I.M. Pei, acclaimed architect, dies at 102
I.M. Pei was fascinated with the geometric swoops and dips of the buildings in Guangzhou, the bustling seaport near Hong Kong where he grew up in the shadows of the city’s avant-garde architecture and towering skyscrapers.
He was equally fascinated with the kings, presidents and autocrats who could bankroll such elegant buildings.
In a career that spanned decades and entire continents, Pei became one of the most distinguished architects of his time, his work on public display from Paris to Los Angeles.
Pei, out of the public eye for much of the last decade, has died at the age of 102, his son’s architecture firm announced Thursday. Further details were not available.
Pei, who won the coveted Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1983, had a client list that was a who’s who of 20th-century notables, including French President Francois Mitterrand for the Louvre, Jacqueline Kennedy for the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library in Boston and art collector and philanthropist Paul Mellon for the East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
As the head of a prestigious architectural firm based in New York City, Pei oversaw dozens of well-known projects, including the now widely admired 60-story John Hancock Tower in Boston designed by partner Henry N. Cobb, a project that initially threatened to ruin the firm when its windows began popping out and crashing to the ground.
Pei’s projects, though sharing in some way his love of geometric forms, were varied in style but not on the cutting edge. He said he liked to compare his approach to architecture to the music of Bach — “constant variations of a simple theme.”