Pei left China aged 18 and studied architecture at MIT and then under citoPitis at Harvard. He became an instructor then assistant professor at Harvard before joining Webb & Knapp Inc., New York (1948-55). In 1955 he founded I. M. Pei & Partners, New York, which in 1979 became Pei, Cobb, Freed & Partners. Pei frequently works on a large scale and is renowned for his sharp, geometric designs.

He first achieved recognition for the Dallas Municipal Center (1966-78), which is built of concrete and resembles an upturned pyramid wedged into the ground. It is heavier in style than subsequent buildings, such as the 60- storey John Hancock Tower in Boston, a slender glass-clad tower on a rhomboid plan described by the critic Charles Jencks as an “ice-blue skyberg”. The fascination for pyramids surfaced again at the National Gallery of Art’s East Building (1978), where the simple stone and brick gallery is given interest in the roof constructed of small glass pyramids.

One of Pei’s most startling structures is the Bank of China, Hong Kong (1984-8), which has a shaft of fractured triangular shapes that look like a dented space frame. Towards the top the skyscraper is finished with an off-centre spire topped by two slender communications towers resembling skyward-pointing chopsticks. Pei’s greatest triumph is the large glass pyramid at the Cour Napoleon outside the Louvre, Paris. The structure in the courtyard is, as it suggests, the tip of an iceberg; below is a vast subterranean hall through which visitors pass to the Metro, shops and galleries.

List of Pei’s works:

• Dallas Municipal Center, 1966-78.
• John Hancock Tower, Boston, Mass., 1973-7.
• East Building, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, 1978.
• J. I. Kennedy Library, South Boston, Mass., 1979.
• Bank of China, Hong Kong, 1984-8.
• Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, Dallas, 1989.
• Louvre pyramid, Paris, 1989.

Bibliography

• Bruno Sillier, leoh Ming Pei, Paris, 1984.

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