name	Ieoh Ming Pei
nationality	American
birth date	April 26, 1917
birth place	Canton (Guangzhou), China
alma mater	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
practice	Pei Cobb Freed & Partners
significant buildings	John F. Kennedy Library, BostonNational Gallery of Art East Building''Louvre'' Pyramid, ParisBank of China Tower, Hong KongMuseum of Islamic Art, Doha
awards	Royal Gold MedalAIA Gold MedalPresidential Medal of FreedomPritzker Prize }}

|s=|p=Bèi Yùmíng|y=Bui Wāt Mìhng}} Ieoh Ming Pei (born April 27, 1917), commonly known as I. M. Pei, is a Chinese American architect, often called a master of modern architecture. Born in Canton, China and raised in Hong Kong and Shanghai, Pei drew inspiration at an early age from the gardens at Suzhou. In 1935 he moved to the United States and enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania's architecture school, but quickly transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was unhappy with the focus at both schools on Beaux-Arts architecture, and spent his free time researching the emerging architects, especially Le Corbusier. After graduating, he joined the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and became friends with the Bauhaus architects Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. In 1939, he married Eileen Loo, who had introduced him to the GSD community. They have been married for over seventy years, and have four children, including architects C.C. "Didi" Pei and L.C. "Sandi" Pei.

Pei spent ten years working with New York real estate magnate William Zeckendorf before establishing his own independent design firm that eventually became Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. Among the early projects on which Pei took the lead were the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel in Washington, DC and the Green Building at MIT. His first major recognition came with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado; his new stature led to his selection as chief architect for the John F. Kennedy Library in Massachusetts. He went on to design Dallas City Hall and the East Building of the National Gallery of Art.

He returned to China for the first time in 1974 to design a hotel at Fragrant Hills, and designed a skyscraper in Hong Kong for the Bank of China fifteen years later. In the early 1980s, Pei was the focus of controversy when he designed a glass-and-steel pyramid for the ''Louvre'' museum in Paris. He later returned to the world of the arts by designing the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, the Miho Museum in Japan, and the Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar.

Pei has won a wide variety of prizes and awards in the field of architecture, including the AIA Gold Medal in 1979, the first ''Praemium Imperiale'' for Architecture in 1989, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in 2003. In 1983, he won the Pritzker Prize, sometimes called the Nobel Prize of architecture.

Childhood

Pei's ancestry traces back to the Ming Dynasty, when his family moved from Anhui province to Suzhou. Finding wealth in the sale of medicinal herbs, the family stressed the importance of helping the less fortunate. Ieoh Ming Pei was born on April 26, 1917 to Tsuyee Pei and Lien Kwun, and the family moved to Hong Kong one year later. The family eventually included five children. As a boy, Pei was very close to his mother, a devout Buddhist who was recognized for her skills as a flautist. She invited him (and not his brothers or sisters) to join her on meditation retreats. His relationship with his father was less intimate. Their interactions were respectful but distant.

The Pei's ancestors' success meant that the family lived in the upper echelons of society, but Tsuyee Pei was in his son's words "not cultivated in the ways of the arts". The younger Pei, drawn more to music and other cultural forms than to his father's domain of banking, explored art on his own. "I have cultivated myself", he said later.

Shanghai's many international elements gave it the name "Paris of the East". The city's global architectural flavors had a profound influence on Pei, from the Bund waterfront area to the Park Hotel, built in 1934. He was also impressed by the many gardens of Suzhou, where he spent the summers with extended family and regularly visited a nearby ancestral shrine. The Shizilin Garden, built in the 14th century by a Taoist monk, was especially influential. Its unusual rock formations, stone bridges, and waterfalls remained etched in Pei's memory for decades. He spoke later of his fondness for the garden's blending of natural and human-built structures.

Soon after the move to Shanghai, Pei's mother developed cancer. As a pain reliever, she was prescribed opium, and assigned the task of preparing her pipe to Pei. She died shortly after his thirteenth birthday, and he was profoundly upset. The children were sent to live with extended family; their father became more consumed by his work and more physically distant. Pei said: "My father began living his own separate life pretty soon after that." His father later married a woman named Aileen, who moved to New York later in her life.

Education and formative years

As Pei neared the end of his secondary education, he decided to study at an overseas university. He was accepted to a number of schools, but decided to enroll at the University of Pennsylvania. Pei's choice had two roots. While studying in Shanghai, he had closely examined the catalogs for various institutions of higher learning around the world. The architectural program at the University of Pennsylvania stood out to him. The other major factor was Hollywood. Pei was fascinated by the representations of college life in the films of Bing Crosby, which differed tremendously from the academic atmosphere in China. "College life in the U.S. seemed to me to be mostly fun and games", he said in 2000. "Since I was too young to be serious, I wanted to be part of it ... You could get a feeling for it in Bing Crosby's movies. College life in America seemed very exciting to me. It's not real, we know that. Nevertheless, at that time it was very attractive to me. I decided that was the country for me."

In 1935 Pei boarded the SS ''President Coolidge'' and sailed to San Francisco, then traveled by train to Philadelphia. What he found, however, differed vastly from his expectations. Professors at the University of Pennsylvania based their teaching in the Beaux-Arts style, rooted in the classical traditions of Greece and Rome. Pei was more intrigued by modern architecture, and also felt intimidated by the high level of drafting proficiency shown by other students. He decided to abandon architecture and transferred to the engineering program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Once he arrived, however, the dean of the architecture school commented on his eye for design and convinced Pei to return to his original major.

MIT's architecture faculty was also focused on the Beaux-Arts school, and Pei found himself uninspired by the work. In the library he found three books by the Swiss-French architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, better known as Le Corbusier. Pei was inspired by the innovative designs of the new International style, characterized by simplified form and the use of glass and steel materials. Le Corbusier visited MIT in , an occasion which powerfully affected Pei: "The two days with Le Corbusier, or 'Corbu' as we used to call him, were probably the most important days in my architectural education." Pei was also influenced by the work of US architect Frank Lloyd Wright. In 1938 he drove to Spring Green, Wisconsin, to visit Wright's famous Taliesin building. After waiting for two hours, however, he left without meeting Wright.

Although he disliked the Beaux-Arts emphasis at MIT, Pei excelled in his studies. "I certainly don't regret the time at MIT", he said later. "There I learned the science and technique of building, which is just as essential to architecture." Pei received his Bachelors of Architecture degree in 1940. He planned to return to China immediately afterward, but the Second Sino-Japanese War forced him to change his plans. Pei's father urged him to remain in the United States, and he worked for two years at the Boston engineering firm of Stone & Webster.

While visiting New York City in the late '30s, Pei met a Wellesley College student named Eileen Loo. They began dating and they married in the spring of 1942. She enrolled in the landscape architecture program at Harvard University, and Pei was thus introduced to members of the faculty at Harvard's Graduate School of Design (GSD). He was excited by the lively atmosphere, and joined the GSD in .

Less than a month later, Pei suspended his work at Harvard to join the National Defense Research Committee, which coordinated scientific research into US weapons technology during World War II. Pei's background in architecture was seen as a considerable asset; one member of the committee told him: "If you know how to build you should also know how to destroy." The fight against Germany was ending, so he focused on the Pacific War. The US realized that its bombs used against the stone buildings of Europe would be ineffective against Japanese cities, mostly constructed from wood and paper; Pei was assigned to work on incendiary bombs. Pei spent two and a half years with the NDRC, but has revealed few details.

In 1945 Eileen gave birth to a son, T'ing Chung; she withdrew from the landscape architecture program in order to care for him. Pei returned to Harvard in the autumn of 1945, and received a position as assistant professor of design. The GSD was developing into a hub of resistance to the Beaux-Arts orthodoxy. At the center were members of the Bauhaus, a European architectural movement that had advanced the cause of modernist design. The Nazi regime had condemned the Bauhaus school, and its leaders left Germany. Two of these, Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer, took positions at the Harvard GSD. Their iconoclastic focus on modern architecture appealed to Pei, and he worked closely with both men.

One of Pei's design projects at the GSD was a plan for an art museum in Shanghai. He wanted to create a mood of Chinese authenticity in the architecture without using traditional materials or styles. The design was based on straight modernist structures, organized around a central courtyard garden, with other similar natural settings arranged nearby. It was very well received; Gropius, in fact, called it "the best thing done in [my] master class". Pei received his master's degree in 1946, and taught at Harvard for another two years.

Career

1948–55: Early career with Webb and Knapp

In the spring of 1948 Pei was recruited by New York real estate magnate William Zeckendorf to join a staff of architects for his firm of Webb and Knapp to design buildings around the country. Pei found Zeckendorf's personality the opposite of his own; his new boss was known for his loud speech and gruff demeanor. Nevertheless, they became good friends and Pei found the experience personally enriching. Zeckendorf was well connected politically, and Pei enjoyed learning about the social world of New York's city planners.

His first project for Webb and Knapp was an apartment building with funding from the Housing Act of 1949. Pei's design was based on a circular tower with concentric rings. The areas closest to the supporting pillar handled utilities and circulation; the apartments themselves were located toward the outer edge. Zeckendorf loved the design and even showed it off to Le Corbusier when they met. The cost of such an unusual design was too high, however, and the building never moved beyond the model stage.

Pei finally saw his architecture come to life in 1950, when he designed a corporate building for Gulf Oil in Atlanta, Georgia. His use of marble for the exterior curtain wall brought praise from the journal ''Architectural Forum''. Pei's designs echoed the work of Mies van der Rohe in the beginning of his career as also shown in his own weekend-house in Katonah in 1952. Soon Pei was so inundated with projects that he asked Zeckendorf for assistants, which he chose from his associates at the GSD, including Henry N. Cobb and Ulrich Franzen. They set to work on a variety of proposals, including the Roosevelt Field Shopping Mall. The team also redesigned the Webb and Knapp office building, transforming Zeckendorf's office into a circular space with teak walls and a glass clerestory. They also installed a control panel into the desk that allowed their boss to control the lighting in his office. The project took one year and exceeded its budget, but Zeckendorf was delighted with the results.

In 1952 Pei and his team began work on a series of projects in Denver, Colorado. The first of these was the Mile High Center, also known in Denver as the "Cash Register Building", which compressed the core building into less than twenty-five percent of the total site; the rest is adorned with an exhibition hall and fountain-dotted plazas. One block away, Pei's team also redesigned Denver's Courthouse Square, which combined office spaces, commercial venues, and hotels. These projects helped Pei conceptualize architecture as part of the larger urban geography. "I learned the process of development," he said later, "and about the city as a living organism." These lessons, he said, became essential for later projects. The hyperbolic paraboloid structure was removed when the Denver Pavilions facility was constructed. In 1982, he returned to design the 16th Street Mall, essentially converting a street into a pedestrian only shopping district.

