I. M. Pei (1917-2019)
Renowned
architect Ieoh Ming Pei died this past Thursday at the age of 102. Numerous
media outlets(1) immediately marked
his passing, extolling the substantial body of outstanding work he leaves
behind after a truly lengthy career, which includes being awarded the AIA Gold Medal, the Praemium Imperiale
for Architecture, and the Pritzker Prize.
He may have been the last of a great generation of architects whose lineage can
be directly traced back to the Bauhaus
and the early years of Modern Architecture. Notably, Pei came to know Bauhaus
founder Walter Gropius
and instructor Marcel Breuer, first as a graduate student and then as a faculty member at Harvard’s
Graduate School of Design. Pei and Breuer (and their wives) established a friendship
that would last until Breuer’s passing in 1981.
Pei embraced
Gropius’ Bauhaus ethos but his professional work would evolve beyond it toward an
aesthetic focus upon geometric precision and elegant monumentality. His most
famous projects include the NCAR Mesa Building in Boulder, Colorado, the East Building
of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Bank of China tower in Hong
Kong, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, Dallas
City Hall, the Fragrant Hills Hotel in China, the Islamic Museum of Art in
Qatar, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, and Le Grand Louvre (Louvre
Pyramid) in Paris.(2) Of these, I have visited the
National Gallery East Building and the Kennedy Library.
East Building, National Gallery (photo by Difference engine [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)])
I
think the wedge-shaped East Building of the National Gallery is fantastic. Despite
its sleek, icy geometries, the public warmly embraced the design immediately
upon its opening in 1978. And nothwithstanding its severe abstraction, Pei’s design for the
East Building belies the typecasting of Modern architecture as anonymous,
placeless, lacking scale, and absent visual richness. It rose above the
regulatory strictures of the Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation and
provided the nation’s capital with a striking counterpoint to the sclerotic neoclassicism
that had dominated the National Mall. I found it an exhilarating masterpiece of
late Modern design and more than worthy of its acclaim.
John F. Kennedy
Presidential Library and Museum, Boston (photo by Fcb981, CC-BY-SA-3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons). This is the only presidential library I've actually visited.
I was
much less enamored by the Kennedy Library. In his otherwise glowing tribute entitled I. M. Pei: A Profile in American Architecture, art historian and
architectural critic Carter Wiseman
describes the Library’s geometry as “too obvious, as if the parts had been ordered
from a Pei catalogue and assembled according to an instruction book.” Wiseman
goes on to cite an “absence of spirit to animate the architectural flesh.” I
found that absence palpable, which by contrast was present in abundance in Pei’s
design for the East Wing. Pei himself admitted disappointment with the Library,
citing the circumstances that barred realization of a superior design.
I’ve
never counted I. M. Pei among the architects and teachers I truly consider my influences.
The affinity I do have for him is undeniably because he was an Asian-American architect
(Pei was born in China, while I’m of Japanese descent). That kinship is as superficial
as the fact that, like me, he was short of stature and bespectacled. In today’s
world, one’s ethnicity or race shouldn’t necessarily matter when it
comes to the profession of architecture, but they still do. It’s a bit sad and
revealing that I feel instinctively bound to acknowledge his passing, not just
because he was a great architect, but also for a reason that is quite literally
skin-deep. Acknowledging this doesn’t diminish my respect for I. M. Pei and his
achievements. His career and talents were truly transcendent.
(1)
Here’s
a sampling:
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