biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1917– )
|
| biography:
| Architect, born in Canton, China. He emigrated to the USA in 1935 and studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and with Walter Gropius at Harvard. He was director of architecture with the contracting firm Webb & Knapp (1948–55) before establishing his own New York firm (1955), later to become Pei, Cobb Freed & Partners. From the outset he was associated with large-scale multi-purpose developments, often connected with urban revitalization. His designs include some of the principal commercial, cultural, and educational buildings of the late 20th-c, such as the Hancock Building (1972) and John F Kennedy Library (1979), both in Boston, the East Building of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (1978), and the controversial glass pyramid entrance to the Louvre, Paris (1983–9). Later projects include the Miho Museum, Kyoto, Japan (1998) and major buildings in China and Hong Kong. His buildings are characterized by their carefully, often dramatically arranged masses, use of exterior landscape in interior design through thoughtful siting, and technological innovation (he pioneered, for example, all-glass curtain walls). |
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