The team also designed a united urban area for Washington, D.C. Pei helped design L'Enfant Plaza (named for French-American architect Pierre Charles L'Enfant). Pei was also the lead architect for the plaza's North Building (955 L'Enfant Plaza SW), South Building (490 L'Enfant Plaza SW), and Center Building (475 L'Enfant Plaza SW; now the United States Postal Service headquarters). (Vlastimil Koubek was the architect for the East Building or L'Enfant Plaza Hotel, located at 480 L'Enfant Plaza SW). The team set out with a broad vision that was praised by both the ''Washington Post'' and ''Washington Star'' (which rarely agreed on anything), but funding problems forced revisions and a significant reduction in scale.

1955–90: I. M. Pei & Associates

In 1955 Pei's group took a step toward institutional independence from Webb and Knapp by establishing a new firm called I. M. Pei & Associates. (The name changed later to I. M. Pei & Partners.) They gained the freedom to work with other companies, but continued working primarily with Zeckendorf. The new firm distinguished itself through the use of detailed architectural models. They took on the Kips Bay residential area on the east side of Manhattan, where Pei set up Kips Bay Towers, two large long towers of apartments with recessed windows (to provide shade and privacy) in a neat grid, adorned with rows of trees. Pei involved himself in the construction process at Kips Bay, even inspecting the bags of concrete to check for consistency of color.

The company continued its urban focus with the Society Hill project in central Philadelphia. Pei designed the Society Hill Towers, a three-building residential block injecting cubist design into the 18th-century milieu of the neighborhood. As with previous projects, abundant green spaces were central to Pei's vision, which also added traditional townhouses to aid the transition from classical to modern design.

Although these projects were satisfying, Pei wanted to establish an independent name for himself. In 1959 he was approached by MIT to design a building for its Earth science program. The Green Building continued the grid design of Kips Bay and Society Hill. The pedestrian walkway at the ground floor, however, was prone to sudden gusts of wind, which embarrassed Pei. "Here I was from MIT," he said, "and I didn't know about wind-tunnel effects." At the same time, he helped design the Luce Memorial Chapel in Taiwan, which broke severely from the cubist designs of his urban projects.

The challenge of coordinating these projects took an artistic toll on Pei. He found himself responsible for acquiring new building contracts and supervising the plans for them. As a result, he felt disconnected from the actual creative work. "Design is something you have to put your hand to," he said. "While my people had the luxury of doing one job at a time, I had to keep track of the whole enterprise." Pei's dissatisfaction reached its peak at a time when financial problems began plaguing Zeckendorf's firm. I. M. Pei and Associates officially broke from Webb and Knapp in 1960, which benefited Pei creatively but pained him personally. He had developed a close friendship with Zeckendorf, and both men were sad to part ways.

NCAR and Kennedy Library

Pei was able to return to hands-on design when he was approached in 1961 by Walter Orr Roberts to design the new Mesa Laboratory for the National Center for Atmospheric Research outside Boulder, Colorado. The project differed from Pei's earlier urban work; it would rest in an open area in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. He drove with his wife around the region, visiting assorted buildings and surveying the natural environs. He was impressed by the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, but felt it was "detached from nature".

The conceptualization stages were important for Pei, presenting a need and an opportunity to break from the Bauhaus tradition. He later recalled the long periods of time he spent in the area: Pei also drew inspiration from the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings of the Ancient Pueblo Peoples; he wanted the buildings to exist in harmony with their natural surroundings. To this end, he called for a rock-treatment process that could color the buildings to match the nearby mountains. He also set the complex back on the mesa overlooking the city, and designed the approaching road to be long, winding, and indirect.

Roberts disliked Pei's initial designs, referring to them as "just a bunch of towers". Roberts intended his comments as typical of scientific experimentation, rather than artistic critique; still, Pei was frustrated. His second attempt, however, fit Roberts' vision perfectly: a spaced-out series of clustered buildings, joined by lower structures and complemented by two underground levels. The complex uses many elements of cubist design, and the walkways are arranged to increase the probability of casual encounters among colleagues.

Once the laboratory was built, several problems with its construction became apparent. Leaks in the roof caused difficulties for researchers, and the shifting of clay soil beneath caused cracks in the buildings which were expensive to repair. Still, both architect and project manager were pleased with the final result. Pei refers to the NCAR complex as his "breakout building", and he remained friends with Roberts until the scientist died in .

The success of NCAR brought renewed attention to Pei's design acumen. He was recruited to work on a variety of projects, including the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and the Sundrome terminal at Idlewild Airport in New York City, and dormitories at New College of Florida.

After President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in , his family and friends discussed how to construct a library that would serve as a fitting memorial. A committee was formed to advise Kennedy's widow Jacqueline, who would make the final decision. The group deliberated for months and considered many famous architects. Eventually, Kennedy chose Pei to design the library, based on two considerations. First, she appreciated the variety of ideas he had used for earlier projects. "He didn't seem to have just one way to solve a problem," she said. "He seemed to approach each commission thinking only of it and then develop a way to make something beautiful." Ultimately, however, Kennedy made her choice based on her personal connection with Pei. Calling it "really an emotional decision", she explained: "He was so full of promise, like Jack; they were born in the same year. I decided it would be fun to take a great leap with him."

The project was plagued with problems from the outset. The first was scope. President Kennedy had begun considering the structure of his library soon after taking office, and he wanted to include archives from his administration, a museum of personal items, and a political science institute. After the assassination, the list expanded to include a fitting memorial tribute to the slain president. The variety of necessary inclusions complicated the design process and caused significant delays.

Pei's first proposed design included a large glass pyramid that would fill the interior with sunlight, meant to represent the optimism and hope that Kennedy's administration had symbolized for so many in the US. Mrs. Kennedy liked the design, but resistance began in Cambridge, the first proposed site for the building, as soon as the project was announced. Many community members worried that the library would become a tourist attraction, causing particular problems with traffic congestion. Others worried that the design would clash with the architectural feel of nearby Harvard Square. By the mid-70s, Pei tried proposing a new design, but the library's opponents resisted every effort. These events pained Pei, who had sent all three of his sons to Harvard, and although he rarely discussed his frustration, it was evident to his wife. "I could tell how tired he was by the way he opened the door at the end of the day," she said. "His footsteps were dragging. It was very hard for I. M. to see that so many people didn't want the building."

Finally the project moved to Columbia Point, near the University of Massachusetts. The new site was less than ideal; it was located on an old landfill, and just over a large sewage pipe. Pei's architectural team added more fill to cover the pipe and developed an elaborate ventilation system to conquer the odor. A new design was unveiled, combining a large square glass-enclosed atrium with a triangular tower and a circular walkway.

The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum was dedicated on October 20, 1979. Critics generally liked the finished building, but the architect himself was unsatisfied. The years of conflict and compromise had changed the nature of the design, and Pei felt that the final result lacked its original passion. "I wanted to give something very special to the memory of President Kennedy," he said in 2000. "It could and should have been a great project." Perhaps the most important consequence of the Kennedy project for Pei was his elevation in the public's consciousness as an architect of note.

"Pei Plan" in Oklahoma City

The Pei Plan was an urban redevelopment initiative designed for downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in the 1960s and 1970s. It is the informal name for two related commissions by Pei – namely the Central Business District General Neighborhood Renewal Plan (design completed 1964) and the Central Business District Project I-A Development Plan (design completed 1966). It was formally adopted in 1965, and implemented in various public and private phases throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

The plan called for the demolition of hundreds of antiquated downtown structures in favor of renewed parking, office building, and retail developments, in addition to public projects such as the Myriad Convention Center and the Myriad Botanical Gardens. It was the dominant template for downtown development in Oklahoma City from its inception through the 1970s. The plan generated mixed results and opinion, largely succeeding in re-developing office building and parking infrastructure but failing to attract its anticipated retail and residential development. Significant public resentment also developed as a result of the destruction of multiple historic structures. As a result, Oklahoma City's leadership avoided large-scale urban planning for downtown throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, until the passage of the Metropolitan Area Projects (MAPS) initiative in 1993.

Dallas City Hall and Hancock Tower

Kennedy's assassination led indirectly to another commission for Pei's firm. In 1964 the acting mayor, Erik Jonsson, began working to change the community's image. Dallas was known and disliked as the city where the president had been killed, but Jonsson began a program designed to initiate a community renewal. One of the goals was a new city hall, which could be a "symbol of the people". Jonsson, a co-founder of Texas Instruments, learned about Pei from his associate Cecil Howard Green, who had recruited the architect for MIT's Earth Sciences building.

Pei's approach to the new Dallas City Hall mirrored those of other projects; he surveyed the surrounding area and worked to make the building fit. In the case of Dallas, he spent days meeting with residents of the city and was impressed by their civic pride. He also found that the skyscrapers of the downtown business district dominated the skyline, and sought to create a building which could face the tall buildings and represent the importance of the public sector. He spoke of creating "a public-private dialogue with the commercial high-rises".

Working with his associate Theodore Musho, Pei developed a design centered on a building with a top much wider than the bottom; the facade leans at an angle of 34 degrees. A plaza stretches out before the building, and a series of support columns holds it up. It was influenced by Le Corbusier's High Court building in Chandigarh, India; Pei sought to use the significant overhang to unify building and plaza. The project cost much more than initially expected, and took 11 years. Revenue was secured in part by including a subterranean parking garage. The interior of the city hall is large and spacious; windows in the ceiling above the eighth floor fill the main space with light.

The city of Dallas received the building well, and a local television news crew found unanimous approval of the new city hall when it officially opened to the public in 1978. Pei himself considered the project a success, even as he worried about the arrangement of its elements. He said: "It's perhaps stronger than I would have liked; it's got more strength than finesse." He felt that his relative lack of experience left him without the necessary design tools to refine his vision, but the community liked the city hall enough to invite him back. Over the years he went on to design five additional buildings in the Dallas area.

While Pei and Musho were coordinating the Dallas project, their associate Henry Cobb had taken the helm for a commission in Boston. John Hancock Insurance chairman Robert Slater hired I. M. Pei & Partners to design a building that could overshadow the Prudential Tower, erected by their rival.

After the firm's first plan was discarded due to a need for more office space, Cobb developed a new plan around a towering parallelogram, slanted away from the Trinity Church and accented by a wedge cut into each narrow side. To minimize the visual impact, the building was covered in large reflective glass panels; Cobb said this would make the building a "background and foil" to the older structures around it. When the Hancock Tower was finished in 1976, it was the tallest building in New England. Almost immediately, however, serious problems with the tower became evident. A windstorm during construction in 1973 caused many of the glass panels to crack and break. Some detached and fell to the ground, causing no injuries but sparking worry among Boston residents. The entire tower was reglazed with smaller panels, significantly increasing the cost of the project. Hancock sued the glass manufacturers, Libbey-Owens-Ford, as well as I. M. Pei & Partners, for submitting plans that were "not good and workmanlike". LOF countersued Hancock for defamation, accusing Pei's firm of poor use of their materials; I. M. Pei & Partners sued LOF in return. All three companies settled out of court in 1981.

