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.

Ieoh Ming Pei was born on April 26, 1917 to Tsuyee Pei and Lien Kwun, and the family moved to Hong Kong one year later.

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

Pei's ancestors ' success meant that the family lived in the upper echelons of society, but Pei said his father was " not cultivated in the ways of the arts ".

At the age of ten, Pei moved with his family to Shanghai after his father was promoted.

As a pain reliever, she was prescribed opium, and assigned the task of preparing her pipe to Pei.

Pei was more intrigued by modern architecture, and also felt intimidated by the high level of drafting proficiency shown by other students.

MIT's architecture faculty was also focused on the Beaux-Arts school, and Pei found himself uninspired by the work.

Pei was inspired by the innovative designs of the new International style, characterized by simplified form and the use of glass and steel materials.

" Pei was also influenced by the work of US architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

She enrolled in the landscape architecture program at Harvard University, and Pei was thus introduced to members of the faculty at Harvard's Graduate School of Design ( GSD ).

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 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.

Zeckendorf was well connected politically, and Pei enjoyed learning about the social world of New York's city planners.

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 was commissioned to design the Luce Memorial Chapel in Taiwan by the same organization that ran the middle school he had attended in Shanghai.

The pedestrian walkway at the ground floor, however, was prone to sudden gusts of wind, which embarrassed Pei.

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.

Designed by I. M. Pei, the building is high with two masts reaching high.

Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect I. M. Pei, the building is high with two masts reaching high.

* Cleo Rogers Memorial Library, by I. M. Pei

However, other observers ( like Minxin Pei ) question whether these steps are genuine efforts towards democratic reform or disingenuous measures by the CPC to retain power.

Pei attended Saint Johns Middle School, run by Protestant missionaries.

In 1935 Pei boarded the SS President Coolidge and sailed to San Francisco, then traveled by train to Philadelphia.

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

It is the informal name for two related commissions by Pei – namely the Central Business District General Neighborhood Renewal Plan ( design completed 1964 ) and the Central Business District Project I-A Development Plan ( design completed 1966 ).

It was influenced by Le Corbusier's High Court building in Chandigarh, India ; Pei sought to use the significant overhang to unify building and plaza.

John Hancock Insurance chairman Robert Slater hired I. M. Pei & Partners to design a building that could overshadow the Prudential Tower, erected by their rival.

Pei was surprised by public resistance to his traditional design of the hotel at Fragrant Hills.

Pei said: " My father began living his own separate life pretty soon after that.

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

Pei considers the John F. Kennedy Library " the most important commission " in his life.

Pei Songzhi's annotations provide a relatively clear, though still incomplete picture of Zhao's life.

Pei said that " Bing Crosby's films in particular had a tremendous influence on my choosing the United States instead of England to pursue my education.

Among the early projects on which Pei took the lead were the L ' Enfant Plaza Hotel in Washington, DC and the Green Building at MIT.

Le Corbusier visited MIT in, an occasion which powerfully affected Pei: " The two days with Le Corbusier, or ' Corbu ' as we used to call him, were probably the most important days in my architectural education.

Less than a month later, Pei suspended his work at Harvard to join the National Defense Research Committee, which coordinated scientific research into US weapons technology during World War II.

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

One of these was a delegation of the American Institute of Architects in 1974, which Pei joined.

A member of Pei's staff returned for a visit several years later and confirmed that it had become dilapidated, which he and Pei attributed to the country's general unfamiliarity with deluxe buildings.

Pei proposed a central entrance, not unlike the lobby of the National Gallery East Building, which would link the three major buildings.

The opening of the Louvre Pyramid coincided with four other projects on which Pei had been working, prompting architecture critic Paul Goldberger to declare 1989 " the year of Pei " in The New York Times.

It was also the year in which Pei's firm changed its name to Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, to reflect the increasing stature and prominence of his associates.

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

" The prize was accompanied by a US $ 100, 000 award, which Pei used to create a scholarship for Chinese students to study architecture in the US, on the condition that they return to China to work.

Jobs found office space in Palo Alto on 3475 Deer Creek Road, occupying a glass and concrete building which featured a staircase designed by architect I. M. Pei.

The Hai River (), previously called Bai He ( Chinese: 白河 ; pinyin: Bái Hé ; literally " White River "; Pei Ho in Western sources ), is a river in the People's Republic of China which flows through Beijing and Tianjin before emptying into the Yellow Sea at the Bohai Gulf.

Then they carried out a landing near at Beitang ( also spelled " Pei Tang "), some from the Taku Forts on 3 August, which they captured after three weeks on 21 August.

Pei Songzhi believed that the first objective of Sun Ce's planned northward excursion was to attack Chen Deng, which would provide a platform for capturing Xuchang.

Further annotations of the text by Pei Songzhi ( 430 AD ) described the design in detail as a large single central wheel and axle around which a wooden frame was constructed in representation of an ox.

However, Liu Bang's family, including Lü Zhi and her children, remained in Pei County, which was a territory of Xiang Yu's kingdom of Western Chu.

In Bo Yang's Modern Chinese Edition of Sima Guang's Zizhi Tongjian, for example, Bo cited seven different and discordant views of Jiang's career — ranging from ringing endorsements of his recklessness and loyalty for the sake of Shu ( Pei Songzhi ( 裴松之 ), commentator to the Records of Three Kingdoms ) to criticism of his constant draining campaigns ( Chen Shou, author of Records of Three Kingdoms ) to outright condemnation ( Sun Sheng ( 孫盛 ), author of the Spring and Autumn Annals of Jin ), each of which could be considered a potentially valid view of his complicated character.

The Gallery's campus includes the original neoclassical West Building designed by John Russell Pope, which is linked underground to the modern East Building designed by I. M. Pei, and the Sculpture Garden.

Pei was an ardent student of Chan and received teachings from Huángbò, eventually building a monastery for Huángbò around 846, which the master named Huang-po after the mountain where he had been a novice monk.