The American architect of Chinese origin Ieoh Ming Pei celebrates his hundredth birthday

Canton/Prague - American architect of Chinese descent Ieoh Ming Pei, who will celebrate his 100th birthday on April 26, is among the leading figures in his field and received the Pritzker Prize (the architectural equivalent of the Nobel Prize) in 1983. His buildings scattered around the world are characterized by austere lines, the use of stone, concrete, glass, and steel. He gained fame for, among other achievements, the bold glass pyramid at the Louvre in Paris or the Bank of China building in Hong Kong.

"Geometry remains the fundamental idea of my architecture," claims Pei, who throughout his career has designed a large number of buildings - from industrial skyscrapers and university buildings to museums (the east wing of the National Gallery in Washington, the Miho Museum near Kyoto, the museum in Boston, or the new wing of the Museum of History in Berlin), banks, hotels, and low-budget houses, hospitals, churches, or an airport terminal.

Among his famous buildings are the Four Seasons hotel on 57th Street in New York, the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado. Some of his latest works include the Museum of Modern Art in Luxembourg (Mudam), the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar, or the Science Center in Macau.

Pei was born in Canton as the son of a well-known banker. He grew up in Shanghai and moved to the USA at the age of 18, where he studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, earning a Bachelor of Architecture degree in 1940 from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He then served as an assistant at Harvard University. A U.S. citizen since 1954, he established his first architectural firm in New York a year later.

Pei likely gained his most famous commission from 1983 to 1989, the expansion and modernization of the Louvre museum. The project was initiated by then-French President François Mitterrand. Pei's design for a large glass and steel entrance pyramid next to the old buildings was shocking. However, Mitterrand liked it and pushed it through, even though about 70 percent of the French people disapproved. Today, the pyramid is one of the city's landmarks on the Seine.

In 1942, he married Chinese woman Eileen Lo, who also studied in the USA and passed away in 2014. They had three sons and a daughter together.