The project became a badge of shame for Pei's firm; he refused to discuss it for many years, and the architects began looking overseas to find commissions. Cobb worked in Australia and Pei took on jobs in Singapore, Iran, and Kuwait. Although it was a difficult time for everyone involved, Pei later reflected with patience on the experience. "Going through this trial toughened us," he said. "It helped to cement us as partners; we did not give up on each other."

National Gallery East Building

In the mid-1960s, directors of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., declared the need for a new building. Paul Mellon, a primary benefactor of the gallery and a member of its building committee, set to work with his assistant J. Carter Brown (who became gallery director in 1969) to find an architect. The new structure would be located to the east of the original building, and tasked with two functions: offer a large space for public appreciation of various popular collections; and house office space as well as archives for scholarship and research. They likened the scope of the new facility to the Library of Alexandria. After inspecting Pei's work at the Des Moines Art Center in Iowa and the Johnson Museum at Cornell University, they offered him the commission.

Pei took to the project with vigor, and set to work with two young architects he had recently recruited to the firm, William Pedersen and Yann Weymouth. Their first obstacle was the unusual shape of the building site, a trapezoid of land at the intersection of Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenues. Inspiration struck Pei in 1968, when he scrawled a rough diagram of two triangles on a scrap of paper. The larger building would be the public gallery; the smaller would house offices and archives. This triangular shape became a singular vision for the architect. As the date for groundbreaking approached, Pedersen suggested to his boss that a slightly different approach would make construction easier. Pei simply smiled and said: "No compromises."

The growing popularity of art museums presented unique challenges to the architecture. Mellon and Pei both expected large crowds of people to visit the new building, and they planned accordingly. To this end, he designed a large lobby roofed with enormous skylights. Individual galleries are located along the periphery, allowing visitors to return after viewing each exhibit to the spacious main room. A large mobile sculpture by American artist Alexander Calder was later added to the lobby. Pei hoped the lobby would be exciting to the public in the same way as the central room of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The modern museum, he said later, "must pay greater attention to its educational responsibility, especially to the young".

Materials for the building's exterior were chosen with careful precision. To match the look and texture of the original gallery's marble walls, builders re-opened the quarry in Knoxville, Tennessee, from which the first batch of stone had been harvested. The project even found and hired Malcolm Rice, a quarry supervisor who had overseen the original 1941 gallery project. The marble was cut into three-inch-thick panels and arranged over the concrete foundation, with darker blocks at the bottom and lighter blocks on top.

The East Building was honored on May 30, 1978, two days before its public unveiling, with a black-tie party attended by celebrities, politicians, benefactors, and artists. When the building opened, popular opinion was enthusiastic. Large crowds visited the new museum, and critics generally voiced their approval. Ada Louise Huxtable wrote in ''The New York Times'' that Pei's building was "a palatial statement of the creative accommodation of contemporary art and architecture". The sharp angle of the smaller building has been a particular note of praise for the public; over the years it has become stained and worn from the hands of visitors.

Some critics disliked the unusual design, however, and criticized the reliance on triangles throughout the building. Others took issue with the large main lobby, particularly its attempt to lure casual visitors. In his review for ''Artforum'', critic Richard Hennessy described a "shocking fun-house atmosphere" and "aura of ancient Roman patronage". One of the earliest and most vocal critics, however, came to appreciate the new gallery once he saw it in person. Allan Greenberg had scorned the design when it was first unveiled, but wrote later to J. Carter Brown: "I am forced to admit that you are right and I was wrong! The building is a masterpiece."

Starting in 2005, the joints attaching the marble panels to the walls began to show signs of strain, creating a risk of panels falling off the building onto the public below. In 2008 officials decided that it would be necessary to remove and reinstall ''all'' the panels. The project is scheduled for completion in 2013.

Fragrant Hills and Javits Convention Center

After US President Richard Nixon made his famous 1972 visit to China, a wave of exchanges took place between the two countries. One of these was a delegation of the American Institute of Architects in 1974, which Pei joined. It was his first trip back to China since leaving in 1935. He was favorably received, and commented on the positive work the Communist government had done in combating poverty and corruption. He was less enamored of the architecture, however; beginning in the 1950s Chinese buildings closely followed Western styles. During one lecture Pei urged the audience to search China's own traditions for architectural inspiration. In 1978, after giving a series of lectures of architecture in China, Pei was asked to imagine a project for his home country. After surveying a number of different locations, Pei fell in love with a valley once used as an imperial garden and hunting preserve, known as Fragrant Hills. The site housed a decrepit hotel; Pei was invited to tear it down and build a new one. As usual, he approached the project by carefully considering its context and purpose. Likewise, he considered modernist styles inappropriate for the setting. Thus, he said, it was necessary to find "a third way".

After visiting his ancestral home in Suzhou, Pei created a design based on the simple but nuanced techniques of traditional residential Chinese buildings. Among these were abundant gardens, integration of nature, and careful consideration of the relationship between enclosure and opening. Pei's design included a large central atrium covered by glass panels not unlike those used for the East Building of the National Gallery. Openings of various shapes peered through walls to display natural views beyond. Younger Chinese were disappointed by Pei's design, hoping that he would bring some of the cubist flavor for which he had become known. Older officials and architects, however, were pleased.

The hotel, with 325 guest rooms and a four-story central atrium, was designed to fit perfectly into its natural habitat. The trees in the area were of special concern, and particular care was taken to cut down as few as possible. He worked with an expert from Suzhou to preserve and renovate a water maze from the original hotel, one of only five in the country. Pei was also meticulous about the arrangement of items in the garden behind the hotel; he even insisted on transporting of rocks from a location in southwest China to suit the natural aesthetic. An associate of Pei's said later that he never saw the architect so involved in a project.

During construction, a series of mistakes collided with the nation's lack of technology to strain relations between architects and builders. Whereas 200 or so workers might have been used for a similar building in the US, the Fragrant Hill project employed over 3,000 workers. This was mostly because the construction company lacked the sophisticated machines used in other parts of the world. The problems continued for months, until Pei had an uncharacteristically emotional moment during a meeting with Chinese officials. He later explained that his actions included "shouting and pounding the table" in frustration. The design staff noticed a difference in the manner of work among the crew after the meeting. As the opening neared, however, Pei found the hotel still needed work. He began scrubbing floors with his wife and ordering his children to make beds and vacuum floors. These difficulties took an emotional and physical strain on the Pei family.

The Fragrant Hill Hotel opened on October 17, 1982, but fell into disrepair almost immediately afterwards. A member of Pei's staff returned for a visit several years later and confirmed that it had become dilapidated, which he and Pei attributed to the country's general unfamiliarity with deluxe buildings. The Chinese architectural community at the time also showed little interest in the building, as they tended to celebrate postmodern architects from the US like Michael Graves.

As the Fragrant Hill project was nearing completion, Pei began working on the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City, although his associate James Freed served as lead designer. Hoping to create a vibrant community institution in a run-down neighborhood on Manhattan's west side, Freed developed a glass-coated structure with an intricate space frame of interconnected metal rods and spheres.

The convention center was plagued from the start by budget problems and construction blunders. City regulations forbid a general contractor having final authority over the project, so architects and program manager Richard Kahan had to coordinate the wide array of builders, plumbers, electricians, and other workers. The forged steel globes to be used in the space frame came to the site with hairline cracks and other defects; 12,000 were rejected. These and other problems led to media comparisons with the disastrous Hancock Tower. One New York City official blamed Kahan for the difficulties, indicating that the building's architectural flourishes were responsible for delays and financial crises. The Javits Center opened on April 3, 1986, to a generally positive reception. During the inauguration ceremonies, however, neither Freed nor Pei was recognized for their role in the project.

Le Grand Louvre

When François Mitterrand was elected President of France in 1981, he laid out an ambitious plan for a variety of construction projects. One of these was the renovation of the ''Louvre'' Museum. Mitterrand appointed a civil servant named Emile Biasini to oversee it. After visiting museums in Europe and the United States, including the US National Gallery, he asked Pei to join the team. The architect made three secretive trips to Paris, to determine the feasibility of the project; only one museum employee knew why he was there. Pei finally agreed that a reconstruction project was not only possible, but necessary for the future of the museum. He thus became the first foreign architect to work on the ''Louvre''.

The heart of the new design included not only a renovation of the ''Cour Napoléon'' in the midst of the buildings, but also a transformation of the interiors. Pei proposed a central entrance, not unlike the lobby of the National Gallery East Building, which would link the three major buildings. Below would be a complex of additional floors for research, storage, and maintenance purposes. At the center of the courtyard he designed a glass and steel pyramid, first proposed with the Kennedy Library, to serve as entrance and anteroom skylight. It was mirrored by another inverted pyramid underneath, to reflect sunlight into the room. These designs were partly an homage to the fastidious geometry of the famous French landscape architect ''André Le Nôtre'' (1613–1700). Pei also found the pyramid shape best suited for stable transparency, and considered it "most compatible with the architecture of the ''Louvre'', especially with the faceted planes of its roofs". The public also reacted harshly to the design, mostly because of the proposed pyramid. One critic called it a "gigantic, ruinous gadget"; another charged Mitterrand with "despotism" for inflicting Paris with the "atrocity". Pei estimated that 90 percent of Parisians opposed his design. "I received many angry glances in the streets of Paris," he said. Some condemnations carried nationalistic overtones. One opponent wrote: "I am surprised that one would go looking for a Chinese architect in America to deal with the historic heart of the capital of France."

Soon, however, Pei and his team won the support of several key cultural icons, including the conductor Pierre Boulez and Claude Pompidou, widow of former French President Georges Pompidou, after whom another controversial museum was named. In an attempt to soothe public ire, Pei took a suggestion from then-mayor of Paris Jacques Chirac and placed a full-sized cable model of the pyramid in the courtyard. During the four days of its exhibition, an estimated 60,000 people visited the site. Some critics eased their opposition after witnessing the proposed scale of the pyramid.

To minimize the impact of the structure, Pei demanded a method of glass production that resulted in clear panes. The pyramid was constructed at the same time as the subterranean levels below, which caused difficulties during the building stages. As they worked, construction teams came upon an abandoned set of rooms containing 25,000 historical items; these were incorporated into the rest of the structure to add a new exhibition zone.

The new ''Louvre'' courtyard was opened to the public on October 14, 1988, and the Pyramid entrance was opened the following March. By this time, public opinion had softened on the new installation; a poll found a fifty-six percent approval rating for the pyramid, with twenty-three percent still opposed. The newspaper ''Le Figaro'' had vehemently criticized Pei's design, but later celebrated the tenth anniversary of its magazine supplement at the pyramid. Prince Charles of Britain surveyed the new site with curiosity, and declared it "marvelous, very exciting". A writer in ''Le Quotidien de Paris'' wrote: "The much-feared pyramid has become adorable." The experience was exhausting for Pei, but also rewarding. "After the ''Louvre''," he said later, "I thought no project would be too difficult." The ''Louvre'' Pyramid has become Pei's most famous structure.

