I M Pei, whose modern designs and high-profile projects made him one of the best-known and most prolific architects of the 20th century, has died, the New York Times reported on Thursday.
He was 102. Pei, whose portfolio included Qatar's Museum of Islamic Art, a controversial renovation of Paris' Louvre Museum and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, died overnight, his son Chien Chung Pei told the newspaper.
Ieoh Ming Pei, the son of a prominent banker in China, left his homeland in 1935, moving to the United States and studying architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University.
After teaching and working for the US government, he went to work for a New York developer in 1948 and started his own firm in 1955.
The museums, municipal buildings, hotels, schools and other structures that Pei built around the world showed precision geometry and an abstract quality with a reverence for light.
They were composed of stone, steel and glass and, as with the Louvre, he often worked glass pyramids into his projects.
