I.M. Pei

Ieoh Ming Pei died 16 May 2019.

He is described in Wikipedia as “a Chinese-American architect,” but that hardly does him justice. In fact, he was a curious amalgam of Western and Eastern, modern and classical, businessman and artist, pragmatist and theorist.

Other people were closer to Pei, and there are plenty of books and articles covering his life and work. Here I’d simply like to offer a couple of examples of his genius as shown in his comments on renderings I did for him.

He had a sure eye:

Many designers and architects have a hard time making up their minds. Mr. Pei was a pleasure to work for, because he knew what he wanted. When I finished the rendering of the Louvre, it did not show the fountains spraying. 

Mr. Pei insisted that they were necessary to complete the visual effect of the design. He was right: The fountain spray seems to moderate between the hard geometry of the glass pyramid and the ornate classicism of the old Louvre façade.

He was steeped in both art and architecture:

I always make pastel color sketches of any proposed rendering. When I showed Mr. Pei my sketches for the Athens Museum of Modern Art, he saw the mottled effect of the pastel in the sky and insisted that the effect be reproduced in the final. 

I had thought the mottling was a bug,but he saw it as an impressionist feature (along with the “van Gogh trees”). Again, he was right.

Finally…

He brought a classical eye to the ever-churning world of modern architecture. His best work shows a nuanced balance between the desperate newness of modern life and the ageless beauty of simple forms.

He will be missed.