1/19/2024 0 Comments Im pei philadelphia“I consider the Grand Louvre the greatest challenge and the greatest accomplishment of my career,” Pei told ARTnews. Pei, to his astonishment, was a virtual national hero. Construction of the pyramid proceeded, and when it opened in 1988, it was not only Mitterrand who declared it “a thing of beauty that will be inscribed forever in our history.” In a remarkable turnaround, the French public overwhelmingly embraced it. Le Figaro called the design “soulless, cold and absurd” - in short, “inadmissible.” Le Monde called it an “annex to Disneyland.”īut Mitterrand did not waver. The French media followed with similar reaction. In January 1984, when he presented the design to the Monuments Historiques, a commission of architects, curators and conservators, the criticism was vicious. Still, even he was taken aback by the intensity of the criticism. He quickly realized that the beauty of this solution might not be as readily apparent to the French - that they might, as he told ARTnews, “raise holy hell” about such a radical plan for their beloved museum. Pei chose a pyramid, which because of its structural stability could be built to be transparent and light. Ryback of ARTnews in 1995 that he came away in a fever to do something for the museum that housed “the greatest collection I know.”īecause there was a danger in digging under the Louvre itself, the obvious place to install a new entrance was beneath the Napoleon Court, an open area between the two wings.īut what should the structure be? Pei did not think the entrance should simply be a sunken hole because “the Louvre needs something prestigious.” But should a surface structure match in some way the other parts of the Louvre? Or be a counterpoint to them? His determination to see a project through to what he thought it should and must be was perhaps most sorely tested at the Louvre, a project he reluctantly accepted.īut Mitterrand insisted, believing that Pei was the best one to devise a plan to build a new entrance and also improve the complex of buildings that over the centuries had been transformed from fortress into public museum.īefore taking on the project, Pei secretly visited the Louvre several times, finding it in “pitiful” condition - disorganized, dreary and with services that were barely functional. “On the other hand, he didn’t have that overriding ego that so many architects of his stature have had.”īut Pei also could be steely, insisting that things be done a certain way on his projects. He was proud of his work,” UCLA architecture and history professor Thomas Hines said. But, as the scion of a prominent banking family in China, he also had the elegant bearing and cultural refinement that enabled him to move comfortably in the milieu of the clients who could afford his projects. Pei’s virtually unmatched ability to move his and his firm’s designs off the drawing board and onto construction sites was due to the superiority of their designs. “But if you are true to yourself, you have a signature, and the signature will come out.” “I don’t think that’s how my architecture should be looked at. “I am not an architect who has a body of theories,” he said in “First Person Singular,” Peter Rosen’s 1997 documentary on Pei. He said he liked to compare his approach to architecture to the music of Bach - “constant variations of a simple theme.” Pei’s projects, though sharing in some way his love of geometric forms, were varied in style but not on the cutting edge.
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