I.M. Pei, the architect who designed the Louvre pyramid and the Kennedy Museum in Boston, died last month at age 102
Hey everyone, welcome to Plain English episode number 164. If you’re new to Plain English, then you’ve stumbled upon the perfect podcast for learning English with current events. Some might even say it’s your recipe for success! As you can hear, we got just a bit slower than normal speed so you can follow every word. And of course a full transcript is available online at PlainEnglish.com/164.
Coming up on today’s episode: the designs of I.M. Pei are in museums, hotels, and skyscrapers around the world, but no design is more famous than the glass pyramid in the courtyard of the Louvre museum in France. As much as we associate the pyramid with that museum today, it was controversial when it first came out. Pei died last month, and in today’s episode we’ll take a look at his work around the world and the effect that it has had. The expression we’ll review today is “to cause a stir.” If you know what that means, you might be able to predict how we’ll use it. And it’s Monday, so we’ll close with a quote.
Before we do so, I wanted to call your attention again to our new partner, IELTS Advantage . Chris and the team there have an excellent introductory IELTS course, which you can find at PlainEnglish.com/IELTS .
I.M. Pei, architect for museums and moguls, dies at 102
If you’ve ever seen the famous pyramid entrance to the Louvre museum, then you’re familiar with the work of architect I.M. Pei. He designed museums, skyscrapers, hotels, and civic buildings around the world, and he died this month at the age of 102.
Pei was born in the city of Guanzhou, China, but was raised primarily in Shanghai, where he saw western-style buildings rising on the waterfront. That sparked his interest in architecture, which he studied in the United States at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He started off working for a property developer in New York and built mostly nondescript apartments. But he later broke into museums, cultural buildings, offices and hotels.
By far his most famous work is the design of the entrance to the Louvre museum in Paris. The Louvre is the world’s largest art museum and is frequently the world’s most visited art museum. It gets a lot of traffic. The museum is in a building that was originally built as a castle in the 12th and 13th centuries, though of course over the years it has been expanded, changed, and adapted to a museum. However, by the 1980s, it was getting more visitors than it could handle.
That’s why then-French President Francois Mitterand commissioned a new entrance, and that new entrance is what Pei designed. He designed the glass pyramid top, which is what we see from the outside. But the genius in the design is the way it disperses the masses of people into the different parts of the museum. Instead of everyone coming in the front door and gradually making their way through the collections, everyone descends to a central underground concourse. And from this underground concourse, people can choose what part of the museum to go to, and then go back upstairs when they’re ready to explore the collections. That way, no single part of the main museum structure becomes a bottleneck.
The design caused a stir when it was first released. Some people objected that the pyramid’s modernist style contrasted with the French Renaissance design of the Louvre. Others said that the pyramids from ancient Egypt are symbols of death, and so not appropriate to the front door of the Louvre. Still others didn’t like the idea of a Chinese-American designing such an important symbol of the French nation. But the design has aged well and it’s one of the most recognizable symbols of Paris, along with the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame Cathedral.
A large part of I.M. Pei’s work was in museums—and he designed a wide variety of museums around the world. The project he thought was most important was the design of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, in Boston, Massachusetts. Kennedy was the 35th President of the United States and was killed by a shooter in Dallas in 1963. A year after the president’s death, Pei was selected to design his museum and library. The project was repeatedly delayed and eventually had to be relocated. The new site that was selected for the museum was once a garbage dump. Pei recalled finding discarded refrigerators and appliances under the soil. But they cleaned it up and the museum was completed in 1977.
Other notable museums include an annex to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio; the Miho Museum near Kyoto, Japan; and the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar. This last project was incredible—the Museum of Islamic Art. Pei designed that building in 2005, at the age of 88, and he said it would be his last major cultural building. The final design resembled stacked boxes and takes up a manmade island in Doha Harbor.
In addition to his museums, Pei also designed buildings for public use. The Meyerson Symphony Center and City Hall, both in Dallas, were his. The symphony center is considered one of the best orchestra halls in the world.
Not everything he touched was considered a success. The tallest building in New England is in Boston, Massachusetts. 200 Clarendon Street, formerly known as the John Hancock Tower. It’s a tall glass and steel tower—a nice building, designed by Pei’s firm, but it went way over budget. One symbol of the project’s struggles came when huge glass panels fell from the building and crashed onto the street below. Though not entirely the architect’s fault, Pei took the blame for the blunder and the cost overruns in general. He also designed a popular, if not exactly famous, building in New York: the Javits Center. That’s the convention center in New York City on the far west side. That one was so far over budget and there were so many design changes that they didn’t even mention Pei when they dedicated the building in 1986. Oops.
That’s not to say he didn’t have any success in the major cities of the US: he did. 200 Clarendon in Boston, despite the cost overruns, has been an icon in the Boston skyline ever since it was finished. In his hometown New York, he designed the Four Seasons Hotel, the second-tallest hotel in New York. The hotel opened in 1993, but Pei himself redesigned the penthouse suite in 2004. That goes for $60,000 per night and was listed as the third most expensive hotel suite in the world.
He also designed the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong, one of the most recognizable towers in that city. It is characterized by sharp edges and some X-shaped designs. Like the Louvre, it caused a bit of a stir when it first opened. Architects of major buildings in Hong Kong almost always consult with feng shui masters in the design phase, but Pei skipped that. In fact, depending on the angle, the building can look like a huge meat cleaver. Kind of the opposite of the feng shui idea!
He designed just three private residences in his life, one of which was his own vacation home in the suburbs of New York City. The design was a minimalist glass box with panoramic views.
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