World famous Architect and Founder, Committee of 100
IEOH MING PEI was born in Suzhou, China in 1917. At age 17 he came to the U.S. to study architecture, and received a Bachelor of Architecture degree from MIT in 1940, and his M.Arch from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design in 1946. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1954.
I. M. Pei has designed some of the most iconic and beloved architectural masterpieces in the world. He gained acclaim for his designs of the East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington (1978), the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston (1979), the Grand Louvre in Paris (1989), and Miho Museum in Shiga, Japan (1997). He completed three projects in his native China: the Fragrant Hill Hotel in Beijing (1982), the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong (1989), and the Suzhou Museum in Suzhou (2006), each designed to graft advanced technology onto the roots of indigenous building and thereby sow the seed of a new, distinctly Chinese form of modern architecture. His latest completed project is the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha (2008).
He has been recognized internationally with the highest honors in architecture, arts and letters, and public service, among them the AIA Gold Medal (1979), the Grande Médaille d’Or of the Académie d’Architecture de France (1982), the Pritzker Architecture Prize (1983), the Japanese Art Association’s Praemium Imperiale (1989), and the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture of the Royal Institute of British Architects (2010). Mr. Pei is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and a Corporate Member of the Royal Institute of British Architects, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Design, and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
