I. M. Pei

I. M. Pei, from Canton, China, decided to become an architect in 1933, at the age of 16, on seeing his firdt skyscraper under construction--the Park Hotel, Shanghai. He went to MIT in 1935, and studied architecture there and (in 1942-3) at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. His great admiration then was Le Corbusier, is now Picasso. After graduating he joined the office of John M. Gray, in Boston, where the buisness-like atmosphere may have prepared him for his later success in working with big buisiness organizations. His first major independent commission--and frst demonstration of buisness-like qualities--was the Gulf Oil Building in Atlanta, Georgia, which had to be built within $8 per square foot, air-conditioned and turned out at seven-fifty. His second commission was for the ‘ fabulous’ offices of the Webb and Knapp organization (illustrated), the fruit of his working collaboration with William A. Zeckendorf, head of Webb and Knapp and leader of the ‘enlightened realtors’, for whom he also designed Mile High Center in Denver, Colorado, and the Roosevelt Field Shopping Center on Long Island. Pei’s office concentrats mostly on commercial buildings and urban redevelopment shemes.