Meyerson Symphony Center and Bank of China

The opening of the ''Louvre'' Pyramid coincided with four other projects on which Pei had been working, prompting architecture critic Paul Goldberger to declare 1989 "the year of Pei" in ''The New York Times''. It was also the year in which Pei's firm changed its name to Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, to reflect the increasing stature and prominence of his associates. At the age of seventy-two, Pei had begun thinking about retirement, but continued working long hours to see his designs come to light.

One of the projects took Pei back to Dallas, Texas, to design the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center. The project was somewhat controversial at the start, since some community members felt there were more urgent needs in the city. Still, city leaders yearned to create a center for musical arts that could rival the best halls of Europe. The organizing committee contacted 45 architects, but Pei did not respond, concerned that his work on City Hall had left a negative impression. One of his colleagues from that project, however, insisted that he meet with the committee. He did and, although it would be his first concert hall, they voted unanimously to offer him the commission. As one put it: "We were convinced that we would get the world's greatest architect putting his best foot forward."

The project presented a variety of specific challenges. Because its main purpose was the presentation of live music, the hall needed a design focused not only on public access and exterior aesthetics, but also acoustics. To this end, a professional sound technician was hired to design the interior. He proposed a shoebox auditorium, based on classic designs used for top European symphony halls. Pei drew inspiration for his adjustments from the designs of the German architect Johann Balthasar Neumann, especially the Basilica of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. He also sought to incorporate some of the panache of the Paris Opéra designed by Charles Garnier.

Pei's design placed the rigid shoebox at an angle to the surrounding street grid, connected at the north end to a long rectangular office building, and cut through the middle with an assortment of circles and cones. The plan was risky, and Pei himself admitted that he did not completely know how it would come together. "I can imagine only 60 percent of the space in this building," he said during the early stages. "The rest will be as surprising to me as to everyone else." As the project developed, costs rose steadily and some sponsors considered withdrawing their support. Billionaire tycoon Ross Perot made a donation of US$10 million, on the condition that it be named in honor of Morton H. Meyerson, the longtime patron of the arts in Dallas.

The building opened to significant praise, especially with regard to the acoustics. After attending a week of performances in the hall, a music critic for ''The New York Times'' enthused about the experience and congratulated the architects. One of Pei's associates told him during a party before the opening that the symphony hall was "a very mature building"; he smiled and replied: "Ah, but did I have to wait this long?"

Perhaps even more personally important for Pei was a new offer from the Chinese government, which had come in 1982. With an eye toward the Transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong from the British in 1997, authorities in China sought Pei's aid on a new tower for the local branch of the Bank of China. The Chinese government was preparing for a new wave of engagement with the outside world, and saw the tower as a chance to demonstrate its economic strength. Given the elder Pei's history with the bank before the Communist takeover, government officials visited the 89-year-old man in New York to gain approval for his son's involvement. When they finished, Pei spoke with his father at length about the proposal. Although the architect still ached from the experience with Fragrant Hill, he agreed to accept the commission.

The proposed site in Hong Kong's Central District for the tower was less than ideal; a tangle of highways lined it on three sides. The area had also been home to a headquarters for Japanese military police during World War II, and was notorious for prisoner torture. The small parcel of land made a tall tower necessary, and Pei had usually shied away from such projects; in Hong Kong especially, the skyscrapers lacked any real architectural character. Lacking inspiration and unsure of how to approach the building, Pei took a weekend vacation to the family home in Katonah, New York. There he found himself experimenting with a bundle of sticks until he happened upon a cascading sequence.

The design that Pei developed for the Bank of China Tower was not only unique in appearance, but also sound enough to pass the city's rigorous standards for wind-resistance. The tower was planned around a visible truss structure, which distributed stress to the four corners of the base. Using the reflective glass that had become something of a trademark for him, Pei organized the facade around a series of boxed X shapes. At the top, he designed the roofs at sloping angles to match the rising aesthetic of the building. Some influential advocates of ''feng shui'' in Hong Kong and China criticized the design, and Pei and government officials responded with token adjustments.

As the tower neared completion, Pei was shocked to witness the government's massacre of unarmed civilians at the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. He wrote an opinion piece for ''The New York Times'' titled "China Won't Ever Be the Same", in which he said that the killings "tore the heart out of a generation that carries the hope for the future of the country". The massacre deeply disturbed his entire family, and he wrote that "China is besmirched."

1990–Present: Museum projects

As the 1990s began, Pei transitioned into a role of decreased involvement with his firm. The staff had begun to shrink, and Pei wanted to dedicate himself to smaller projects allowing for more creativity. Before he made this change, however, he set to work on his last major project as active partner: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. Considering his work on such bastions of high culture as the ''Louvre'' and US National Gallery, some critics were surprised by his association with what many considered a tribute to low culture. The sponsors of the hall, however, sought Pei for specifically this reason; they wanted the building to have an aura of respectability from the beginning. As in the past, Pei accepted the commission in part because of the unique challenge it presented.

Using a glass wall for the entrance, similar in appearance to his ''Louvre'' pyramid, Pei coated the exterior of the main building in white metal, and placed a large cylinder on a narrow perch to serve as a performance space. The combination of off-centered wraparounds and angled walls was, Pei said, designed to provide "a sense of tumultuous youthful energy, rebelling, flailing about".

The building opened in 1995, and was received with moderate praise. ''The New York Times'' called it "a fine building", but Pei was among those who felt disappointed with the results. The museum's early beginnings in New York combined with an unclear mission created a fuzzy understanding among project leaders for precisely what was needed. Although the city of Cleveland benefited greatly from the new tourist attraction, Pei was unhappy with it.

At the same time, Pei designed a new museum for Luxembourg, the ''Musée d'art moderne Grand-Duc Jean'', commonly known as the Mudam. Drawing from the original shape of the Fort Thüngen walls where the museum was located, Pei planned to remove a portion of the original foundation. Public resistance to the historical loss forced a revision of his plan, however, and the project was nearly abandoned. The size of the building was halved, and it was set back from the original wall segments to preserve the foundation. Pei was disappointed with the alterations, but remained involved in the building process even during construction.

In 1995 Pei was hired to design an extension to the ''Deutsches Historisches Museum'', or German Historical Museum in Berlin. Returning to the challenge of the East Building of the US National Gallery, Pei worked to combine a modernist approach with a classical main structure. He described the glass cylinder addition as a "beacon", and topped it with a glass roof to allow plentiful sunlight inside. Pei had difficulty working with German government officials on the project; their utilitarian approach clashed with his passion for aesthetics. "They thought I was nothing but trouble", he said.

Pei also worked at this time on two projects for a new Japanese religious movement called ''Shinji Shumeikai''. He was approached by the movement's spiritual leader, Kaishu Koyama, who impressed the architect with her sincerity and willingness to give him significant artistic freedom. One of the buildings was a bell tower, designed to resemble the ''bachi'' used when playing traditional instruments like the ''shamisen''. Pei was unfamiliar with the movement's beliefs, but explored them in order to represent something meaningful in the tower. As he said: "It was a search for the sort of expression that is not at all technical."

The experience was rewarding for Pei, and he agreed immediately to work with the group again. The new project was the Miho Museum, to display Koyama's collection of tea ceremony artifacts. Pei visited the site in Shiga Prefecture, and during their conversations convinced Koyama to expand her collection. She conducted a global search and acquired more than 300 items showcasing the history of the Silk Road.

One major challenge was the approach to the museum. The Japanese team proposed a winding road up the mountain, not unlike the approach to the NCAR building in Colorado. Instead, Pei ordered a hole cut through a nearby mountain, connected to a major road via a bridge suspended from ninety-six steel cables and supported by a post set into the mountain. The museum itself was built into the mountain, with 80 percent of the building underground.

When designing the exterior, Pei borrowed from the tradition of Japanese temples, particularly those found in nearby Kyoto. He created a concise spaceframe wrapped into French limestone and covered with a glass roof. Pei also oversaw specific decorative details, including a bench in the entrance lobby, carved from a 350-year-old ''keyaki'' tree. Because of Koyama's considerable wealth, money was rarely considered an obstacle; estimates at the time of completion put the cost of the project at US$350 million.

During the first decade of the 2000s, Pei designed a variety of buildings, including the Suzhou Museum near his childhood home. He also designed the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar. Although it was originally planned for the corniche road along Doha Bay, Pei convinced project coordinators to build a new island to provide the needed space. He then spent six months touring the region and surveying mosques in Spain, Syria, and Tunisia. He was especially impressed with the elegant simplicity of the Mosque of Ibn Tulun in Cairo.

Once again, Pei sought to combine new design elements with the classical aesthetic most appropriate for the location of the building. The rectangular boxes rotate evenly to create a subtle movement, with small arched windows at regular intervals into the limestone exterior. The building has become in the words of ''Artinfo'' "an instant landmark". The museum's coordinators were pleased with the project; its official website describes its "true splendour unveiled in the sunlight", and speaks of "the shades of colour and the interplay of shadows paying tribute to the essence of Islamic architecture".

Style and awards

Pei's style is described as thoroughly modernist, with significant cubist themes. He is known for combining traditional architectural elements with progressive designs based on simple geometric patterns. As one critic writes: "Pei has been aptly described as combining a classical sense of form with a contemporary mastery of method." In 2000, biographer Carter Wiseman called Pei "the most distinguished member of his Late-Modernist generation still in practice". At the same time, Pei himself rejects simple dichotomies of architectural trends. He once said: "The talk about modernism versus post-modernism is unimportant. It's a side issue. An individual building, the style in which it is going to be designed and built, is not that important. The important thing, really, is the community. How does it affect life?"

Pei's work is celebrated throughout the world of architecture. His colleague John Portman once told him: "Just once, I'd like to do something like the East Building." But this originality does not always bring large financial reward; as Pei replied to the successful architect: "Just once, I'd like to make the kind of money you do." His concepts, moreover, are too individualized and dependent on context to give rise to a particular school of design. Pei refers to his own "analytical approach" when explaining the lack of a "Pei School". "For me," he said, "the important distinction is between a stylistic approach to the design; and an analytical approach giving the process of due consideration to time, place, and purpose ... My analytical approach requires a full understanding of the three essential elements ... to arrive at an ideal balance among them."

Pei has won in the words of his biographer "every award of any consequence in his art", The prize was accompanied by a US$100,000 award, which Pei used to create a scholarship for Chinese students to study architecture in the US, on the condition that they return to China to work. In being awarded the 2003 Henry C. Turner Prize by the National Building Museum, then-museum board chair Carolyn Brody praised his impact on construction innovation: "His magnificent designs have challenged engineers to devise innovative structural solutions, and his exacting expectations for construction quality have encouraged contractors to achieve high standards."

See also

List of I.M. Pei projects

Notes

References

Diamonstein, Barbaralee. ''American Architecture Now''. New York: Rizzoli, 1980. ISBN 0-8478-0329-5.

Heyer, Paul. ''Architects on Architecture: New Directions in America''. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1993. ISBN 0-442-01751-0.

