Top 52 Quotes & Sayings by I. M. Pei

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American architect I. M. Pei.

Last updated on December 21, 2024.

Ieoh Ming Pei was a Chinese-American architect. Raised in Shanghai, Pei drew inspiration at an early age from the garden villas at Suzhou, the traditional retreat of the scholar-gentry to which his family belonged. In 1935, he moved to the United States and enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania's architecture school, but he quickly transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was unhappy with the focus at both schools on Beaux-Arts architecture, and spent his free time researching emerging architects, especially Le Corbusier. After graduating, he joined the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and became a friend of the Bauhaus architects Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. In 1948, Pei was recruited by New York City real estate magnate William Zeckendorf, for whom he worked for seven years before establishing an independent design firm in 1955, I. M. Pei & Associates. In 1966 that became I. M. Pei & Partners, and in 1989 became Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. Pei retired from full-time practice in 1990. In his retirement, he worked as an architectural consultant primarily from his sons' architectural firm Pei Partnership Architects.

American - Architect | Born: April 26, 1917

Source: Wikipedia

We had a lot of difficulty in getting the French to accept the pyramid. They thought we were trying to import a piece of Egypt until I pointed out that their obelisk was also from Egypt and the Place des Pyramides is around the corner. Then they accepted it. The pyramid at the Louvre, though, is just the tip.

I. M. Pei

To me, form doesn't always follow function. Form has a life of its own, and at times, it may be the motivating force in design. When you're dealing with form as a sculptor, you feel that you are quite free in attempting to mould and shape things you want to do, but in architecture, it's much more difficult because it has to have a function.

I. M. Pei

I arrived in the U.S.A. in 1935, to San Francisco. I got the boat from China, and I didn't even speak English. I could read a little, perhaps write a little, but that was all. It was a 17-day journey, and I learnt to speak English from the stewards.

I. M. Pei

I liked the America of Bing Crosby, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton - it was all a dream, of course, but a very alluring dream for a young man from Canton.

I. M. Pei

A city, far from being a cluster of buildings, is actually a sequence of spaces enclosed and defined by buildings.

I. M. Pei

A lasting architecture has to have roots.

I. M. Pei

One thing I learn - I've been in practice now for half a century or more, and the most important ingredient for an architect to do a good building is to have a good client. I think a client counts for as much as fifty per cent.

I. M. Pei

The Pyramids are perfect, but you can't put the Pyramids in the middle of Manhattan. In the desert, the combination of light and form makes it perfect.

I. M. Pei

Architecture must not do violence to space or its neighbors.

I. M. Pei

I think the artistic side of architecture was natural to me. My mother was an artist and a poet.

I. M. Pei

Modern architecture needed to be part of an evolutionary, not a revolutionary, process.

I. M. Pei

I've never left China. My family's been there for 600 years. But my architecture is not consciously Chinese in any sense. I'm a western architect.

I. M. Pei

I'd been going to the Louvre since 1951. I thought I knew Paris and the French, but I didn't really. You know how easy it is to make friends when you are traveling. People are curious about you, you are curious about them. But you never really make friends that way. After the Louvre, I discovered that I have friends now because I have enemies.

I. M. Pei

It is good to learn from the ancients. I'm a bit of an ancient myself. They had a lot of time to think about architecture and landscape.

I. M. Pei

The first decent building I did with my own practice was a chapel in Taiwan.

I. M. Pei

The essence of architecture is form and space, and light is the essential element to the key to architectural design, probably more important than anything. Technology and materials are secondary.

I. M. Pei

I came, I studied architecture in America, so my technical background's completely western. But my seventeen years, the formative years of one's life, and I can't say that the Chineseness in me is not there.

I. M. Pei

The Louvre for me is a wonderful experience. Because it continues; it didn't get cut off. It was actually a continuous involvement all the way, and a lot of people have come and gone, come and gone; but I'm still here.

I. M. Pei

Even a beautiful piece of work can be overshadowed, destroyed, by something else.

I. M. Pei

In northern architecture - the cathedrals of Europe and all the little churches - the details, the carving of stone, become necessary because the light is not there to help you very much. You have to enrich surfaces. The desert reduces form to its simplest nature. There is no need for gargoyles or flying buttresses in the desert.

I. M. Pei

Contemporary architects tend to impose modernity on something. There is a certain concern for history, but it's not very deep.

I. M. Pei

I have a great love for nature. That must have started somewhere down back home, I think, because my family own one of the better known gardens in Soochow, so I played there, and I lived there, and so I must have absorbed something there. So I continue to have a great interest in nature.

I. M. Pei

At home, I have a wife, fortunately, and my children are all grown, and I have many grandchildren. I spend weekends with my grandchildren; I adore them.

I. M. Pei

Success is a collection of problems solved.

I. M. Pei

I travel to the Middle East, I travel to China, I travel to Europe. It's all very rewarding - the only problem is the travel is getting more and more difficult for me now. Ten years ago I would have enjoyed it a lot more.

I. M. Pei

I believe that architecture is a pragmatic art. To become art it must be built on a foundation of necessity.

