CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE

ASSIGNMENT
(THE MOST SIGNIFICANT ARCHITECT DURING THE PERIOD 1960-2010)

Assignment by
P.SRIMATHI
I YEAR SEM II
119011201044

I find Ar. Ieoh Ming Pei, one of the most significant of that time period.

ABOUT AR. I.M.PEI___

I.M. Pei, (born April 26, 1917, China—died May 16, 2019, U.S.), Chinese-born
American architect noted for his large, elegantly designed urban buildings
and complexes.

 Pei went to the United States in 1935 to the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology, Cambridge, as a student of architectural engineering. He
graduated in 1939 and, unable to return to China because of the outbreak
of World War II, carried out various architectural contracts in Boston, New
York City, and Los Angeles.
 During World War II he worked with a unit of the National Defence Research
Committee. From 1945 to 1948 he was an assistant professor at the Graduate
School of Design of Harvard University, where he received a master’s
degree in 1946.
 He became a U.S. citizen in 1954. Pei formed his own architectural firm, I.M.
Pei & Associates (later Pei Cobb Freed & Partners), in 1955

REASONING THE SIGNIFICANCE ___

In general, Pei’s designs represent

"an extension of and elaboration on the rectangular forms and irregular
silhouettes of the prevailing International Style". He was noted, however, for
his bold and skilful arrangements of groups of geometric shapes and for his dramatic
use of richly contrasted materials, spaces, and surfaces.
COMMITTED IDEALIST - Mr. Pei remained a committed modernist, and while
none of his buildings could ever be called old-fashioned or traditional, his particular
brand of modernism — clean, reserved, sharp-edged and unapologetic in its use of
simple geometries and its aspirations to monumentality — sometimes seemed to be a
throwback, at least when compared with the latest architectural trends.

INTENSE APPROACH TOWARDS DESIGN - When he got to design the

Museum of Islamic Art, in Doha, Qatar, in 2008, a challenge Mr. Pei accepted with
relish. A long time collector of Western Abstract Expressionist art, he admitted to
knowing little about Islamic art. He began his research by reading a biography of the
Prophet Muhammad, and then commenced a tour of great Islamic architecture
around the world.

BOLD YET PRAGMATIC - While the waffle-like concrete facades of the

Zeckendorf buildings were an early signature of his, Mr. Pei soon moved beyond
concrete to a more sculptural but equally modernist approach. Throughout his long
career he combined a willingness to use bold, assertive forms with a pragmatism
born in his years with Zeckendorf, and he alternated between designing commercial
projects and making a name for himself in other architectural realms.

THE PRE-EMINENT ARCHITECT - When Mr. Pei was invited to design the East
Building of the National Gallery of Art, he had the opportunity to demonstrate his
belief that modernism was capable of producing buildings with the gravitas, the
sense of permanence and the popular appeal of the greatest traditional structures.
When the building opened in 1978, Ada Louise Huxtable, the senior architecture
critic of The New York Times, hailed it as the most important building of the
era.

PATIENCE AND PERSEVERANCE - In the early 1980s, an admirer of the East

Building at the National Gallery, invited Mr. Pei to update and expand the Louvre
Museum, which was sorely in need of renovation to accommodate a huge increase in
visitors. Mr. Pei proposed building a glass pyramid in the centre to serve as a new
main entrance to the museum. He quickly found himself in the center of an
international controversy, accused of defacing one of the world’s great landmarks. He
argued that his glass pyramid was merely an updated version of a traditional form,
and that his redesigned courtyard had been influenced by the geometric work of the
French landscape architect Le Notre. It was rigorously rational, in other words, and
in that sense classically French. Within a few years the pyramid had become an
accepted, and generally admired, symbol of a re-energized Paris.
 NOTABLE DESIGNS DURING THE TIME PERIOD 1960-2010____

 On the basis of a 1960 design competition, Pei was selected to design the multi
airline terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York City.
 In 1964 he was also chosen to design the John F. Kennedy Memorial
Library at Harvard University.
 Pei’s innovative East Building (1978) of the National Gallery of Art,
Washington, D.C., is an elegant triangular composition that was hailed as one
of his finest achievements.
 In addition to designing public buildings, Pei was active in urban
renewal planning.
 He was chosen to design the New York City Convention Centre, the Gateway
office complex in Singapore, and the Dallas Symphony Hall.
 Pei’s other works included the John Hancock Tower (1973) in Boston, Indiana
University Museum (1979), the west wing (1980) of the Boston Museum of
Fine Arts, Nestlé Corporate Headquarters (1981), El Paso Tower (1981), the
Beijing Fragrant Hill Hotel (1982), and a controversial glass pyramid (1989)
for one of the courtyards in the Louvre Museum in Paris. In his Miho Museum
(1997) in Shiga,
 Japan, Pei achieved a harmony between the building, much of it underground,
and its mountain environment. The Suzhou Museum (2006) in China
combines geometric shapes with traditional Chinese motifs.

AWARDS DURING 1960-2010

 His numerous honours included the Pritzker Architecture Prize (1983)
 The Japan Art Association’s Praemium Imperiale prize for architecture (1989)
 The Presidential Medal of Freedom (1993)
 A lifetime achievement award from the Cooper-Hewitt museum (2003)
 The Royal Gold Medal (2010) awarded by the Royal Institute of British
Architects. He also was made an officer of the Legion of Honour in 1993.
 In 1979, the year after the National Gallery was completed, Mr. Pei received
the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects, its highest honor.