I. M. Pei was a Chinese-American architect whose serene, geometric modern buildings became some of the most recognizable landmarks in the world. Born Ieoh Ming Pei in Guangzhou and raised in Hong Kong and Shanghai, the son of a prominent banker, he came to the United States in 1935 to study architecture, earning degrees at MIT and Harvard and choosing to make his career in America.
Pei developed a distinctly refined version of modernism, marked by bold geometric forms, monumental scale, and a masterful command of concrete, stone, glass, and natural light. After early work in large-scale urban development, he won a string of celebrated commissions, including the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston and the dramatic East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
His most famous — and at first most controversial — work was the glass-and-steel pyramid he designed as a new entrance to the Louvre in Paris, completed in 1989. Denounced by critics as an affront to the historic palace, it was soon embraced as a modern icon and a triumph of contrasting old and new.
Among the most honored architects of his generation, Pei received the Pritzker Prize, his profession's highest award, in 1983. He continued designing into his nineties, completing the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha and the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong, among many others. He died in New York in 2019 at the age of 102.