Celebrated architect Ieoh Ming Pei—more commonly known as I.M. Pei—died on May 16th. He was 102 years old. He designed the Texas Commerce Bank Bldg for Gerald D. Hines Interests.
Born in 1917 in Guangzhou, China, Pei moved to the U.S. in 1935 to study architecture, starting at the University of Pennsylvania and later transferring to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After graduating, Pei joined the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he studied under Marcel Breuer and Walter Gropius, pioneers of modernist architecture.
At the beginning of his career, Pei worked closely with developer William Zeckendorf and fellow architects Ulrich Franzen and Henry Cobb, as the in-house architect of Webb & Knapp. Together, they adventured on multiple large-scale urban renewal projects in Houston, New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., Boston, Denver, Montreal and other cities.
After seven years with Webb & Knapp in New York, Pei established his own architecture firm in 1955, known today as Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. Throughout his more than 60-year career, he designed a number of notable modernist buildings around the world, including the East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Louvre Pyramid in Paris and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. Check our web site for more information www.houstonrealtyadvisors.com
