Pei Cobb Freed & Partners
Pei Cobb Freed & Partners is an American architectural firm based in New York City, founded in 1955 by I. M. Pei and other associates. The firm has received numerous awards for its work.
The US Bank Tower, for many years the tallest building in the United States west of the Mississippi River, designed by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners
Ieoh Ming Pei was a Chinese-American architect. Born in Guangzhou into a Chinese family, Pei drew inspiration at an early age from the garden villas at Suzhou, the traditional retreat of the scholar-gentry to which his family belonged. In 1935, he moved to the United States and enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania's architecture school, but quickly transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Unhappy with the focus on Beaux-Arts architecture at both schools, he spent his free time researching emerging architects, especially Le Corbusier.
Pei in 1980
As a child, Pei found the Shizilin Garden in Suzhou to be "an ideal playground".
Pei describes the architecture of Shanghai's Bund waterfront area (seen here in a 2004 photo) as "very much a colonial past".
Pei's first project (1949): 131 Ponce de Leon Avenue, Atlanta