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Ieoh Ming Pei
1983 Laureate
Ieoh Ming Pei is a founding partner of I. M. Pei & Partners, since evolved
to Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, based in New York City. He was born in China
in 1917. He come to the United States in 1935 to study architecture at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (B. Arch. 1940) and the Harvard
Graduate School of Design (M. Arch. 1946). In 1948, he accepted the newly
created post of Director of Architecture at Webb & Knapp, Inc., the real
estate development firm, and this association resulted in major
architectural and planning projects in Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington,
Pittsburgh and other cities. In 1958, he formed the partnership of I. M.
Pei & Associates, which become I.M. Pei & Partners in 1966. The partnership
received the 1968 Architectural Firm Award of The American Institute of
Architects.
Pei has designed over fifty projects in this country and abroad, many of
which have been award winners. His more prominent commissions have included
the East Building of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Le
Grand Louvre in Paris, France; the Bank of China in Hong Kong; the John
Fitzgerald Kennedy Library near Boston; the National Center for Atmospheric
Research, Boulder, Colorado; the Dallas City Hall in Texas; The Morton H.
Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, Texas; the Society Hill development in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; the Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation Centre
(OCBC) and Raffles City in Singapore; the West Wing of the Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston; the Fragrant Hill Hotel near Beijing, China; Creative Artists
Agency Headquarters in Beverly Hills, California; the Jacob K. Javits
Center in New York; an IBM Office Complex in Somers, NY and another in
Purchase, NY; the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York; and the Texas
Commerce Tower in Houston.
He has designed arts facilities and university buildings on the campuses of
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Rochester,
Cornell University, the Choate School, Syracuse University, New York
University and the University of Hawaii.
As a student, he was awarded the MIT Traveling Fellowship, and the
Wheelwright Traveling Fellowship at Harvard. His subsequent honors' include
the following: the Brunner Award,the Medal of Honor of the New York Chapter
of the AIA, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Medal for Architecture, the Gold
Medal for Architecture of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the
Alpha Rho Chi Gold Medal, la Grande Medaille d'Or of l'Academie
d'Architecture (France), and The Gold Medal of The American Institute of
Architects. In 1982, the deans of the architectural schools of the United
States chose 1. M. Pei as the best designer of significant non-residential
structures.
Citation from the Pritzker Jury
Ieoh Ming Pei has given this century some of its most beautiful interior
spaces and exterior forms. Yet the significance of his work goes far beyond
that. Hi |