IM PEI: THE ENDURING MODERNIST

August 2019

In May of this year the news filtered through that Ieoh Ming Pei (I.M. Pei as he was more commonly known), had passed away at the age of 102. Pei stood as one of the last standing modernists enlisted by Walter Gropius at Harvard University to go forth and change the world with their Modernist mantra. He not only stands as the longest living, but the architect who was able to maintain the ideology the longest and most successfully.

Upon hearing of his passing I found my myself a little confounded. Whilst I had visited several of his buildings, some remarkable, so not quite as remarkable, I realised I knew quite little of the person who had given so much to the architectural landscape. His collection of projects rivals other household names like Le Corbusier, Wright or Kahn, however this level of fame often sits slightly under these canonical figures. This curiosity prompted me to take a deep dive into his life and career, a venture that has taken me two months to collate into a never seen before ‘double edition’ of the Jake Taylor Architecture blog.

IM Pei was born in 1917 into the fifteenth generation of a successful lineage of painters, poets, calligraphers and bankers in Suzhou, China - an area known for its beautiful ornamental gardens and crafts. At a young age his family moved to Shanghai following his father, who was quickly becoming a prominent banker. Pei was educated in a Western focused school during his teenage years that looked to grow the next generation of international thinkers. Along with several other Chinese friends, he moved to the US to study at the University of Pennsylvania. Pei’s decision to study abroad was prompted by his father, who sensed the impending upheaval in China due to the war with Japan. If he had not decided to leave, his future talents would most likely not have eventuated - a potential loss that many others undoubtedly were not as lucky to avoid.

Pei arrived at Penn in 1935 eager to embrace all that the United States had to offer. Penn architecture at this time was still ardently practising the classical nineteenth century style from the Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris under the guidance of Paul Cret. Pei’s strengths lay in maths and sciences and it came as shock that he would need to couple this with being an artist to thrive in the Parisian system of education. After just two weeks at Penn, Pei made the bold decision to not dwell in an unsatisfactory situation and transferred to MIT. Interestingly given his experience with the Beaux Arts he enrolled in engineering at MIT, rather than architecture. Pei was convinced by William Emerson, the Dean of Architecture at MIT, that his path should lie in architecture at a dinner later that year. Pei soon found himself once again studying architecture.

Pei arrived in Cambridge at an amazing time architecturally. There was a growing collective voice that was frustrated by the old world conventions of architecture. There was a thirst to embrace the technological innovations of the modern era to create a contemporary future. No one embodied this more than Le Corbusier, a French architect who’s publications and early built works had energised the growing discourse. Le Corbusier gave a lecture at MIT during Pei’s undergraduate studies and Pei was magnetically drawn to what he said. This proved to be a seminal moment in formalising his professional desires.

After graduating from MIT in 1940 Pei had planned to return home to China, however his father had dissuaded this notion due to Japan’s ever growing presence in China. The China of his childhood no longer existed. 

Pei had enjoyed his undergraduate studies at MIT. Although much like his decision to leave Penn, he jumped with conviction to prioritise the best possible outcomes. This time it was a move to Harvard, the neighbouring university in Cambridge less than a mile away, for postgraduate studies. Other US universities were still grappling with the future of the classical Beaux Arts system and its place in 20th century architectural education. Harvard had made the decision to wholeheartedly embrace modernism and under the command of Walter Gropius fresh out of the Bauhaus in Germany they were looking to implement radical new ideals to undo the mistakes of the past.

Gropius along with his counterpart Marcel Breuer were inspiring a new generation of architects with enthusiasm rarely seen before. They firmly believed that architects needed to develop contemporary solutions. Gropius believed that students should not study history until they had unearthed their own inherent motivations. The education received at Harvard energised the growing tensions in the industry and produced a large proportion of those who would go and actively translate the teachings to built outcomes – including Pei, Edward Larrabee Barbes, Henry Cobb, Paul Rudolph, Harry Seidler and Philip Johnson.

This dramatic setting allowed Pei to develop a unique pairing of ideals. Harvard was unleashing the shackles of the past in an ambitiously forward-looking manner. Pei combined this with his upbringing in China that had imparted on him a Confucian perspective grounded in ancient traditions. With these two systems flowing energetically together he graduated from Harvard in 1946 with a unique mindset and permission to attempt to do great things.

