Photo: AP
The story behind
I.M. Pei's
most personal project
Photo: AP
I.M. Pei, the revered architect behind the Louvre pyramid, died on Thursday at 102.
Photo: AP
He designed some of the world’s most iconic buildings, including the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong and the glass pyramid entrance to the Louvre in Paris.
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His structures are characterized by sharp angles and expansive use of natural light.
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The result is a refined modernism that balances cutting-edge design with classical elegance.
Photo: AFP
While his glass skyscrapers are his most famous structures, Pei’s most personal project was an art museum in his ancestral hometown in China.
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Pei spent most of his 60-year career in the United States, but his family is from Suzhou, known as the “Venice of the East” because of its canals.
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In 1996, the city asked Pei to build a modern museum in its historic downtown without disrupting its traditional layout and charm.
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Pei accepted the challenge, and designed a building that embodied his personal style but still adhered to the characteristics of old Suzhou architecture.
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He reinterpreted the gray tiled roofs of traditional Chinese architecture, replacing them with gray granite.
Photo: SCMP
The interior, a plethora of triangles and rectangles, reflects Pei’s obsession with geometry.
Photo: SCMP
Skylights and windows let in ample light, creating shadows that accentuate the building’s design.
Photo: Gavin Huang
Even the museum’s garden is a maze of prisms.
Photo: Alamy
Although Pei spent most of his life in the United States, he never played down his connection to China.
Photo: SCMP
When the museum opened in 2006, he told The New York Times that he hoped his design might inspire China to be “neither a slave to the past nor a weak imitator of the West.”
Photo: SCMP