Ita
I.M. Pei dies at 102 years old
Ieoh Ming Pei (Canton, April 26, 1917 - New York, May 16, 2019)
I.M. Pei dies at 102 years old
The founding architect of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners (originally I.M. Pei & Associates) and 1983 Pritzker Prize winner I.M. Pei has passed away at the age of 102.
Pei’s influence could be felt all over the world, from the National Gallery of Art, East Building, in Washington, DC, to the iconic pyramidal glass entrance of the Louvre in Paris, to the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong.
The entrance pyramid to the Louvre by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners.
He won the Pritzker Prize in 1983, and on December 11, 1992, President George H. W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He was one of the last great masters of modernist architecture. He worked with abstract forms, using stone, concrete, glass and steel. Pei was one of the most successful architects of the 20th century.
Pei’s lesser-known but no less impressive Brutalist museums, such as the 1968 Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York, or the 1973 Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art in Ithaca, New York, reflected Pei’s relationships with modernists such as Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer and their work, and introduced revolutionary modern architecture for smaller cities.
Pei, born in Guangzhou, China, in 1917, moved to the United States in 1935 to attend the University of Pennsylvania’s school of architecture. Pei was dissatisfied and eventually left for MIT, before graduating and later attending the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
