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

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 hoped the lobby would be exciting to the public in the same way as the central room of the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

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.

Pei, and was opened to the public in 1990 as the tallest building of Hong Kong at that time.

Washington Post critic Benjamin Forgey highly praised the Pei Cobb Freed design when it was first made public.

Emperor Muzong was displeased with Pei's accusations, but as Pei was a prominent statesman, placated Pei by demoting Wei to be the director of the imperial armory and Yuan to be the deputy minister of public works ( 工部侍郎, Gongbu Shilang ), relieving Yuan of his position as imperial scholar.

Kelly has since executed many public commissions, including Wright Curve ( 1966 ), a steel sculpture designed for permanent installation in the Guggenheim ’ s Peter B. Lewis Theater ; a mural for the UNESCO headquarters in Paris in 1969 ; Curve XXII ( I Will ) at Lincoln Park in Chicago in 1981 ; a 1985 commission by I. M. Pei for the Raffles City building in Singapore ; the Houston Triptych, vertical bronze planes mounted on a tall concrete at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in 1986 ; Totem ( 1987 ), a sculpture for the Parc de la Creueta del Coll, Barcelona ; the Dallas Panels ( Blue Green Black Red ) ( 1989 ) for the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, Dallas ; a 1989 sculpture for the headquarters of Nestlé in Vevey, Switzerland ; Gaul ( 1993 ), a monumental sculpture commissioned by the Institute d ' Art Contemporain, Nîmes, France ; a two-part memorial for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D. C., in 1993 ; and large-scale Berlin panels for the Deutscher Bundestag, Berlin, in 1998.

After visiting his ancestral home in Suzhou, Pei created a design based on the simple but nuanced techniques of traditional residential Chinese buildings.

The message is in Pei ' an, addressed to Shimbo ( the name of the Pei ' an god connected with Sandow ) and signed by Belion ( Shimbo's traditional enemy in Pei ' an mythology ).

There is also the Fragrant Hill Hotel, designed by I. M. Pei, which is more traditional than most of his designs.