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“Life Of One Of The Most Eminent Architect – I.M Pei”

SUBMITTED TO,Mrs. Kirti Acharya

SUBMITTED BY,Parth PatelB.arch IV Sem.

AR. Ieoh Ming Pei

• Born: April 26, 1917 Canton, China Chinese-born American architectHarvard Graduate School of Design

Significant buildings :-- L’Enfant Plaza Hotel, Washington DC- Miho Museum, Japan- Bank of China Tower, Hong Kong

Chinese American architect, I. M. Pei, directed for nearly forty years one of the most successful architectural practices in the United States. Known for his dramatic use of concrete and glass, Pei counts among his most famous buildings the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the John Hancock Tower in Boston, Massachusetts, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland, Ohio.

Childhood

• Ieoh Ming Pei was born in Canton, China, on April 26, 1917. His early childhood was spent in Canton and Hong Kong, where his father worked as director of the Bank of China.

• In the late 1920s, after the death of Pei's mother, the family moved to Shanghai, China, where Pei attended St. Johns Middle School.

• His father, encouraged his son to attend college in England, but Pei decided to move to the United States in order to study architecture at the University of Pennsylvania.

• As a youth, Pei watched the growing cityscape in Shanghai, which planted the seeds for his love of architecture. Upon his arrival in 1935, however, he found that the University of Pennsylvania's course work, with its heavy emphasis on fine draftsmanship, was not well suited to his interest in structural engineering.

• He enrolled instead in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, Massachusetts.

• While at MIT, Pei considered pursuing a degree in engineering, but was convinced by Dean William Emerson to stick with architecture.

• Pei graduated with a bachelor's degree in architecture in 1940, winning the American

• Institute of Architects Gold Medal and the Alpha Rho Chi (the fraternity of architects). Pei considered going to Europe or returning to China, but with both regions engulfed in war, he decided to remain in Boston and work as a research assistant at the Bemis Foundation (1940–1941).

(Family Photo Of I.M Pei) (Place where Pei used to play in shanghai)

From Professor To Architect• In 1942 Pei married Eileen Loo . After the wedding Pei moved to Cambridge,

Massachusetts.

• Pei enrolled in the Harvard Graduate School of Design in the summer of 1942.

• Pei designed several low-cost modern houses, Several of these designs were awarded recognition in Arts and Architecture magazine and thus served to give Pei his first national exposure.

• In 1946 Pei was appointed assistant professor after obtaining his master's degree in architecture.

• Pei's career as a Harvard professor ended in 1948 when, at the age of thirty-one

• He was hired to direct the architectural division of Webb and Knapp, a huge New York City contracting firm owned by the wealthy businessman William Zeckendorf.

(Pei with is wife Eileen)

His Own Architectural Firm• As architect of Webb and Knapp, he recognised his “own big picture”.

• By mutual agreement, Pei and his staff of some seventy designers split from Webb and Knapp in 1955 to become I. M. Pei & Associates.

• Pei and his partners designed some of their most ambitious worksPlace Ville Marie, Kips Bay Plaza, the Manhattan, New York etc.

• In terms of style, Pei's work at this time was strongly influenced by Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969).

• Pei experimented with towers of pre-cast concrete window frames laid on one another like blocks.

• This system proved to be quick to construct and required no added fireproof lining or exterior sheathing, making it relatively inexpensive.

• During the 1960s Pei continued to build "skin-and-bones" office and apartment towers

• But he also began to get commissions for other types of buildings that allowed him more artistic expression.

• Among the first of these was the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado (1961–1967).

• The NCAR complex helped to establish Pei as a designer of serious artistic intent.

(Pei with is wife Eileen)

Triangles And Curtains Of Glass

• Of Pei's many museums, he became best known for the East Wing of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. (1968–1978).

• Located on a distinct but oddly shaped site, Pei cleverly divided the plan into two triangular sections—one containing a series of intimate gallery spaces and the other housing administrative and research areas.

• Although Pei's reputation was slightly tarnished in the mid-1970s when plates of glass mysteriously fell out of his John Hancock Tower in Boston, Pei was still considered a master of curtain glass construction in the 1980s.

• He demonstrated this again in the glass-sheathed Allied Bank Tower in Dallas (1985) and later worked on a well-publicized glass pyramid built in the courtyard of the Louvre Museum in Paris (1987).

I.M Pei’s Architectural Wonders

L’Enfant Plaza Hotel, Washington DC The Louvre, Paris

Bank of China Tower, Hong Kong

Museum of Islamic Art, Qatar Miho Museum, Japan

Awards And Achievements

• AIA Gold Medal (1979)

• Pritzker Architecture Prize (1983)

• Royal Gold Medal (2010)

• Praemium Imperiale (1989)

• Presidential Medal of Freedom (1993)

• National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement.

• Twenty-five Year Award (2011,2004 for John Hancock Tower, East Building)