Looking back at the iconic architect?s first building The architecture world is mourning the death of Pritzker Prize-winning Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei. In partnership with his firm Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, Pei was responsible for a wide range of buildings in the United States and abroad, including the famous glass-topped extension of Paris?s Louvre Museum.
But long before Pei was a household name, he designed the Gulf Oil Building in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1949. In light of Pei?s passing, we?re sharing a closer look at his debut project, first published as a part of the 21 First Drafts series.
Getting the gig
After more than a decade in academia, Ieoh Ming Pei was ready for the next step. Born in Canton, China, and inspired by the cityscapes of Shanghai, Pei had come to the United States to study architecture in 1935. He chose the U.S. over Britain, in part because he found the American experience depicted in Bing Crosby movies to be much more exciting. More than a decade later, he had studied at the University of Pennsylvania, MIT, and Harvard as a disciple of modernist design. A rising star, Pei made connections with key figures such as Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer at Cambridge and earned national exposure for designing a series of prefab wooden houses. By 1948, he became an associate professor at the Harvard?s Graduate School of Design (he was prevented from returning to China due to the civil war between Communist and Nationalist forces).
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