CityLab Daily: How I. M. Pei Shaped the Modern City

No stone unturned: I. M. Pei died Thursday at the age of 102 after a long career as an architect of great renown. Most known for his glass pyramid addition to the Louvre Museum in Paris, the China-born, U.S.-trained architect took on commissions that helped reshape cities around the world through the second half of the 20th century.

Since the 1960s, he helped define the ambitions of American cities through various cultural, academic, and civic commissions on high-profile sites including the JFK Library (Boston), the East Building of the National Gallery of Art (D.C.), Everson Museum (Syracuse), and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Cleveland). Although mostly earning praise over the years, Pei’s firm was nearly ruined in the 1970s by the fallout from faulty glass panels used for the facade of the Hancock Tower in Boston. And then there was the Pei Plan for Oklahoma City, adopted in 1965, which demolished various treasured buildings and nearly 40 percent of downtown for a new “City of Tomorrow” that was hardly realized before local resentment pushed officials to move on and make a new plan in the ’90s.