Born in Canton, China and raised in Hong Kong and Shanghai, Pei drew inspiration at an early age from the gardens at Suzhou.

Pei also drew inspiration from the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings of the Ancient Pueblo Peoples ; he wanted the buildings to exist in harmony with their natural surroundings.

This drew Emperor Xuanzong's displeasure with them, and he removed all three of them, replacing them with Yuwen Rong and Pei Guangting, while retaining fellow chancellor Xiao Song.

During one lecture Pei urged the audience to search China's own traditions for architectural inspiration.

Lacking inspiration and unsure of how to approach the building, Pei took a weekend vacation to the family home in Katonah, New York.

The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity is housed in an 11-story structure originally built for The Christian Science Publishing Society constructed between 1932 and 1934, and the present plaza was constructed in the late 1960s and early 1970s to include a 28 story administration building, a colonnade, and a reflecting pool with fountain, designed by Araldo Cossutta of I. M. Pei and Partners ( now Pei Cobb Freed ).

In the early 1980s, Pei was the focus of controversy when he designed a glass-and-steel pyramid for the Louvre museum in Paris.

Pei has won a wide variety of prizes and awards in the field of architecture, including the AIA Gold Medal in 1979, the first Praemium Imperiale for Architecture in 1989, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in 2003.

As a boy, Pei was very close to his mother, a devout Buddhist who was recognized for her skills as a flautist.

Once he arrived, however, the dean of the architecture school commented on his eye for design and convinced Pei to return to his original major.

Pei attempted to meet renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright, but gave up after waiting for two hours.

Pei received his master's degree in 1946, and taught at Harvard for another two years.

William Zeckendorf ( shown here in the office redesigned by his architectural team ) hired Pei after ordering a search for what he called " the greatest unknown architect in the country ".

In the spring of 1948 Pei was recruited by New York real estate magnate William Zeckendorf to join a staff of architects for his firm of Webb and Knapp to design buildings around the country.

Pei found Zeckendorf's personality the opposite of his own ; his new boss was known for his loud speech and gruff demeanor.

Pei finally saw his architecture come to life in 1950, when he designed a corporate building for Gulf Oil in Atlanta, Georgia.

Soon Pei was so inundated with projects that he asked Zeckendorf for assistants, which he chose from his associates at the GSD, including Henry N. Cobb and Ulrich Franzen.

Pei and his team also designed a united urban area for Washington, D. C., L ' Enfant Plaza ( named for French-American architect Pierre Charles L ' Enfant ).

Pei involved himself in the construction process at Kips Bay, even inspecting the bags of concrete to check for consistency of color.

Pei, helped to set new standards for architecture in Canada in the 1960s ...

Although these projects were satisfying, Pei wanted to establish an independent name for himself.

Pei said he wanted the Mesa Laboratory of the National Center for Atmospheric Research to look " as if it were carved out of the mountain ".

Pei was able to return to hands-on design when he was approached in 1961 by Walter Orr Roberts to design the new Mesa Laboratory for the National Center for Atmospheric Research outside Boulder, Colorado.

The conceptualization stages were important for Pei, presenting a need and an opportunity to break from the Bauhaus tradition.

" Perhaps the most important consequence of the Kennedy project for Pei was his elevation in the public's consciousness as an architect of note.

Some influential advocates of feng shui in Hong Kong and China criticized the design, and Pei and government officials responded with token adjustments.

The city's global architectural flavors had a profound influence on Pei, from the Bund waterfront area to the Park Hotel, built in 1934.

Pei was fascinated by the representations of college life in the films of Bing Crosby, which differed tremendously from the academic atmosphere in China.

The US realized that its bombs used against the stone buildings of Europe would be ineffective against Japanese cities, mostly constructed from wood and paper ; Pei was assigned to work on incendiary bombs.

In 1955 Pei's group took a step toward institutional independence from Webb and Knapp by establishing a new firm called I. M. Pei & Associates.

I. M. Pei and Associates officially broke from Webb and Knapp in 1960, which benefited Pei creatively but pained him personally.

Jonsson, a co-founder of Texas Instruments, learned about Pei from his associate Cecil Howard Green, who had recruited the architect for MIT's Earth Sciences building.

Pei was also meticulous about the arrangement of items in the garden behind the hotel ; he even insisted on transporting of rocks from a location in southwest China to suit the natural aesthetic.

In an attempt to soothe public ire, Pei took a suggestion from then-mayor of Paris Jacques Chirac and placed a full-sized cable model of the pyramid in the courtyard.

Perhaps even more personally important for Pei was a new offer from the Chinese government, which had come in 1982.

The small parcel of land made a tall tower necessary, and Pei had usually shied away from such projects ; in Hong Kong especially, the skyscrapers lacked any real architectural character.

The sponsors of the hall, however, sought Pei for specifically this reason ; they wanted the building to have an aura of respectability from the beginning.

Although the city of Cleveland benefited greatly from the new tourist attraction, Pei was unhappy with it.

Drawing from the original shape of the Fort Thüngen walls where the museum was located, Pei planned to remove a portion of the original foundation.

Instead, Pei ordered a hole cut through a nearby mountain, connected to a major road via a bridge suspended from ninety-six steel cables and supported by a post set into the mountain.

When designing the exterior, Pei borrowed from the tradition of Japanese temples, particularly those found in nearby Kyoto.

Pei also oversaw specific decorative details, including a bench in the entrance lobby, carved from a 350-year-old keyaki tree.

In the words of his biographer, Pei has won " every award of any consequence in his art ", including the Arnold Brunner Award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters ( 1963 ), the Gold Medal for Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters ( 1979 ), the AIA Gold Medal ( 1979 ), the first Praemium Imperiale for Architecture from the Japan Art Association ( 1989 ), the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, and the 2010 Royal Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects.