of Japanese temples, particularly those found in nearby Kyoto.

IM Pei created a concise spaceframe wrapped into French limestone and covered with a glass roof.

IM Pei oversaw specific decorative details, including a bench in the entrance lobby, carved from a 350-year-old keyaki tree.

IM Pei designed the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar at the request of the Al-Thani Family.

IM Pei then spent six months touring the region and surveying mosques in Spain, Syria, and Tunisia.

IM Pei was especially impressed with the elegant simplicity of the Mosque of Ibn Tulun in Cairo.

Once again, IM Pei sought to combine new design elements with the classical aesthetic most appropriate for the location of the building.

IM Pei's career ended with his death in May 2019, at 102 years of age.

IM Pei's style was described as thoroughly modernist, with significant cubist themes.

IM 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.

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IM Pei referred to his own "analytical approach" when explaining the lack of a "IM Pei School".

In 1996, IM Pei became the first person to be elected a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

IM Pei was an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

IM Pei alleges that the assault occurred when IM Pei threatened to call the police about Nikolaishvili.

IM Pei was survived by three of his children, seven grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.