I. M. Pei

For Kips Bay, I had a wonderful client, William Zeckendorf, who was willing to gamble with me on using concrete and not brick for a high-rise apartment building. That was very innovative at the time.

I. M. Pei

When I got the opportunity to do the new wing [the Schauhaus] for the German Historical Museum, for instance, I didn't see it as an opportunity for my own ego, to do something so exciting that every architectural publication would want to put it on the cover. I accepted it because I knew it was going to be a very difficult project, and I wasn't sure I could do something exciting there.

I. M. Pei

I've been active all my life. In 1990 I retired from my firm, I.M. Pei & Partners, and for two years I didn't do much. Then I started to get kind of antsy, so I decided, I'm going to do some more work. And I chose to do work outside the U.S. because I've spent 45 years here and I wanted to learn more about what's happening in the rest of the world.

I. M. Pei

Great artists need great clients.

I. M. Pei

I know something about the civilization of China, with my background, obviously, and I think I know something about American history. But that's about all. And I've traveled all over the world, and for a long time I didn't know very much about it, really.

I. M. Pei

I want to bring out the best in a community and contribute something of permanent value.

I. M. Pei

Many of the projects I'm most proud of are tall buildings, especially the housing projects. In New York I have two: one in Kips Bay and one at New York University. At that time, those projects were most challenging.

I. M. Pei

Be the best, not necessarily the original.

I. M. Pei

Qatar does not have much history, it's a new emirate. So I couldn't draw on the history of the country; its history is really just being a desert. But I thought, the one thing I must learn about for this project is the Islamic faith. So I read about Islam and Islamic architecture, and the more I studied the more I realized where the best Islamic buildings were.

I. M. Pei

I didn't want to think about a project that I couldn't finish. That's a kind of temptation. One has to realize one's limitations. Why kid yourself? ?

I. M. Pei

Stop worrying about missed opportunities and start looking for new ones.

I. M. Pei

Design is something you have to put your hand to.

I. M. Pei

Life is architecture and architecture is the mirror of life.

I. M. Pei

Let's do it right. This is for the ages.

I. M. Pei

François Mitterrand was a student of architecture, he had done a lot of research before he called me. He said, "You did something special at the National Gallery of Art in Washington - you brought the new and the old together." But John Russell Pope finished the West Building in 1941, so when the East Building opened it was only about 40 years old. But the Louvre is 800 years old! A much bigger design challenge.

I. M. Pei

I cannot work and listen to Wagner at the same time, nor Mahler, nor Beethoven's late quartets. I enjoy listening to Chopin's piano music when I work.

I. M. Pei

It is not an individual act, architecture. You have to consider your client. Only out of that can you produce great architecture. You cannot work in the abstract

I. M. Pei

At the beginning, I thought the best Islamic work was in Spain - the mosque in Cordoba, the Alhambra in Granada. But as I learned more, my ideas shifted. I traveled to Egypt, and to the Middle East many times.I found the most wonderful examples of Islamic work in Cairo, it turns out. I'd visited mosques there before, but I didn't see them with the same eye as I did this time. They truly said something to me about Islamic architecture.

I. M. Pei

You cannot defend your design without knowing what you're designing for.

I. M. Pei

On a daily basis, my home life is very simple. I spend about 2 hours every morning reading the newspaper. As my two assistants will tell you, I don't come to work in the mornings, for two reasons. First, I want to be informed - that means I go through The New York Times every day, and then I watch some news on television. The second is, mornings are the best time to communicate with my clients abroad.

I. M. Pei

Contemporary architects tend to impose modernity on something. There is a certain concern for history but it’s not very deep. I understand that time has changed, we have evolved. But I don’t want to forget the beginning. A lasting architecture has to have roots.

I. M. Pei

Architecture is the very mirror of life.You only have to cast your eyes on buildings to feel the presence of the past, the spirit of a place; they are the reflection of society.

I. M. Pei

Luxembourg was and still is today a crossroads, the place where Germany meets the rest of Europe. The country lost part of its territory to Belgium in the 1800s, and during World Wars I and II the German military overran it. Very few people have visited Luxembourg - when I went there and looked at it, I said, my God, it's built on a rock. And within the rock they had a castle, and within the city there's a network of tunnels so the residents could move around and defend themselves. That was of great interest to me.

I. M. Pei

I haven't taken any new projects in the past years - I told myself, if I cannot live long enough to finish it, I don't want it.

I. M. Pei

My projects have typically taken a long time to complete. Buildings might take on average about five to seven years to finish, but in my case it's been longer, because the projects I have accepted within the past 15 years have been mostly government projects, and those involve some politics and funding issues, and approvals and so forth. So they're slower.

I. M. Pei

I was born in Suzhou, a city not very far from Shanghai. It's a very interesting town - there is a long artist's tradition there, especially during the Ming and Ching dynasties, which produced many, many scholars and painters and so forth. That's where my family lived for 600, 700 years.

I. M. Pei

Top 52 Quotes & Sayings by I. M. Pei

Related Authors