Chinese American architect I.M. Pei is celebrated for his iconic structures in the United States, Greater China, and around the world. A major retrospective at M+ Museum, on view through January 5, 2025, has put Pei’s work at the center of renewed discussions about the legacy of twentieth-century architecture and urbanism in Asia and the Americas. To kick off that conversation in New York, M+ AFF organized a panel on May 15 in New York to gather professional insights and personal recollections about the architect and his work.

“He was always interested in trying to find buildings that would enliven the community in which they existed,” said architect Li-Chung (Sandi) Pei, who is also a son of I.M. Pei. He spoke with fellow architect Calvin Tsao in a conversation moderated by critic Paul Goldberger.

Hosted by the Cooper Union in their Rose Auditorium in New York, the event featured a wide-ranging discussion that spanned from intimate memories of his life to thoughts about his influence on young architects today. M+ AFF board member Patricia Pei, half-sister of the architect, introduced the event.

Colleagues at I.M. Pei’s firm as relatively junior architects, Sandi Pei and Tsao recalled a rigorous working culture in the 1970s and ’80s. “We often said working in the office was like being in a university,” said Tsao, with dedicated “students” earning a prestigious “I.M. degree.” It was a time when Pei was at the peak of his influence; indeed, Goldberger once declared 1989 “the year of I.M. Pei” for the number of prominent buildings that opened at the end of the decade.

View of facade, Bank of China Tower (1982–1989), Hong Kong 2021. Commissioned by M+, 2021. © South Ho Siu Nam

Among them was the Bank of China tower in Hong Kong, the tallest building in Asia upon its completion. The building’s geometric form, emphasizing deceptively simple structure based on triangular supports, exemplifies Pei’s modernist design vocabulary. To this day a landmark on Hong Kong Island, the structure still dominates the skyline when viewed from M+ in West Kowloon. The Bank of China tower is an engineering marvel designed to withstand typhoon winds, but it embodies a poetic sensibility as well. “It’s not just technical engineering, but also it derived from that cultural, literary context,” Tsao said, explaining that I.M. Pei spoke about the work in relation to a Chinese idiom about bamboo growing incrementally stronger as it rises.

Pei spent his early years in Hong Kong and Shanghai before traveling to the United States to study at MIT and the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Aric Chen and Shirley Surya, co-curators of the exhibition at M+, describe how these “transcultural foundations” informed Pei’s work through his adaptation of historical archetypes. Structures like the Fragrant Hill Hotel in Beijing, a project that Tsao recalled working on, as well as the Suzhou Museum, a later-career masterpiece to which Sandi Pei’s firm contributed, exemplify the hybridity of Pei’s cultural references. A venue for Chinese art, Suzhou Museum marries the modernist geometries for which I.M. Pei was known with a unique interpretation of vernacular and historical Chinese architecture.

I. M. Pei walking up the stairs at the National Gallery of Art East Building, Washington, D.C. © Marc Riboud/Fonds Marc Riboud au MNAAG/Magnum Photos

During the Q&A segment, a member of the audience noted that it was AAPI heritage month. She spoke about how Pei was a pioneering figure in the design professions and an inspiration for her as a Chinese American. Pei is responsible for buildings at the heart of civic life in the US, notably the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and the JFK Presidential Library in Dorchester, Mass.

The retrospective promises to spark a reevaluation of aspects of Pei’s career that have yet to receive proper study, especially his then-controversial decision to join a commercial real estate firm out of graduate school. Goldberger addressed the question whether Pei might be “underrated”—a counterintuitive proposition for the architect who led the renovation of the Grand Louvre, though a reasonable question to consider given that he never embedded himself in the academic establishment and was partially shunned for working in real estate.

I. M. Pei, Section drawing of the Museum of Chinese Art for Shanghai, master’s in architecture thesis at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design 1946. Courtesy of the Frances Loeb Library.

Yet it is precisely this experience that allowed him to have such a significant impact on the field later in life. “He did many low-cost housing buildings,” Sandi Pei said, which “allowed him to explore the possibility of using reinforced concrete in a way that was cost-competitive with brick buildings. By using new technologies, and new structural engineering techniques, he was able to really advance housing as a result.” This experience in development allowed Pei to gather building experts in his own firm and create innovative structures.

A project many years in the making, the M+ retrospective I.M. Pei: Life is Architecture developed in part from a 2017 conference on the legacy of I.M. Pei held at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the alma mater of both I.M. Pei and Sandi Pei. Many colleagues who worked with I.M. Pei at various stages in his career joined the M+AFF and celebrated with a reception after the talk.

June 2024