Hong Kong celebrates architect Ieoh Ming Pei with retrospective

(Hong Kong) More than 30 years after redesigning Hong Kong’s downtown with a futuristic glass-and-steel tower, Chinese-American architect Ieoh Ming Pei is once again in the city’s spotlight with a retrospective.

From the Louvre pyramid in Paris to the Bank of China tower in Hong Kong, the architect has created buildings with iconic silhouettes, combining modernity and history, with often austere structures and straight lines.

In 1983 he received the Pritzker Prize, considered the Nobel Prize of architecture. Of the fifty or so projects he designed in the United States and around the world, more than half have been awarded major prizes.

“He had a unique career […] which allowed him to work with world leaders and build major buildings,” his son, Sandi Pei, told AFP.

“The projects he has completed are of an importance, scale and reputation that is very difficult to match.”

Died in 2019 at the age of 102, IM Pei is the subject of a retrospective at the M+ Museum in Hong Kong, which opens its doors on Saturday after seven years of preparation.

The exhibition presents more than 400 objects, including original drawings, photographs, films, models and his essential round glasses.

The architect became known in the United States for the construction of the John F. Kennedy Library in 1964, the president’s widow, Jacqueline, having been seduced by his charisma.

His fame was further increased when French President François Mitterrand entrusted him with the Grand Louvre project in 1981, and he launched a daring project for a giant glass pyramid, which was highly controversial during its construction.

“My father had a lot of charm,” notes his son, also an architect. “He always said that you don’t choose your projects, you choose your clients – but not everyone can choose François Mitterrand or Jacqueline Kennedy.”

“Design comes from within”

Born in southern China in 1917, Ieoh Ming Pei, the son of a banker, spent his early childhood in Hong Kong before leaving to study architecture in the United States.

A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, he began his career with a real estate developer.

Pei’s multicultural heritage was an asset, allowing him to bring Chinese notions of “family, community and landscape” to the West, combined with his love of early modernist art and sculpture, according to Sandi Pei.

His early urban housing projects refined his method, which focuses on adapting to the “time, place and purpose” of each site, rather than emulating an ostentatious style.

“One of the things I learned from my dad is that you don’t just come up with an idea and put it on the site,” says Sandi. “Design comes from within.”

In the 1980s, Pei worked with her father on the Bank of China Tower, made up of four triangular blades – which still stands out amid Hong Kong’s forest of skyscrapers.

IM Pei is also admired in China. He is at the origin of scholarships allowing Chinese students to study architecture in the United States, on the condition that they return to work at home.

Today’s Chinese architects still draw inspiration from Ieoh Ming Pei’s analytical and thoughtful approach, according to his son.

But construction in the country often moves at a breakneck pace and “China needs to slow down, be more careful,” he notes.

“We find that better-built buildings last longer, serve their communities better and don’t waste as many resources,” he says.

Ieoh Ming Pei’s works, larger-than-life monuments, speak of the harmony between a community and its environment, notes Sandi Pei, which is demonstrated by the exhibition dedicated to him in Hong Kong.

“That’s why his buildings will continue to live and be enjoyed, because I think people enjoy being there, because he enjoyed being able to bring communities together through his architecture.”