I.M. Pei’s Inspiration

Chinese-American architect IM Pei turns 100 today. To celebrate, we've selected 1 of his most iconic building from a career that spans seven decades.

Ieoh Ming Pei was born on 26 April 1917 in Guangzhou, China. He moved to the US to study architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, then engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and finally Harvard's Graduate School of Design – where he studied under former Bauhaus masters Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer.

After a stint working for the US National Defense Research Committee towards the end of the second world war, Pei began his architectural career, and worked for American real-estate magnate William Zeckendorf from 1948.

He went on to open his own New York-based architecture firm in 1955, which had several name changes before becoming Pei Cobb Freed & Partners in 1989. The architect retired from full-time practice a year later, but even now continues to consult on projects.

Accolades Pei has received over the years include the AIA Gold Medal in 1979, the Pritzker Prize in 1983, first Praemium Imperiale for Architecture in 1989, and the RIBA's Royal Gold Medal for architecture in 2010.

His architecture is identifiable through its strict geometries – combinations of circles, squares and triangles that manifest in both two and three dimensions in plan, section and elevation.

The firm's oeuvre ranges from a curving brick chapel to soaring glass-sheathed skyscrapers, and includes museums, libraries and civic centres in locations across the globe. Here is a selected project;

Le Grand Louvre, Paris, France, 1989

Perhaps one of the most recognisable structures in the world, Pei's addition to the Musée du Louvre in Paris was highly controversial with both the museum's leadership and the public when it was first proposed.

The glass and steel pyramids were created as part of an extensive overhaul of the historic former palace, and were designed for the complex's central courtyard to allow light into a new subterranean concourse.