AN UNUSUAL ARCHITECT—LEOH MING PEI

On this vivid planet, it appears colorful with azure blue seawater, lush green plants and many world famous buildings. Among these largest artificial articles in the world, many originated from the same architect—Ieoh  Ming  Pei.

Ieoh Ming Pei, the 1983 Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, is a founding partner of I. M. Pei & Partners based in New York City. He was born in China in 1917, the son of a prominent banker. He came to the United States in 1935 to study architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (B. Arch. 1940) and the Harvard Graduate School of Design (M. Arch. 1946). 

During World War Ⅱ, he served on the National defense Research Commission at Princeton, and from 1945 to 1948, taught at Harvard. In 1948 he accepted the newly created post of director of Architecture at Webb & Knapp, Inc., the real estate development firm, and this association resulted in major architectural and planning projects in Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, Pittsburgh and other cities. In 1958, he formed the partnership of I. M. Pei & Associates, which became I. M. Pei & Parteners in

1966. The partnership received the 1968 Architectural Firm Award of The American Institute of Architects.

Pei has designed over forty projects in this country and abroad, twenty of which have been award winners. His more prominent commissions have included the East Building of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D .C.; the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library near Boston; the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado; the Dallas City Hall in Texas; the Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation Centre (OCBC) and Raffles City in Singapore; the West Wing of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Fragrant Hill Hotel near Beijing, China, designed to graft advanced  technology onto the roofs of indigenous building and thereby sow the seed of a new ,distinctly Chinese form of modern architecture; the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse , New York; and the Texas Commerce Tower in Houston.

He has designed arts facilities and university buildings on the campuses of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Rochester, Cornell University, the Choate School, Syracuse University, New York University and the University of Hawaii. He has been selected to design the headquarters for the Bank of China in Hong Kong.

Pei is currently a member of the National Council on the Arts, and previously served on the National Council on the Humanities. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (of which he served a term as Chancellor), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Design. He is a member of the Corporation of the Massachusetts Institue of Technology.liuxuepaper.com