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I.M. Pei and the National Gallery

The purpose of this research is to examine the east wing of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., designed by architect I.M. Pei in the late 1970s. The plan of the research will be to set forth a description of the life and career of Pei and of the National Gallery itself, and then to discuss reasons for the new addition, how the commission to design the east wing of the structure came about, and details of the project itself, from an architectural standpoint. As well, reference will be made to the relationship between the "container," or structure, and the "contents," or works of art that it houses.

To discuss a principal work of Ieoh Ming Pei, usually referred to as I.M. Pei, it is useful to place that work in the context of life. Pei was born into a financier's family in 1917 in Canton, China, and stayed in the United States from 1935 onward, when he came to the country to study architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his degree in 1939, worked as an architect until 1942, when he joined the National Defense Research Committee at Princeton. After World War II, Pei taught at Harvard's Graduate School of Design for three years, returning to private-sector architecture in 1948 at a major New York real estate company owned by William Zeckendorf Sr. that was involved in city planning and commercial and residential real estate development. As an architectural director for the real estate firm, Pei participated in major commercial and residential development designs in Denver, New York, and Montreal (Funk & Wagnalls, 1978). In 1955, Zeckendorf began to face financial problems, and Pei was among those on the architectural staff who left to form their own enterprises (Wiseman, 1992). Pei formed his own architectural design firm, focusing principally on commercial designs, including a major mall design at L'Enfant Plaza in Washington, D.C. in the 1960s (Funk & Wagnalls, 1978). Wiseman says that ...

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I.M. Pei and the National Gallery. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 05:20, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1681463.html