Moeller, Gerard M. and Weeks, Christopher. ''AIA Guide to the Architecture of Washington, D.C.'' Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.

von Boehm, Gero. ''Conversations with I.M. Pei: Light is the Key''. Munich: Prestel, 2000. ISBN 3-7913-2176-5.

Williams, Paul Kelsey. ''Southwest Washington, D.C.'' Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia, 2005.

Wiseman, Carter. ''I.M. Pei: A Profile in American Architecture''. New York: H.N. Abrams, 2001. ISBN 0-8109-3477-9.

External links

Pei Cobb Freed & Partners

I.M. Pei at the Digital Archive of American Architecture

Pritzker Prize information and acceptance speech

Concept sketches for The ''Musée d'Art Moderne''

Category:1917 births Category:Alumni of St. Paul's College, Hong Kong Category:American architects of Asian descent Category:Chinese architects Category:Chinese emigrants to the United States Category:American people of Chinese descent Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Living people Category:Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Category:Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Category:Modernist architects Category:United States National Medal of Arts recipients Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States Category:Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Category:Pritzker Prize winners Category:National Design Award winners Category:People from Guangzhou Category:Recipients of the Royal Gold Medal

ar:آي إم بي an:Ieoh Ming Pei zh-min-nan:I. M. Pei be:Бэй Юймін be-x-old:Юймін Бэй bs:I.M. Pei ca:Ieoh Ming Pei cs:I. M. Pei cy:I. M. Pei da:I.M. Pei de:Ieoh Ming Pei et:Ieoh Ming Pei el:Ι.Μ. Πέι es:Ieoh Ming Pei eo:I. M. Pei eu:Ieoh Ming Pei fa:آی. ام. پی hif:I. M. Pei fr:Ieoh Ming Pei gl:Ieoh Ming Pei ko:I. M. 페이 hr:I. M. Pei id:I. M. Pei ia:Ieoh Ming Pei is:I. M. Pei it:Ieoh Ming Pei he:איי אם פיי pam:I. M. Pei ka:იუჰ მინ პეი sw:Ieoh Ming Pei la:I. M. Pei lb:Ieoh Ming Pei lt:Ieoh Ming Pei mi:I. M. Pei arz:ايوه مينج باى nl:Ieoh Ming Pei ja:イオ・ミン・ペイ no:I.M. Pei nn:I. M. Pei pl:Ieoh Ming Pei pt:Ieoh Ming Pei ro:Ieoh Ming Pei ru:Бэй Юймин simple:I. M. Pei sk:Ieoh Ming Pei sl:Ieoh Ming Pei sr:Јо Минг Пеј fi:I. M. Pei sv:I.M. Pei ta:ஐ. எம். பேய் th:ไอ. เอ็ม. เพ tr:Ieoh Ming Pei uk:Бей Юймін vi:Ieoh Ming Pei vo:Ieoh Ming Pei war:I. M. Pei zh-yue:貝聿銘 bat-smg:I. M. Pei zh:贝聿铭

Name	Louis Isadore Kahn
Mother	Bertha Schmuilowsky
Father	Leopold Schmuilowsky
Nationality	American
Birth date	February 20, 1901
Birth place	Kuressaare, Governorate of Estonia , Russian Empire
Death date	March 17, 1974
Death place	New York City
Significant buildings	Yale University Art Gallery Salk Institute Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad Jatiyo Sangshad Bhaban Phillips Exeter Academy Library Kimbell Art Museum
Significant projects	Center of Philadelphia,Urban and Traffic Study
Awards	AIA Gold Medal RIBA Gold Medal }}

Louis Isadore Kahn (born Itze-Leib Schmuilowsky) (February 20, 1901 or 1902 – March 17, 1974) was a world-renowned American architect of Estonian Jewish origin, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. After working in various capacities for several firms in Philadelphia, he founded his own atelier in 1935. While continuing his private practice, he served as a design critic and professor of architecture at Yale School of Architecture from 1947 to 1957. From 1957 until his death, he was a professor of architecture at the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania. Influenced by ancient ruins, Kahn's style tends to the monumental and monolithic; his heavy buildings do not hide their weight, their materials, or the way they are assembled. Louis Kahn's works are considered as monumental beyond modernism.

Biography

Early life

Louis Kahn, whose original name was Itze-Leib (Leiser-Itze) Schmuilowsky (Schmalowski), was born into a poor Jewish family in Pärnu and spent the rest of his early childhood in Kuressaare on the Estonian island of Saaremaa, then part of the Russian Empire. At age 3, he saw coals in the stove and was captivated by the light of the coal. He put the coal in an apron which later seared his face. He carried these scars for the rest of his life.

In 1906, his family immigrated to the United States, fearing that his father would be recalled into the military during the Russo-Japanese War. His actual birth year may have been inaccurately recorded in the process of immigration. According to his son's documentary film in 2003 the family couldn't afford pencils but made their own charcoal sticks from burnt twigs so that Louis could earn a little money from drawings and later by playing piano to accompany silent movies. He became a naturalized citizen on May 15, 1914. His father changed their name in 1915.

Career

He trained in a rigorous Beaux-Arts tradition, with its emphasis on drawing, at the University of Pennsylvania. After completing his Bachelor of Architecture in 1924, Kahn worked as senior draftsman in the office of City Architect John Molitor. In this capacity, he worked on the design for the 1926 Sesquicentennial Exposition.

In 1928, Kahn made a European tour and took a particular interest in the medieval walled city of Carcassonne, France and the castles of Scotland rather than any of the strongholds of classicism or modernism. After returning to the States in 1929, Kahn worked in the offices of Paul Philippe Cret, his former studio critic at the University of Pennsylvania, and in the offices of Zantzinger, Borie and Medary in Philadelphia. In 1932, Kahn and Dominique Berninger founded the Architectural Research Group, whose members were interested in the populist social agenda and new aesthetics of the European avant-gardes. Among the projects Kahn worked on during this collaboration are unbuilt schemes for public housing that had originally been presented to the Public Works Administration. Among the more important of Kahn's early collaborations was with George Howe. Kahn worked with Howe in late 1930s on projects for the Philadelphia Housing Authority and again in 1940, along with German-born architect Oscar Stonorov for the design of housing developments in other parts of Pennsylvania.

Kahn did not find his distinctive architectural style until he was in his fifties. Initially working in a fairly orthodox version of the International Style, a stay at the American Academy in Rome in the early 1950s marked a turning point in Kahn's career. The back-to-the-basics approach he adopted after visiting the ruins of ancient buildings in Italy, Greece, and Egypt helped him to develop his own style of architecture influenced by earlier modern movements but not limited by their sometimes dogmatic ideologies.

In 1961 he received a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts to study traffic movement in Philadelphia and create a proposal for a viaduct system. He describes this proposal at a lecture given in 1962 at the International Design Conference in Aspen, Colorado:

In the center of town the streets should become buildings. This should be interplayed with a sense of movement which does not tax local streets for non-local traffic. There should be a system of viaducts which encase an area which can reclaim the local streets for their own use, and it should be made so this viaduct has a ground floor of shops and usable area. A model which I did for the Graham Foundation recently, and which I presented to Mr. Entenza, showed the scheme.

Kahn's teaching career began at Yale University in 1947, and he was eventually named Albert F. Bemis Professor of Architecture and Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1962 and Paul Philippe Cret Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in 1966 and was also a Visiting Lecturer at Princeton University from 1961 to 1967. Kahn was elected a Fellow in the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 1953. He was made a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1964. He was awarded the Frank P. Brown Medal in 1964. He was made a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1968 and awarded the AIA Gold Medal, the highest award given by the AIA, in 1971 and the Royal Gold Medal by the RIBA in 1972.

Jatiyo Sangshad Bhaban

Jatiyo Sangshad Bhaban (National Assembly Building) in Dhaka, Bangladesh, is perhaps the most important building designed by Kahn. Kahn got the design contract with the help of Muzharul Islam, his student at Yale University, who worked with him on the project. It was Kahn's last project during 1962 to 1974. It is the centerpiece of the national capital complex designed by Kahn that includes hostels, dining halls, and a hospital. According to Robert McCarter, author of the book ''Louis I. Kahn'', it "is one of the twentieth century's greatest architectural monuments, and is without question Kahn's magnum opus."

Death

In 1974, Kahn died of a heart attack in a men's restroom in Pennsylvania Station in New York. He went unidentified for three days because he had crossed out the home address on his passport. He had just returned from a work trip to Bangladesh, and despite his long career, he was deeply in debt when he died.

Personal life

Kahn had three different families with three different women: his wife, Esther, whom he married in 1930; Anne Tyng, who began her working collaboration and personal relationship with Kahn in 1945; and Harriet Pattison. His obituary in the ''New York Times'', written by Paul Goldberger, mentions only Esther and his daughter by her as survivors. But in 2003, Kahn's son with Pattison, Nathaniel Kahn, released an Oscar-nominated biographical documentary about his father, titled ''My Architect: A Son's Journey'', which gives glimpses of the architecture while focusing on talking to the people who knew him: family, friends, and colleagues. It includes interviews with renowned architect contemporaries such as Muzharul Islam, B. V. Doshi, Frank Gehry, Ed Bacon, Philip Johnson, I. M. Pei, and Robert A. M. Stern, but also an insider's view of Kahn's unusual family arrangements. The unusual manner of his death is used as a point of departure and a metaphor for Kahn's "nomadic" life in the film.

Designs

Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut,(1951–1953), the first significant commission of Louis Kahn and his first masterpiece, replete with technical innovations. For example, he designed a hollow concrete tetrahedral space-frame that did away with the need for ductwork and reduced the floor-to-floor height by channeling air through the structure itself. Like many of Kahn's buildings, the Art Gallery makes subtle references to its context while overtly rejecting any historical style.

Richards Medical Research Laboratories, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, (1957–1965), a breakthrough in Kahn's career that helped set new directions for modern architecture with its clear expression of served and servant spaces and its evocation of the architecture of the past.

The Salk Institute, La Jolla, California, (1959–1965), was to be a campus composed of three main clusters: meeting and conference areas, living quarters, and laboratories. Only the laboratory cluster, consisting of two parallel blocks enclosing a water garden, was actually built. The two laboratory blocks frame an exquisite view of the Pacific Ocean, accentuated by a thin linear fountain that seems to reach for the horizon.

First Unitarian Church, Rochester, New York (1959–1969), named as one of the greatest religious structures of the 20th century by Paul Goldberger, Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural critic. Tall, narrow window recesses create an irregular rhythm of shadows on the exterior while four light towers flood the sanctuary walls with indirect natural light.

Jatiyo Sangshad Bhaban (National Assembly Building) in Dhaka, Bangladesh (1962–1974)

Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College and Hospital, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, in Ahmedabad, India (1962).

National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD), Dhaka, Bangladesh (1963)

Phillips Exeter Academy Library, Exeter, New Hampshire, (1965–1972), awarded the Twenty-five Year Award by the American Institute of Architects in 1997. It is famous for its dramatic atrium with enormous circular openings into the book stacks.

Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, (1967–1972), features repeated bays of cycloid-shaped barrel vaults with light slits along the apex, which bathe the artwork on display in an ever-changing diffuse light.

