From Bloomberg News:
Chinese-American architect Ieoh Ming Pei, better known as I.M. Pei, has brought his love of geometric design back to his family’s hometown in China with the opening this week of the new Suzhou Museum.
The angular white and gray building is the latest — and some say the last — major design by Pei, 89. New York-based Pei Partnership Architects, helmed by Pei’s sons Chien Chung and Li Chung, helped design the 15,000-square-meter museum, which includes a 5,000-square-meter exhibition space, a 200-seat auditorium, research library and several Chinese gardens.
“He used the geometrical form as his basic element and repeated the theme throughout,” said Jia Beisi, associate professor of architecture at the University of Hong Kong. “The design looks like a big building cut into smaller pieces.”
Pei was born in 1917 to a Suzhou family. His father, Zu Yi, became head of Bank of China’s branch in Hong Kong, the city where Pei spent his boyhood years before heading to the U.S. to study architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard. [Full Text]
