Renowned architect I.M. Pei, who designed the City View building, has died
They say famous people die in bunches of three. Well three days in a row a person from the list has died. Doris Day, Tim Conway and now I.M. Pei, He is number 209 on the list.
I.M. Pei, (Ieoh Ming Pei) the world-renowned Chinese-born American architect, designed many iconic buildings over his decades-long career: the East Building of the National Gallery of Art in D.C., the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong, and the glass pyramid at the Louvre in Paris. But he also designed a building in Pittsburgh.
Pei, who died at age 102 on Thursday, was the architect behind City View, the 24-story residential high rise on the Lower Hill. Pei designed the structure in the early 1960s, and the structure was completed in 1964, a few years after the neighboring Civic Arena as part of a massive urban renewal project.
Originally called Washington Plaza, the building was recently renovated and renamed City View in 2014.
Pei's work in Pittsburgh was one of his last before rising to national prominence. As work was being finished up on the Lower Hill, Pei was announced as the surprise winner of a contest to design a presidential library honoring John F. Kennedy. Jacqueline Kennedy, who personally made the final choice of architect, said Pei’s selection was "really an emotional decision.”
"He was so full of promise, like Jack; they were born in the same year,” she told Carter Wiseman for his 1990 Pei biography. “I decided it would be fun to take a great leap with him."
The project suffered more than a decade of setbacks, but the commission generated a great level of recognition for Pei and he went on to become one of the leading modernist designers of municipal structures and museum buildings.
Among his other designs were Dallas City Hall (1978), the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland (1995), the Mihio Museum in Kyoto, Japan (1997), the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Washington, D.C.(2008), and the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar (2008).
Pei, who died at age 102 on Thursday, was the architect behind City View, the 24-story residential high rise on the Lower Hill. Pei designed the structure in the early 1960s, and the structure was completed in 1964, a few years after the neighboring Civic Arena as part of a massive urban renewal project.
Originally called Washington Plaza, the building was recently renovated and renamed City View in 2014.
Pei's work in Pittsburgh was one of his last before rising to national prominence. As work was being finished up on the Lower Hill, Pei was announced as the surprise winner of a contest to design a presidential library honoring John F. Kennedy. Jacqueline Kennedy, who personally made the final choice of architect, said Pei’s selection was "really an emotional decision.”
"He was so full of promise, like Jack; they were born in the same year,” she told Carter Wiseman for his 1990 Pei biography. “I decided it would be fun to take a great leap with him."
The project suffered more than a decade of setbacks, but the commission generated a great level of recognition for Pei and he went on to become one of the leading modernist designers of municipal structures and museum buildings.
Among his other designs were Dallas City Hall (1978), the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland (1995), the Mihio Museum in Kyoto, Japan (1997), the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Washington, D.C.(2008), and the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar (2008).
No comments:
Post a Comment