Yale Center for British Art, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, (1969–1974).

Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park, Roosevelt Island, New York, (1972–1974), unbuilt.

Timeline of works

All dates refer to the year project commenced

1935 – Jersey Homesteads Cooperative Development, Hightstown, New Jersey

1940 – Jesse Oser House, 628 Stetson Road, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania

1947 – Phillip Q. Roche House, 2101 Harts Lane, Conshohocken, Pennsylvania

1951 – Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel Street, New Haven, Connecticut

1952 – City Tower Project, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (unbuilt)

1954 – Jewish Community Center (aka Trenton Bath House), 999 Lower Ferry Road, Ewing, New Jersey

1956 – Wharton Esherick Studio, 1520 Horseshoe Trail, Malvern, Pennsylvania (designed with Wharton Esherick)

1957 – Richards Medical Research Laboratories, University of Pennsylvania, 3700 Hamilton Walk, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

1957 – Fred E. and Elaine Cox Clever House, 417 Sherry Way, Cherry Hill, New Jersey

1959 – Margaret Esherick House, 204 Sunrise Lane, Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

1958 – Tribune Review Publishing Company Building, 622 Cabin Hill Drive, Greensburg, Pennsylvania

1959 – Salk Institute for Biological Studies, 10 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, California

1959 – First Unitarian Church, 220 South Winton Road, Rochester, New York

1960 – Erdman Hall Dormitories, Bryn Mawr College, Morris Avenue, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania

1960 – Norman Fisher House, 197 East Mill Road, Hatboro, Pennsylvania

1961 – Point Counterpoint II, barge used by the American Wind Symphony Orchestra

1962 – Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India

1962 – National Assembly Building, Dhaka, Bangladesh

1963 – President's Estate, Islamabad, Pakistan (unbuilt)

1965 – Phillips Exeter Academy Library, Front Street, Exeter, New Hampshire

1966 – Kimbell Art Museum, 3333 Camp Bowie Boulevard, Fort Worth, Texas

1966 – Olivetti-Underwood Factory, Valley Road, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

1968 – Hurva Synagogue, Jerusalem, Israel (unbuilt)

1969 – Yale Center for British Art, Yale University, 1080 Chapel Street, New Haven, Connecticut

1971 – Steven Korman House, Sheaff Lane, Fort Washington, Pennsylvania

1972 – Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park, Roosevelt Island, New York City, New York (unbuilt) 1973 – The Arts United Center (Formerly known as the Fine Arts Foundation Civic Center), Fort Wayne, Indiana 1979 – Flora Lamson Hewlett Library of the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California

Legacy

Louis Kahn's work infused the International style with a fastidious, highly personal taste, a poetry of light. His few projects reflect his deep personal involvement with each. Isamu Noguchi called him "a philosopher among architects." He was known for his ability to create monumental architecture that responded to the human scale. He was also concerned with creating strong formal distinctions between ''served'' spaces and ''servant'' spaces. What he meant by ''servant'' spaces was not spaces for servants, but rather spaces that serve other spaces, such as stairwells, corridors, restrooms, or any other back-of-house function like storage space or mechanical rooms. His palette of materials tended toward heavily textured brick and bare concrete, the textures often reinforced by juxtaposition to highly refined surfaces such as travertine marble.

While widely known for his spaces' poetic sensibilities, Kahn also worked closely with engineers and contractors on his buildings. The results were often technically innovative and highly refined. In addition to the influence Kahn's more well-known work has on contemporary architects (such as Muzharul Islam, Tadao Ando), some of his work (especially the unbuilt City Tower Project) became very influential among the high-tech architects of the late 20th century (such as Renzo Piano, who worked in Kahn's office, Richard Rogers and Norman Foster). His prominent apprentices include Muzharul Islam, Moshe Safdie, Robert Venturi, Jack Diamond.

Many years after his death, Kahn continues to inspire controversy. Interest is growing in a plan to build a Kahn-designed Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park at the southern tip of Roosevelt Island. A ''New York Times'' editorial opined:

There's a magic to the project. That the task is daunting makes it worthy of the man it honors, who guided the nation through the Depression, the New Deal and a world war. As for Mr. Kahn, he died in 1974, as he passed alone through New York's Penn Station. In his briefcase were renderings of the memorial, his last completed plan.

The editorial describes Kahn's plan as:

...simple and elegant. Drawing inspiration from Roosevelt's defense of the Four Freedoms – of speech and religion, and from want and fear – he designed an open 'room and a garden' at the bottom of the island. Trees on either side form a 'V' defining a green space, and leading to a two-walled stone room at the water's edge that frames the United Nations and the rest of the skyline.

Critics note that the panoramic view of Manhattan and the UN are actually blocked by the walls of that room and by the trees. Other as-yet-unanswered critics have argued more broadly that not enough thought has been given to what visitors to the memorial would actually be able to do at the site. The proposed project is opposed by a majority of island residents who were surveyed by the Trust for Public Land, a national land conservation group currently working extensively on the island.

The movement for the memorial, which was conceived by Kahn's firm almost 35 years ago, needed to raise $40 million by the end of 2007; as of July 20, it had collected $5.1 million. There is a merest hint in ''Architectural Record'' about the often-heard argument that it must be built because it was literally Kahn's last project; and this is rebutted by those who've said the plans aren't enough like Kahn's other work for it to be touted as a memorial to Kahn as well as FDR.

Gallery

Notes

References

Further reading

Louis Kahn: Essential Texts, edited by Robert Twombly, WW Norton & Company, 2003.

External links

Louis I. Kahn – Philadelphia Architects and Buildings Project

The Louis I. Kahn Collection – The Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania

Exhibition at the University of Pennsylvania on Louis I. Kahn Interiors

Great Buildings Online – Louis I. Kahn

The Works of Louis I. Kahn, a personal collection of photographs taken at various Kahn buildings.

Honoring Louis Kahn's Legacy on the 100th Anniversary of His Birth

The Trenton Bath House of Louis Kahn

Redefining the Basemap

Louis Kahn traffic studies

Kahn Project Amherst College

Category:1901 births Category:1974 deaths Category:American architects Category:American ecclesiastical architects Category:Fellows of the American Institute of Architects Category:Modernist architects Category:Brutalist architects Category:Jewish architects Category:Estonian architects Category:Estonian emigrants to the United States Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States Category:American people of Estonian descent Category:University of Pennsylvania alumni Category:University of Pennsylvania faculty Category:Estonian Jews Category:People from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Category:People from Kuressaare Category:Architecture of Phillips Exeter Academy Category:Recipients of the Royal Gold Medal Category:Yale University faculty

ar:لويس كان bn:লুইস কান bg:Луис Кан ca:Louis Kahn cs:Louis Kahn de:Louis I. Kahn et:Louis Kahn es:Louis Isadore Kahn eo:Louis Kahn eu:Louis Kahn fa:لوئی کان fr:Louis Kahn (architecte) gl:Louis Kahn ko:루이스 칸 it:Louis Kahn he:לואיס קאן nl:Louis Kahn ja:ルイス・I・カーン nn:Louis Kahn pl:Louis Kahn pt:Louis Kahn ru:Кан, Луис Исраэль sk:Louis I. Kahn fi:Louis Kahn sv:Louis Kahn th:หลุยส์ คาห์น tr:Louis Kahn vi:Louis Kahn zh:路易·康

Name	Rem Koolhaas
Nationality	Dutch
Birth date	November 17, 1944
Birth place	Rotterdam, Netherlands
Alma mater	Netherlands Film and Television Academy, Architectural Association School of Architecture, Cornell University
Practice	Office for Metropolitan Architecture
Significant buildings	Casa da Música in Porto Seattle Central Library Netherlands Embassy Berlin
Significant projects	Volume Magazine
Awards	Pritzker Prize (2000)Praemium Imperiale (2003)Royal Gold Medal (2004) }}

Remment Lucas Koolhaas (; born November 17, 1944) is a Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanist and "Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design" at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, USA. Koolhaas studied at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy in Amsterdam, at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London and at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Koolhaas is the founding partner of OMA, and of its research-oriented counterpart AMO, currently based in Rotterdam, Netherlands. In 2005 he co-founded Volume Magazine together with Mark Wigley and Ole Bouman.

In 2000 Rem Koolhaas won the Pritzker Prize. In 2008 ''Time'' put him in their top 100 of ''The World's Most Influential People''.

Early life and career

Remment Koolhaas, usually abbreviated to Rem Koolhaas, was born on 17 November 1944 in Rotterdam, Netherlands to Anton Koolhaas (1912–1992) and Selinde Pietertje Roosenburg (born 1920). His father was a novelist, critic, and screenwriter. Two documentary films by Bert Haanstra for which his father wrote the scenarios were nominated for an Academy Award for Documentary Feature, one won a Golden Bear for Short Film. His maternal grandfather, Dirk Roosenburg (1887–1962), was a modernist architect. His grandfather had worked for Hendrik Petrus Berlage, before he opened his own practice. Rem Koolhaas has a brother, Thomas, and a sister, Annabel. The family lived consecutively in Rotterdam (until 1946), Amsterdam (1946–1952), Jakarta (1952–1955), and Amsterdam (from 1955).

His father strongly supported the Indonesian cause for autonomy from the colonial Dutch in his writing. When the war of independence was won, he was invited over to run a cultural programme for three years and the family moved to Jakarta in 1952. "It was a very important age for me," Koolhaas recalls, "and I really lived as an Asian."

Koolhaas first studied scriptwriting at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy in Amsterdam. Koolhaas co-wrote ''The White Slave'', a 1969 Dutch film noir, and later wrote an unproduced script for American soft-porn king Russ Meyer.

He then was a journalist for the ''Haagse Post'' before starting studies, in 1968, in architecture at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, followed, in 1972, by further studies at Cornell University in New York.

Koolhaas first came to public and critical attention with OMA (The Office for Metropolitan Architecture), the office he founded in 1975 together with architects Elia Zenghelis, Zoe Zenghelis and (Koolhaas's wife) Madelon Vriesendorp in London. They were later joined by one of Koolhaas's students, Zaha Hadid - who would soon go on to achieve success in her own right. An early work which would mark their difference from the then dominant postmodern classicism of the late 1970s, was their contribution to the Venice Biennale of 1980, curated by Italian architect Paolo Portoghesi, titled "Presence of the Past". Each architect had to design a stage-like "frontage" to a Potemkin-type internal street; and the OMA scheme was the only modernist scheme among them.

Other early critically received (yet unbuilt) projects included the Parc de la Villette, Paris (1982) and the residence for the President of Ireland (1981). The first large project by OMA to be built was the Kunsthal in Rotterdam (1992). These schemes would attempt to put into practice many of the findings Koolhaas made in his book ''Delirious New York'' (1978), which was written while he was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York, directed by Peter Eisenman. In September 2006, Rem Koolhaas was commissioned to develop 111 First Street in Jersey City across the Hudson River from Manhattan, working with real estate developer Louis Dubin.

