I.M. Pei, architect of Louvre Pyramid, dies at 102

Ieoh Ming Pei, the Chinese-American architect who designed the Louvre Pyramid, died on Thursday, May 16, 2019, in New York at age 102. Born in Guangzhou, China, in 1917, Pei studied at the University of Pennsylvania, MIT, and Harvard Graduate School of Design. He began his career at Webb & Knapp, Inc. in 1948, founded I.M. Pei & Associates in 1955, later I.M. Pei & Partners, and finally Pei Cobb Freed & Partners in 1989. In 1983, he was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize by a jury including Arata Isozaki, Philip Johnson, and Kevin Roche, shortly after being selected for the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong. His most famous work, the glass pyramid at the Louvre, was completed in 1989 as part of President François Mitterrand's cultural renovation plan. Other major projects include the Bank of China Tower (1990), the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha (2008), the National Gallery of Art East Building in Washington DC (1978), and Palazzo Lombardia in Milan (2010). Pei officially retired in the early 1990s but continued to follow some projects.