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 Pei, whose portfolio included a controversial renovation of
Paris' Louvre Museum and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in
Cleveland, died overnight, his son Chien Chung Pei told the
newspaper.
Ieoh Ming Pei, the son of a prominent banker in China, left his
homeland in 1935, moving to the United States and studying
architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
Harvard University. After teaching and working for the U.S.
government, he went to work for a New York developer in 1948 and
started his own firm in 1955.
The museums, municipal buildings, hotels, schools and other
structures that Pei built around the world showed precision
geometry and an abstract quality with a reverence for light.
They were composed of stone, steel and glass and, as with the
Louvre, he often worked glass pyramids into his projects.
The Louvre, parts of which date to the 12th century, proved to
be Pei's most controversial work, starting with the fact that he
was not French. After being chosen for the job by President
Francois Mitterrand amid much secrecy, Pei began by making a
four-month study of the museum and French history.
He created a futuristic 70-foot-tall (21-m) steel-framed,
glass-walled pyramid as a grand entrance for the museum with
three smaller pyramids nearby. It was a striking contrast to the
existing Louvre structures in classic French style and was
reviled by many French.
A French newspaper described Pei's pyramids as "an annex to
Disneyland" while an environmental group said they belonged in a
desert.
Pei said the Louvre was undoubtedly the most difficult job of
his career. When it opened in 1993 he said he had wanted to
create a modern space that did not detract from the traditional
part of the museum.
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"Contemporary architects tend to impose modernity on something," he
said in an New York Times interview in 2008. "There is a certain
concern for history but it's not very deep. I understand that time
has changed, we have evolved. But I don't want to forget the
beginning. A lasting architecture has to have roots."
Other notable Pei projects include the John F. Kennedy Library in
Dorchester, Massachusetts, the National Center for Atmospheric
Research in Boulder, Colorado, the East Wing of the National Gallery
of Art in Washington and the Dallas City Hall.
When Pei won the international Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1983,
he used the $100,000 award to start a program for aspiring Chinese
architects to study in the United States.
Even though he formally retired from his firm in 1990, Pei was still
taking on projects in his late 80s, such as museums in Luxembourg,
Qatar and his ancestral home of Suzhou.
Pei, a slight man who wore round, owl-ish glasses, became a U.S.
citizen in 1955. He was married to Eileen Loo from 1942 until her
death in 2014. They had four children, two of whom became
architects.
(Additional reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Chicago; Editing by
Diane Craft and Cynthia Osterman)
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