MR. PEI'S PERFECT SHAPES

A tribute to the distinctive approach and sensibility of the renowned modernist architect.

In language as simple and stately as her subject’s best works, Leung traces the long career of I.M. Pei (1917-2019) from childhood encounters with the intricately water-sculpted volcanic rocks in the gardens at Suzhou to his design of an art museum for the Chinese city many decades later. In between, she follows him to Shanghai and then the U.S., where he trained in his vocation, became a citizen, and, after winning a breakthrough commission to design the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, went on to a long and distinguished career. The author artfully develops her thesis that Pei “could foresee how the shape of a building must harmonize with nature, with people, and with time” by describing how he solved potential challenges in some of his iconic buildings, such as the tall but slender Bank of China tower in Hong Kong with its innovative diagonal bracing, as well as the daring but now iconic glass pyramid at the Louvre. (The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, alas, gets just a bare mention in the closing timeline.) In Wu’s clean and lovely illustrations, Pei stands amid fanciful, harmoniously hued geometric shapes that tumble kaleidoscopically through his thoughts before flowing naturally, effortlessly, into structural components. Buildings and people alike seem to stand with graceful but monumental solidity.

Acute and rich in insight.