Later in Pei’s Harvard education the New York City developer William Zeckendorf gave a lecture where he excitedly spruiked that the clean and efficient designs of modernism were shedding the fussiness of classical styles and that “good designs would no longer cost more than bad”. He felt that modernity could eliminate the historical disdain between profit driven developers and design focused architects.

Several years after this lecture, Pei found himself accepting a job to work as Zeckendorf’s architect for the company Webb & Knapp. Pei accepted the role due to an aligned mindset. Pei felt that if modern design wanted to become more than academic theories and bespoke dwellings it needed to be able to withstand the forces of the market. The news of Pei, one of Haravrd’s most esteemed graduates, move into development was not met favourably by the bright ideas of Cambridge – who inherently turned up their noses at the commerce driven New York City real-estate game.

Pei fresh out of Harvard speedily learned from Zeckendorf the business driven set of skills that were required to survive in the streets of New York City real estate. Pei quickly emerged as one of the unique architects who could effortlessly debate real world market topics like location and finance. With Zeckendorf as a fast paced tutor he learned how to locate potential parties and convince them that Webb & Knapp’s design would benefit all involved -  a life lesson he used repeatedly. The key behind Pei’s quick rise to prominence in this role was his natural charisma. He was always able to speak spontaneously, without jargon and to any type of party, with such enthusiasm that all in the room found it hard to not get swept up in the presentation.

The first large commission that Zeckendorf and Pei completed as a duo was the Mile High Center in Denver in 1956. Pei’s early career design concepts were Miesian glass and steel ideals – inspired by Mies’s own Lake Shore Drive apartments in Chicago c.1951. The Mile High Center continued this lineage of Miesian modernism and it opened with grandeuer and success. Zeckendorf marketed the design as ‘the most progressive building between San Francisco and Chicago’.

The Zeckendorf and Pei team continued to gain momentum. Pei became so busy with reconnaissance for new projects and the management of numerous bureaucratic headaches that there was little time left for design. A series of projects ensued over the next years, all usually including unfathomable political and community concerns before ground could be broken. The most substantial of these was the Place Ville Marie in Montreal a project that rigorously adhered to Gropius’s modern ideals.

The project rejuvenated the city of Montreal and allowed for future investments in public transport and the eventual success of the 1967 World’s Fair. However, by this time the enlightened mission of urban renewal projects had began to be met with bitterness due to countless designs that failed due to narrowly focused and implemented designs. Pei’s education had given him the tools that were meant to change the built world. It was starting to feel like these tools only had marginal levels of success. With this growing negative sentiment towards renewal projects and outside market issues the golden days of Webb & Knapp seemed to be behind them. In the mid-fifties Pei expressed desires to practise outside of Webb & Knapp’s umbrella, and then by 1965 the high-flying lifestyle of Zeckendorf came unstuck when Webb & Knapp went bankrupt.

In the ten years between Pei’s desire to work independently and the bankruptcy of Webb & Knapp, Pei had been able to transition himself out of the development company. His first private commission was a house for William Slayton in Washington DC. The house consisted of three concrete barrel vaults with glass walls at each end. The house, as so often is the case, thanks to its small scale and amenable client proved a great testing ground for a more humble version of modernism that would characterise the next phase of his career. 

The first major private project that allowed Pei to formally withdraw from Webb & Knapp was for his alma mater MIT. They came to Pei with a brief for a nine-storey earth sciences building and in classic Pei style, thanks to his years with Zeckendorf, he was able to convince them to build a twenty-storey tower that would become an important organising marker in the neoclassical campus. From this project he was able to string together a series of projects that allowed the built outcomes of IM Pei and Partners to match his lofty ambitions.

A defining building in Pei’s aesthetic development occurred during this early, prosperous period of the company – the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. At Webb & Knapp, Pei would work on the early conceptual and bureaucratic work and then hand the design work over to Henry Cobb or Araldo Cossutta. The Atmospheric Research Center allowed Pei the opportunity to fully immerse himself in the design process once again. Pei researched native Indian designs on a road trip during this phase and noted “their success stemmed from using indigenous materials, then tucking their structures into the mountain. It looks as if it was carved out of the mountains”. The desire to integrate a similar strategy prompted Pei to release from the shackles of his Bauhaus education and explore the meditative geometries that became iconic with his work.