In October 2008 Rem Koolhaas was invited for a European "group of the wise" under the chairmanship of former Spanish prime minister Felipe González to help 'design' the future European Union. Other members include Nokia chairman Jorma Ollila, former European Commissioner Mario Monti and former president of Poland Lech Wałęsa.

Theoretical position

Delirious New York

''Delirious New York'' set the pace for Koolhaas's career. Koolhaas celebrates the "chance-like" nature of city life: "The City is an addictive machine from which there is no escape" "Rem Koolhaas...defined the city as a collection of “red hot spots.” (Anna Klingmann). As Koolhaas himself has acknowledged, this approach had already been evident in the Japanese Metabolist Movement in the 1960s and early 1970s. A key aspect of architecture that Koolhaas interrogates is the "Program": with the rise of modernism in the 20th century the "Program" became the key theme of architectural design. The notion of the Program involves "an act to edit function and human activities" as the pretext of architectural design: epitomised in the maxim Form follows function, first popularised by architect Louis Sullivan and Nicolas Cisneros at the beginning of the 20th century. The notion was first questioned in ''Delirious New York'', in his analysis of high-rise architecture in Manhattan. An early design method derived from such thinking was "cross-programming", introducing unexpected functions in room programmes, such as running tracks in skyscrapers. More recently, Koolhaas (unsuccessfully) proposed the inclusion of hospital units for the homeless into the Seattle Public Library project (2003).

S,M,L,XL

The next landmark publication by Koolhaas was ''S,M,L,XL'', together with Bruce Mau, Jennifer Sigler, and Hans Werlemann (1995), a 1376-page tome combining essays, manifestos, diaries, fiction, travelogues, and meditations on the contemporary city. The layout of the huge book transformed architectural publishing, and such books—full-colour graphics and dense texts—have since become common. Ostensibly, ''S,M,L,XL'' gives a record of the actual implementation of "Manhattanism" throughout the various (mostly un-) realized projects and texts OMA had generated up to that time. The part lexicon-type layout (with a marginal "dictionary" composed by Jennifer Sigler, who also edited the book) spawned a number of concepts that have become common in later architectural theory, in particular "Bigness": 'old' architectural principles (composition, scale, proportion, detail) no longer apply when a building acquires Bigness. This was demonstrated in OMA's scheme for the development of "Euralille" (1990–94), a new centre for the city of Lille in France, a city returned to prominence by its position on the new rail route from Paris to London via the Channel Tunnel. OMA sited a train station, two centres for commerce and trade, an urban park, and 'Congrexpo' (a contemporary Grand Palais with a large concert hall, three auditoria and an exhibition space). In another essay in the book, titled "The Generic City", Koolhaas declares that progress, identity, architecture, the city and the street are things of the past: “Relief … it’s over. That is the story of the city. The city is no longer. We can leave the theatre now...”

Project on the city

Koolhaas's next landmark publications were a product of his position as professor at Harvard University, in the design school's "Project on the City"; firstly the 720-page ''Mutations'', followed by ''The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping'' (2002) and ''The Great Leap Forward'' (2002). All three books involved Koolhaas's students analysing what others would regard as "non-cities", sprawling conglomerates such as Lagos in Nigeria, west Africa, which the authors argue are highly functional despite a lack of infrastructure. The authors also examine the influence of shopping habits and the recent rapid growth of cities in China. Critics of the books have criticised Koolhaas for being cynical - as if Western capitalism and globalization demolish all cultural identity - highlighted in the notion expounded in the books that "In the end, there will be little else for us to do but shop". However, such cynicism can alternatively be read as a "realism" about the transformation of cultural life, where airports and even museums (due to finance problems) rely just as much on operating gift shops.

When it comes to transforming these observations into practice, Koolhaas mobilizes what he regards as the omnipotent forces of urbanism into unique design forms and connections organised along the lines of present day society. Koolhaas continuously incorporates his observations of the contemporary city within his design activities: calling such a condition the ‘culture of congestion’. Again, shopping is examined for "intellectual comfort", whilst the unregulated taste and densification of Chinese cities is analysed according to "performance", a criterion involving variables with debatable credibility: density, newness, shape, size, money etc. For example, in his design for the new CCTV headquarters in Beijing (2009), Koolhaas did not opt for the stereotypical skyscraper, often used to symbolise and landmark such government enterprises, but instead designed a series of volumes which not only tie together the numerous departments onto the nebulous site, but also introduced routes (again, the concept of cross-programming) for the general public through the site, allowing them some degree of access to the production procedure. Through his ruthlessly raw approach, Koolhaas hopes to extract the architect from the anxiety of a dead profession and resurrect a contemporary interpretation of the sublime, however fleeting it may be.

In 2003 ''Content'', a 544-page magazine-style book designed by &&& Creative and published by Koolhaas, gives an overview of the last decade of OMA projects including his designs for the Prada shops, the Seattle Public Library, a plan to save Cambridge from Harvard by rechanneling the Charles River, Lagos' future as Earth's third-biggest town, as well as interviews with Martha Stewart and Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.

AMO

In the late nineties, while working on the design for the new headquarters for Universal (currently Vivendi), OMA was first exposed to the full pace of change that engulfed the world of media and with it the increasing importance of the virtual domain. It led Rem Koolhaas and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) to create a new company, AMO, exclusively dedicated to the investigation and performance in this realm. He is heading the think tank ever since with Reinier de Graaf.

Volume Magazine

In 2005 Rem Koolhaas co-founded Volume Magazine together with Mark Wigley and Ole Bouman. Volume Magazine - the collaborative project by Archis (Amsterdam), AMO Rotterdam and C-lab (Columbia University NY) - is a dynamic experimental think tank devoted to the process of spatial and cultural reflexivity. It goes beyond architecture’s definition of ‘making buildings’ and reaches out for global views on architecture and design, broader attitudes to social structures, and creating environments to live in. The magazine stands for a journalism which detects and anticipates, is proactive and even pre-emptive - a journalism which uncovers potentialities, rather than covering done deals.

European Flag proposal

Following the signing of Treaties of Nice in May 2001, which made Brussels the de facto capital of the European Union, the then President of the European Commission, Romano Prodi and the Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt invited Koolhaas to discuss the necessities and requirements of a European capital.

During these talks and as an impetus for further discussion, Koolhaas and his think-tank AMO – an independent part of OMA – suggested the development of a visual language. This idea inspired a series of drawings and drafts, including the "Barcode". The barcode seeks to unite the flags of the EU member countries into a single, colourful symbol. In the current European flag, there is a fixed number of stars. In the barcode however, new Member States of the EU can be added without space constraints. Originally, the barcode displayed 15 EU countries. In 2004, the symbol was adapted to include the ten new Member States.

Since the time of the first drafts of the barcode it has very rarely been officially used by commercial or political institutions. During the Austrian EU Presidency 2006 it was officially used for the first time. The logo has already been used for the EU information campaign which will also be continued during the Austrian EU Presidency. There was initially some uproar caused, as the stripes of the flag of Estonia were displayed incorrectly.

Architecture, fashion, and theatre

With his Prada projects, Koolhaas ventured into providing architecture for the fleeting world of fashion and with celebrity-studded cachet: not unlike Garnier's Opera, the central space of Koolhaas' Beverly Hills Prada store is occupied by a massive central staircase, ostensibly displaying select wares, but mainly the shoppers themselves. The notion of selling a brand rather than marketing clothes was further emphasised in the Prada store in New York, which had previously been owned by the Guggenheim: the museum signs were not removed during the outfitting of the new store, as if emphasizing the premises as a cultural institution.

Prior to his Prada project in New York, Koolhaas was behind another remodeling project on the other side of town. Koolhaas redesigned a 1929 bank and transformed it into a one-of-a-kind, 296 seat, performance space for Second Stage Theatre.

21st Century Office

At the moment Koolhaas' constructions sites are in China: the massive Central China Television Headquarters Building in Beijing, China, and the new building for the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, the equivalent of the NASDAQ in China.

Recently he has changed the organization of his office to a partnership. Partners next to him are Ellen van Loon, Reinier de Graaf, Shohei Shigematsu and managing partner Victor van der Chijs. The partner Ole Scheeren left OMA in March 2010 to start his own practice.

Koolhaas now heads offices in Europe (OMA*AMO Rotterdam), North America (OMA*AMO Architecture PC New York) and Asia (OMA Beijing).

OMA Rotterdam: the head office is working on a master plan for the White City area of London; a harbour redevelopment and contemporary art Museum in Riga, the Cordoba Congress Centre in Spain; the redevelopment of the Mercati Generali in Rome, an architectural centre, offices and housing in Copenhagen, the new head office of Rothschild Bank in London and multi-use towers in Rotterdam and The Hague. It is also working on various masterplans in the Netherlands and Belgium and shopping centres in Rotterdam and Ostrava. In addition the Rotterdam office has a number of activities in the Middle East including office and residential towers and master plans in Dubai, three master plans in Ras -Al-Khaimah and several public buildings in Qatar. With his Rotterdam office Koolhaas is also designing a science center for Hamburg’s Hafencity.

OMA New York: the office in Manhattan Koolhaas is leading by Shohei Shigematsu is now designing an extension of Cornell University (NY), 111 First Street, a high rise residential building and hotel in Jersey City (NJ) and a high end residential tower with CAA screening room at One Madison Park in NYC.

OMA Beijing: In Asia, Koolhaas is working with his team on the office’s largest project to date, the 575,000 m2 China Central Television Headquarters (CCTV) and Television Cultural Center (TVCC), currently under construction in Beijing and due for completion in 2008. (However, the TVCC was damaged by an enormous fire in 2009.) Other projects in development include the new Shenzhen Stock Exchange and a lush residential tower and residential masterplan in Singapore.

Quotes

Noting that architecture can no longer keep up with the world: "The areas of consensus shift unbelievably fast; the bubbles of certainty are constantly exploding. Any architectural project we do takes at least four or five years, so increasingly there is a discrepancy between the acceleration of culture and the continuing slowness of architecture." —interview in ''Iconeye'', 2004 Reference to the article 'Generic city', a critic to current mode of urbanization: "People can inhabit anything. And they can be miserable in anything and ecstatic in anything. More and more I think that architecture has nothing to do with it. Of course, that's both liberating and alarming. But the generic city, the general urban condition, is happening everywhere, and just the fact that it occurs in such enormous quantities must mean that it's habitable. Architecture can't do anything that the culture doesn't. We all complain that we are confronted by urban environments that are completely similar. We say we want to create beauty, identity, quality, singularity. And yet, maybe in truth these cities that we have are desired. Maybe their very characterlessness provides the best context for living." —interview in ''Wired'' 4.07, July 1996 Asked if there is a certain contribution he aspires to make: "It's very simple and it has nothing to do with identifiable goals. It is to keep thinking about what architecture can be, in whatever form. That is an answer, isn't it? I think that ''S,M,L,XL'' has one beautiful ambiguity: it used the past to build a future and is very adamant about giving notice that this is not the end. That's how it felt to me, anyway. That is in itself evidence of a kind of discomfort with achievement measured in terms of identifiable entities, and an announcement that continuity of thinking in whatever form, around whatever subject, is the real ambition." —Interview with Jennifer Sigler in ''Index Magazine'', 2000

Awards

Pritzker Prize (2000)

Chevalier de Légion d'honneur (2001)

Praemium Imperiale (2003)

Royal Gold Medal (2004)

Doctor honoris causa by the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (2007)

Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale of Architecture for lifetime achievement (2010)

Selected projects

Lille Grand Palais (Lille, 1988)

Netherlands Dance Theater (The Hague, 1988)

Villa dall’Ava (Saint-Cloud, 1991)

Nexus Housing (Fukuoka, 1991)

Kunsthal (Rotterdam, 1993)

Educatorium (Utrecht, 1993–1997)

Maison à Bordeaux (Bordeaux, 1998)

Second Stage Theatre (New York City, 1999)

Guggenheim Hermitage Museum (Las Vegas, 1980, 2002?)

