Ieoh Ming Pei, FAIA

Year Awarded: 1979
Born: April 26, 1917; Guangzhou, Guangdong, China


Quote
I believe that architecture is a pragmatic art. To become art it must be built on a foundation of necessity. —from his acceptance speech for the 1983 Pritzker Architecture Award


Projects
• 2001: Dutch History Museum Extension
• 1999: Bank of China Headquarters
• 1997: Miho Museum and Footbridge, Shiga, Japan
• 1995: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Cleveland
• 1993: Grand Louvre in Paris, Louvre Pyramid, and Pyramid Inversée
• 1989: Bank of China Tower, Hong Kong
• 1986: Raffles City, Singapore
• 1981: West Wing, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
• 1979: John F. Kennedy Library, Boston
• 1978: East Wing, National Gallery, Washington D.C.
• 1973: John Hancock Tower
• 1972: Paul Mellon Center for the Arts, Choate Rosemary Hall, Wallingford, Conn.
• 1964: Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, N.Y.
• 1963: Luce Memorial Chapel, Tunghai University, Taiwan
• 1961: National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colo.
• 1956: U.S. National Bank of Denver


Biography
Ieoh Ming Pei was born in China and moved with his family when still very young to Hong Kong. In 1935, he moved to the United States to study architecture. After a brief period at the University of Pennsylvania, he continued his studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at Harvard. He earned a BArch from MIT in 1940.

In 1941 he worked at the Bemis Foundation as a research assistant; in 1942 he enrolled at Harvard Graduate School of Design. During this time, he volunteered for the National Defense Research Committee in Princeton and also worked for Stone and Webster as a concrete designer. He continued his studies at Harvard in 1944 and in 1946 earned an MArch. He remained at Harvard for two years as an assistant professor, with mentoring from Walter Gropius.

In 1946 Pei moved to Boston to work at Hugh Asher Stubbins, then a couple of years later to New York, where he worked as the architectural director at Webb & Knapp. After becoming a U.S. citizen in the mid-1950s, he founded I.M. Pei & Partners in New York, which received the AIA Architecture Firm Award in 1968. In 1990 Pei retired from his firm, Pei, Cobb, Free & Partners.

Pei received a number of high honors during his career, including the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1983. In addition, he received the Wheelwright Traveling Fellowship in 1951 and the Praemium Imperiale for Architecture, a global arts prize awarded annually by the Japan Art Association. He has been nominated as an honorary academician of the Royal Academy of Arts, London.

Pei has designed more than 50 buildings around the world, designing large-scale buildings in abstract form with geometric designs, using steel, glass, and stone that reflect the high-tech movement. Known for excelling in modernist architecture, his work reflects both eastern and western influences.