On November 22, 1963, the President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated. This tragic event left a country in mourning. Out of this awful event those closest to JFK quickly mobilised to make the conceptual plans for his Presidential Library a reality. The location had already been selected on the banks of the Charles River in Cambridge. Although due to the presumed full term of his presidency all other details were far from resolved. The best architects where summoned to discuss the potential commission – one of great National importance.

Jackie Kennedy and her trusted inner circle interviewed a range of potential architects. Surprisingly to some, Pei was her clear choice. His beaming enthusiasm and personality won her over, like so many others before her. Other architects were discussed, such as Louis Kahn, who at this time was considered the most innovative and visionary architect academically. However, everywhere Pei flourished Kahn stumbled. Kahn’s unusual appearance, bumbling conversation and mystical architectural ideas did little to deter Kennedy that Pei was the man for the job.

Pei in winning this project, had thrust himself into the upper echelons of the architectural industry – at a relatively young age. The winning of this commission would not prove to be the simple handing over of the keys to the architectural kingdom. 

Pei had intentionally not commented on potential concepts during the interview process. Which now meant that he was charged with the task of designing a monument to the adored martyr of the Nation, in Cambridge a synonymously conservative and precious area of Boston. Up to this point in his career Pei’s designs had never had to integrate into the fine grain of an area, especially one that architecturally dated back to the 16th century. He was undoubtedly the correct choice politically, but Pei himself was unsure of how to create a design that met the contrasting forces of the project. Unfortunately this would be a quandary that would plague the project over a dozen years and fifteen or twenty design iterations.

Pei’s various designs options were received with mixed reviews. He worked tirelessly to appease the opposing sides of the project. Inevitably the underlying issue of Cambridge not being a suitable location for a National Monument caused the project to fracture – with the project team agreeing to move the project across town to UMass. This was a heartbreaking ruling for Pei, who like many others saw Harvard and MIT as enlightened patrons and the construction of anything significant on Cambridge as a career defining achievement.

With the new site, the project gained momentum once again and groundbreaking occurred thirteen years and six months after the assassination of JFK – the same duration of his political career.

The Library opened to moderate reviews. The underlying problems had sapped the energy from not just the project team, but also the general public. The initial ground swell to immortalise the fallen president had been slowly obscured by more contemporary concerns. Nonetheless I.M. Pei & Partners was able to garner the national spotlight of this project to procure a range of high profile commissions.

Pei along with his partners Cobb and Freed continued to win substantial scale projects that sustained the large office. Pei was the glue that held the firm together, his infectious personality was a rare gift that inspired loyalty from all those within his aura.

The firm by this stage had many projects on the drafting tables that it was predestined that one of them could falter and hurt the larger image of the entire office. Unfortunately for Pei, this project came in the form of Hancock Tower in Boston. The design was to be the tallest in Boston. The design, controversial for its minimalist stark angled glass design, was to hang over the classical Copley Square like a ghost. The design faced opposition, but thanks to Pei’s remarkable bureaucratic skills it broke ground and began to rise above the city of Boston.

The issue with the project became apparent when glass façade units began intermittently shattering. The façade that was slowly being installed was having issues with withstanding gusts and eventually for public safety the police began cordoning off Copley Square whenever the wind gusts reached forty-five miles per hour. The broken windows were replaced with black painted plywood and the root cause of the breakages could not be defined. This led to an elongated period of time where the building stood as a dishevelled landmark to the projects failings. It became colloquially known as the Plywood Palace.

An issue with the brittle lead spacer between the panes of glass was eventually defined as the culprit - this imperfection existed in every single pane. Prompting the full stripping and reassembling of the façade and an ensuing lawsuit that would send shivers through anyone in the construction industry. The widespread media reporting of both the towers issues and the continuing litigation proceedings caused deep damage to I.M. Pei & Partners reputation and their ability to attract new clients.