McCormick Tribune Campus Center, IIT (Chicago, 1997–2003)

Netherlands Embassy Berlin (2003)

Retail design for Prada stores (New York: 2003, Los Angeles: 2004)

Seattle Central Library (Seattle, 2004)

Casa da Música (Porto, 2001–2005)

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, (London, 2006)

Shenzhen Stock Exchange, (Shenzhen, 2006)

Córdoba International Congress Center (Palacio del Sur), Córdoba, Spain

Seoul National University Museum of Art (Seoul, 2003–2005)

Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre, (Dallas, Texas, 2004–2009)

Milstein Hall, (Cornell, 2006–2009)

CCTV HQ (Beijing, 2004–2009)

Riga Port City, (Riga, 2009)

23 East 22nd Street, (New York City, 2008–2010) Bryghusprojektet, (Copenhagen, 2008–2010) Torre Bicentenario (Bicentennial Tower), (Mexico City, 2007, unbuilt)

New Court, St. Swithin's Lane (London, 2010)

De Rotterdam, (Rotterdam, 2009–2013)

Bibliography

''Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto of Manhattan ''(1978) ISBN 978-1885254009 ''S,M,L,XL'' (1995) ISBN 978-1885254863 '' Serpentine Gallery: 24 Hour Interview Marathon'' (2007) ISBN 978-1-904563-69-3 ''Living Vivre Leben'' (1998) ''Content'' (2004) ISBN 978-3822830703

''Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2006''; Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln, Germany 2008 ISBN 978-3-86560-393-7

Gallery

References

External links

Office for Metropolitan Architecture

OMA official Facebook page (updated daily)

OMA official Vimeo channel

OMA portfolio on Archello.com

Rem Koolhaas at Harvard University

Rem Koolhaas lecture at the Canadian Centre for Architecture: June 8th, 2007

On Starchitecture

Koolhaas at Harvard's Ecological Urbanism

Rem Koolhaas: A Kind of Architect (2008 Feature Documentary)

Category:1944 births Category:20th-century architects Category:21st-century architects Category:Architectural theoreticians Category:Deconstructivism Category:Dutch architects Category:Dutch non-fiction writers Category:Living people Category:Cornell University alumni Category:Harvard University faculty Category:Dutch urban planners Category:People from Rotterdam Category:Pritzker Prize winners Category:Recipients of the Royal Gold Medal

ar:ريم كولهاس zh-min-nan:Rem Koolhaas br:Rem Koolhaas bg:Рем Колхас ca:Rem Koolhaas cs:Rem Koolhaas de:Rem Koolhaas el:Ρεμ Κούλχαας es:Rem Koolhaas eu:Rem Koolhaas fa:رم کولهاس fr:Rem Koolhaas gl:Rem Koolhaas ko:렘 콜하스 is:Rem Koolhaas it:Rem Koolhaas he:רם קולהאס ka:რემ კოოლჰაასი hu:Rem Koolhaas nl:Rem Koolhaas ja:レム・コールハース no:Rem Koolhaas pl:Rem Koolhaas pt:Rem Koolhaas ru:Колхас, Рем sk:Rem Koolhaas sl:Rem Koolhaas fi:Rem Koolhaas sv:Rem Koolhaas th:เร็ม คอลฮาส tr:Rem Koolhaas uk:Рем Колгас vi:Rem Koolhaas zh:雷姆·库哈斯

show name	American Masters
format	Documentary
creator	Susan Lacy
country	United States
language	English
executive producer	Susan Lacy (1986-present)
producer	Thirteen/WNET
channel	PBS
first aired
last aired	present
website	http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/
production website	}}

''American Masters'' is a PBS television show which produces biographies on the artists, actors and writers of the United States who have left a profound impact on the nation's popular culture. It is produced by WNET in New York City. The show debuted on PBS in 1986.

Groups or organizations featured include: Actor's Studio, Algonquin Round Table, Group Theatre, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Women of Tin Pan Alley, Negro Ensemble Company, Juilliard School, the Beat Generation, Sun Records, Vaudeville, and Warner Bros. Pictures.

History

''American Masters'', a series "devoted to America's 'greatest native-born and adopted' artists," was originally scheduled to premier in September 1985; for "logistical scheduling reasons" the premiere was delayed until summer 1986, though on October 16, 1985, an ''American Masters'' "special" called ''Aaron Copland: A Self-Portrait'' was aired.

The first of the 15 first-season episodes was ''Private Conversations'', a "cinema-verite documentary by Christian Blackwood done in that trickiest of cinematic forms: a film about a film, in this instance the television version of ''Death of a Salesman'', directed by Volker Schlöndorff". It aired on June 23, 1986, as one of two episodes not specifically commissioned for the show's first season.

Susan Lacy, ''American Masters'' creator and executive producer, selected each subject, matched them to the specific film makers, and oversaw a first-season budget of $8 million. Before creating the series Lacy had been the senior programmer for ''Great Performances'' and one of the "architects" of ''American Playhouse'', having written the original proposal for the latter. At the time of the show's premiere, she was also the East Coast head of the Sundance Institute.

After the show's first two seasons, ''American Masters'' began producing most of its episodes; in those cases, it hires directors, arranges for funding, manages the budget, and supervises the editing; the show reserves the right to make the final cut on every film it produces. The ''American Masters'' production company occasionally plays a more limited role and co-produces some of its episodes, such as the 2005 documentary on Bob Dylan, ''No Direction Home'', and then in 2010 The Doors, ''When You're Strange''.

Profiles

A

Stella Adler

Louisa May Alcott

Woody Allen

Louis Armstrong

John James Audubon

Richard Avedon

B

Joan Baez

George Balanchine

James Baldwin

Lucille Ball

Tony Bennett

Leonard Bernstein

Jeff Bridges

James Brown

Carol Burnett

C

John Cage

Alexander Calder

Cab Calloway

Robert Capa

Truman Capote

The Carter Family

John Cassavetes

Willa Cather

Lon Chaney

Charlie Chaplin

Ray Charles

Julia Child

Harold Clurman

Nat King Cole

Sam Cooke

Aaron Copland

Walter Cronkite

George Cukor

Merce Cunningham

Edward S. Curtis

D

James Dean

Placido Domingo

The Doors (''When You're Strange'')

Bob Dylan (''No Direction Home'')

E

Thomas Eakins

Charles and Ray Eames

Clint Eastwood

Albert Einstein

Duke Ellington

Ralph Ellison

Ahmet Ertegün

F

Ella Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald

John Ford

Miloš Forman

Aretha Franklin

Buckminster Fuller

G

Judy Garland

Marvin Gaye

Frank Gehry

George Gershwin

Allen Ginsberg

Lillian Gish

Philip Glass

Samuel Goldwyn

Benny Goodman

Glenn Gould

Martha Graham

Cary Grant

D.W. Griffith

Woody Guthrie

H

Merle Haggard

Dashiell Hammett

John H. Hammond

Helen Hayes

Lillian Hellman

Ernest Hemingway

Don Hewitt

Al Hirschfeld

Alfred Hitchcock

David Hockney

Billie Holiday

Lena Horne

Zora Neale Hurston

I

J

Jasper Johns

Philip Johnson

Bill T. Jones

Quincy Jones

K

Danny Kaye

Elia Kazan

Buster Keaton

Garrison Keillor

Gene Kelly

André Kertész

L

Annie Leibovitz

John Lennon

James Levine

Harold Lloyd

Cachao Lopez

Murray Louis

George Lucas

Henry Luce

M

Norman Mailer

Bob Marley

Elaine May

Sanford Meisner

Yehudi Menuhin

Arthur Miller

Joni Mitchell

Marilyn Monroe

Robert Motherwell

Edward R. Murrow

N

Willie Nelson

Bob Newhart

Mike Nichols

Alwin Nikolais

Isamu Noguchi

O

Phil Ochs

Georgia O'Keeffe

Eugene O'Neill

P

Jack Paar

Charlie Parker

Les Paul

Pearl Jam

Gregory Peck

Edgar Allan Poe

Sidney Poitier

Cole Porter

Katherine Anne Porter

Q

R

Robert Rauschenberg

Man Ray

Lou Reed

Frederic Remington

Diego Rivera

Paul Robeson

Norman Rockwell

Richard Rodgers

Will Rogers

Arthur Rubinstein

S

Mort Sahl

Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Waldo Pressman Salt

Charles M. Schulz

Martin Scorsese

Pete Seeger

David O. Selznick

Maurice Sendak

Rod Serling

Neil Simon

Paul Simon

Isaac Bashevis Singer

Alfred Stieglitz

George Stevens

Preston Sturges

William Styron

T

Paul Taylor

Dalton Trumbo

U

V

Sarah Vaughan

Gore Vidal

W

Andy Warhol

Alice Waters

Muddy Waters

John Wayne

Billy Wilder

Hank Williams

Tennessee Williams

William Wyler

X

Y

Neil Young

Z

Funding

Cuismart (November 2, 1998-July 6, 2006)

Le Cordon Bleu (August 18, 2004)

The Charles H. Revsion Foundation (July 21, 1998-Present)

Carnegie Corporation of New York (July 6, 1983-Present)

Park Foundation (January 6, 1996-2006)

National Endowment for the Humanities (August 24, 1994–December 26, 2005)

National Endowment for the Arts (July 6, 1983–present)

Rosland P. Walter (May 1, 1992–present)

The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations (2009–present)

American Playhouse (2001–present)

Corporation for Public Broadcasting (January 6, 1983–present)

Institute for Civil Society (1999-2005)

Viewers Like You (January 6, 1983–present)

MasterCard (August 29, 2000–August 31, 2007)

Apple Inc. (August 29, 2000–2008)

American Express (August 24, 1994-August 31, 1995)

References

External links

PBS: American Masters

Category:Programs produced by Thirteen/WNET New York Category:Lists of American people Category:PBS network shows Category:American documentary television series Category:1986 American television series debuts Category:1980s American television series Category:1990s American television series Category:2000s American television series Category:2010s American television series

fr:American Masters