“Cities today are incredibly dull. Part of the reason is because the city is filled with faceless buildings.” Ieoh Ming Pei presents this controversial view, wearing a well-tailored suit and his perfectly round glasses, in the video series “Essays/I. M. Pei: An Architect for Today” (1970). Pei, as a media and image savvy architect drew attention through unorthodox, controversial public designs. His transformation of the Grand Louvre—the proposed entrance pyramid and additional shopping amenities in the subterranean level were mocked as L’hyper Louvre, as a commercialization and Disneyfication of French heritage. Pei throughout his career enhanced the world’s metropolises with iconic landmarks like the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong, the National Gallery East Building in Washington D.C., or the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, often referring to triangular and crystalline geometrical forms in the spirit of an elegant late modernism.

The exhibition “I. M. Pei: Life is Architecture” at the recently opened M+, a museum by Herzog & de Meuron in Hong Kong, portrays Pei essentially as a star architect. It is a carefully curated show that starts with Pei’s early university projects, proceeds to large scale global commissions managed by a corporate firm of six partners and 275 employees. The exhibition showcases a typological comparison of extremely intelligent and multi-facetted housing, administrative and cultural (museum) designs, brings together a broad range of drawings, plans and correspondences from global institutions and archives, interweaves media coverage, and a chapter on construction within the exhibition plan. Still, when constructing such a monographic exhibition, can we productively reframe the biographical method of storytelling? The exhibition captions attribute all drawings and plans to its respective authors and office collaborators. Consequently, would it not be interesting to learn more about Eileen Loo, Pei’s wife, a student of landscape architecture with Marcel Breuer, or the setting and work structure of the Pei Cobb Freed & Partners office?

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