The office managed during this lean period to attract several projects from Asia, which allowed the company to avoid critical troughs in work. Pei and his team knew that a new project of International stature was required if the firm was going to redirect the negative image since the Hancock dilemma. Miraculously this project appeared on Pei’s radar in the form of Paul Mellon, an architectural patron who knew that Pei was the man for his upcoming commission, regardless of the recent furor.

Paul Mellon’s father, Andrew Mellon a Pittsburgh banker, had built the National Gallery in Washington Mall. This design was undertaken by John Russell Pope a renowned Beaux Arts classicist who executed a design that is referred to as one of the last great examples of the classical style, created in 1937 on the eve of the modernist movement. Paul now had a vision to extend his fathers legacy across to the adjacent site set aside for such a venture. Mellon pictured that the new building should be distinct from the existing classical gallery. A new building in a contemporary style. A building that would demonstrate that America no longer requires classical European styles and can instead build monumental buildings in a home grown manner.

Pei and Mellon met early in the architect selection process and their chemistry aligned immediately. Once again Pei’s natural charisma enabled him to procure key clients and projects – Pei must have known that this new friendship has a pivotal moment in his career. He was initially connected to Mellon and his advisory team due to his unparalleled ability to navigate bureaucracy. The team predicted that Mellon’s desire to introduce a contemporary form into the Mall would not be an easy process to achieve.

In winning the project he had inherited one of the stranger sites on the Mall - a trapezoid that that has the longitudinal push of the Mall cut on an acute angle by Pennsylvania Avenue. This created a site that inherently required three facades. Pei understood that to appease both the desires of his client and the regulators of the site his design needed to be an essay on contemporary monumental modesty.

Pei worked tirelessly to develop a design that was intricately simple. The outcome cleverly referenced its neoclassical predecessor across the plaza – while still maintaining a modern appearance that is both timeless and of its own period. The planning of the gallery looked to be engaging and interesting to the general public. Whilst this drew some conjecture from people who felt the building was overpowering the art it housed – it resoundingly met Pei’s desires to make the space an alluring part of the Washington Mall.

The building upon completion vastly exceeded the initial budget estimates. Luckily this did not deter Mellon from fulfilling Pei’s holistic intentions. Mellon was not willing to take short cuts on a building intended to “last forever”. The building opened to a reception usually reserved for a presidential inauguration. The building was instantly deemed a success and thanks to its timeless form it has been able to maintain its public appreciation. Interestingly Pei’s design, which is one of the great late modernist achievements, was a resounding success publicly at a time when modernism was generally frowned upon. In a time when other architects were exploring more fashionable design mantras Pei resolutely maintained and refined his design ideology to great success. Pei through this design, along with his often rival Kahn, were able to unveil the next era of design - humanised modernism. Following the successful opening of the East Building and international fame it garnered I.M. Pei & Partners never struggled again.

After leaving to study in the US in 1935, Pei did not get the chance to return professionally to his home country until April 1974, when Pei, as part of a group of fifteen US architects was invited to visit China once again. With the growing openness of China came a commission for Pei in his home country. The project, a new hotel called Fragrant Hills, engaged Pei who was now an Internationally renowned architect as they thought it was a great opportunity to raise the architectural profile of China through welcoming home their native son.

Pei saw the Fragrant Hills project as a chance to demonstrate the new China. To achieve this Pei looked backwards deep into the rich culture of the country to find a crafted expression that was more textured than his typical language. This project subsequently varied a lot from his international architectural image and opened with mixed reviews as the Chinese clients were hoping that the project would demonstrate China’s movement towards being a modern culture. Nonetheless, Pei’s fame internationally continued to rise and further projects in China appeared. The most substantial of which was the Bank of China skyscraper in Hong Kong. Where Fragrant Hills missed, this project excelled. The commanding towers innovative form symbolised the adoption of Hong Kong into China and more importantly China onto the world stage.

The far-reaching power of the office had an unstoppable momentum by 1989. I.M. Pei and Partners seemed to have important projects opening to applause across the globe. These included the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, the CAA headquarters in Los Angeles, educational buildings at Choate Rosemary Hall in Connecticut and the aforementioned Bank of China building in Hong Kong.

