I. M. Pei: Architect of Time, Place, and Purpose (review)

The last thing one expects in a book about an architect is an opening more reminiscent of high adventure than career biography. There's a child born in wartorn China in the Year of the Snake, with its prophecy of problem-solving and overcoming obstacles; a family at odds with the government; years of exile in Hong Kong; an emotionally distant father; a spiritually aware mother who dies young; a hard-hearted stepmother who turns her stepchildren out of the family home. Rubalcaba's compelling backstory of Ieoh Ming Pei's early years deftly sets the stage for his professional accomplishments as a housing designer turned starchitect in his adopted country, the United States. The main body of the text is organized around seven important projects in the U.S. and abroad which not only showcase Pei's working methodology but also demonstrate how the aesthetic sensibility developed as a youth in China permeates his concern with the relationship between structure and site, and how retreat into silence is the first step toward inspiration. The central chapters range in mood and tone from the frustration of site location for the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library to the comedy-of-errors construction of Fragrant Hill Hotel in outrageously egalitarian, post-Revolutionary China to the rare incident of Pei's political outrage at the Tiananmen Square massacre that followed hot on the heels of his Bank of China project for a newly independent Hong Kong. Exceptionally attractive bookmaking enhances the story of Pei's career: stylish font with wide leading on generous white space; delicately framed color photographs, plans, elevations, and sketches harmonize with the text layout; bibliography, timeline, notes, resources, major Pei deigns, and index enjoy care in design seldom lavished on end matter. This is an essential addition to the 720s and a first choice for adolescents imagining a future in architecture or engineering.