Architect I. M. Pei: The master of light is dead

I. M. Pei, the son of a Chinese noble family, was the artist among architects. His masterpiece, the glass pyramid in the Louvre in Paris is. Now Pei has died at the age of 102 years.

Georg Schwarte, ARD Studio New York

architecture as a constant Variation on a theme. Of His Subject. I. M. Pei, the sounds in Bach's music, the architects of the beauty that he has created himself again and again. Buildings as works of art. Architecture as the quintessence of things. Because the master of the planes of the Diagonals, say, only the essence überdauere everything. The Rest is fashion.

fashion. He, born in China the son of a Chinese noble family is as an architect, never the fashion eaten. Architecture, says the man who gave the world the pyramid of the Louvre Museum, the German, the extension of the German Historical Museum in Berlin, the architecture should never be fashionable, you need a long breath:

"I use prefer, not Label. It is architecture. There is nothing like modern, post-modern, deconstructive architecture. All of this comes and goes. What remains is the architecture of the time."

But the world needs to learn its architecture to understand. As he presented in 1984, the glass pyramid for the new entrance of the Louvre as a draft, cries the world. Mutilating dead bodies. Desecration of the surrounding Renaissance buildings. As the pyramid is, however, silence the critics. Enter. I. M. Pei, the one you gave, because of its initials in the U.S., the top name in “First Person Singular“, had created the glass pyramids is a masterpiece.

He had not a bundle of theories. So no one should look at its architecture, he says.

Pei's Design of the glass pyramid in the Louvre in Paris, called first, many critics on the Plan. The silent but fast.

The artists among the architects

Only those who as an architect, staying true to yourself, develop a manuscript, the show itself. His shows anywhere in the world. He, the Gropius learned the admired Schinkel, as he crafted the Delicate and Intimate as clearly as the Absolute, he, Pei, built the presidential library for John F. Kennedy, the East wing of the national gallery in Washington. And besides many other buildings of the 86 tons of glass design at the Louvre. For him, the most important building of his life. Spectacular Architecture. For an artist, the spectacle is so strange, almost embarrassing. Pei, the so-slyly smiling, polite man, says, as an architect, You need to try at the end, always implement what You want:

"It is to insist on many species. Polite and less Polite, in order to convince the client. You have to know what You want and can't give up."

Ieoh Ming Pei, a master of light. In 1983, he received the Pritzker architecture prize. Good Architecture? It sounds so simple.

You need to reduce the Complex to the core. And then implement it. The master of the Diagonals, where only his horn-rimmed glasses circle seem to be around, has built this quintessence of a lifetime as works of art. Now has died in New York working artists among the architects at the age of 102.

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Japanese Isozaki Pritzker prize, 05.03.2019 news Atlas |USA |New York

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