Given these achievements it would not have been hard to imagine Pei’s international acclaim had peaked. However a project came onto Pei’s radar that would allow him to realise a truly internationally renowned canonically project – one that would be his crowning achievement. This project like many of Pei’s other works would not be achievable without a power of work that involved Pei, not only designing a beautiful building, but also becoming a thoughtful citizen of the site to convince and impress the public in which the building was to exist.

This project was the Louvre renovations and addition in Paris. This project became Pei’s most visited and recognisable work. To achieve this, as an American architect, in the heart of cultural Paris was his most impressive feat of bureaucratic mastery. The project came to Pei as the main project of the newly elected socialist governments ‘grand projects’ scheme to inspire a new renaissance and an economic recovery in a dwindling France. The project became a key pawn of the political discourse, as the conservative opposition saw the project as a key piece of the current government to be attacked.

After much duress in the public spotlight Pei was able to eventually appease the regulatory hurdles and after it’s opening the public of France also. Pyramid-mania for a time eclipsed the Eiffel Tower as the iconic image of Paris. The project opened in 1989, with 165 new rooms accommodating 70,000 artworks that for many could be displayed again for the first time in decades, if not centuries.

Pei has able to transfer the key successes of timeless, occupant-focused form of late-modernist design to create a spectacle that has broad public appeal – a clear shift away from the dusty repository of art that the Louvre of old encapsulated. His solution encompasses a 70-foot high glass pyramid that allows a mesmerising 15,000 patrons an hour to enter. The pyramid was placed at the centre of the Cour Napolean and leads to an underground network into the untainted existing buildings of the Louvre gallery. 

The key to the intervention was the disconnection between the modern addition and the existing classical buildings. The pyramid is able to function as the entrance focal point, but somehow does not compete with the historical aura of the existing facades. Pei genius was being able to create an intervention that thanks to its ancient form, executed in a clearly contemporary manner, is at once much older and much newer than the Louvre.

The Louvre stands as the culmination of a career where he personally directed more than forty-five commissions. After the successful opening of the Louvre, Pei left an unassuming note in the office that he would be retiring. He planned to take on smaller passion projects at a slower pace than the large-scale firm could consider. Pei’s departure left a hole where the main motivator once stood. In Pei’s absence Jim Freed sustained the firm with a series of high profile commissions. The firm eventually rebranded to Pei, Cobb, Freed & Partners and still exists today. 

Pei’s legacy is an interesting story; his broad base of projects is top tier, yet his legacy in the academic architectural canons is underrepresented. This realisation prompted this whole deep dive into Pei to develop a greater understanding. The origins of Pei’s career came out of the crucible of Walter Gropius’s Harvard education. It could be said that no one else adhered to these mantras in a more successful and enduring manner. Pei’s design evolution was a constant refinement of these original teachings that culminated in two of the most successful and influential works of the modern era. To generalise, architectural academia subconsciously has tiers that architects get categorised into. The top tier is reserved for the true innovative form givers such as Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Kahn. These architects were all pioneers who through their work and teachings altered the architectural discourse. Pei is unfortunately relegated to the second tier. His works are iconic, but due to his approach of refining and consolidating the ideas of those before him, he is being penalised for not being a disruptive pioneer.

Pei’s lifework is undeniably important. His ability to cross cultures and create a lineage of projects that looked to unlock meaningful change through large complex interventions that others could not have fathomed was unparalleled. For these contributions he will be remembered for generations to come as one of the most important and recognisable architects of the 20th century.

Image Sources:

1. I.M. Pei Portrait, il sognatore

2. Suzhou Garden, iStock Photo

3. Villa Savoye

4. Portrait of Walter Gropius at Harvard Graduate Center, The Harvard Gazette

5. Mile High Center, Paper Architect

6. Place Ville-Marie, Wikipedia

7. Slayton House, Wikipedia

8. National Centre for Atmospheric Research, chinaqw

9. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, TripAdvisor

10. Hancock Tower, Flickr

11. Hancock Tower, NY Times

12. East Building, Azure Magazine

13. East Building, Surface Magazine

14. Fragrant Hills, NY Times

15. Bank of China, Architectural Record

16. Le Grande Louvre, ArchDaily

17. Le Grande Louvre, World Architecture, Photographer: Koji Horiuchi