Pei, Ieoh Ming : Pei, I(eoh) M(ing) (1917 - ) (Born April 26, 1917, Guangzhou, China) Chinese-born U.S. architect. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1935 and studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. After working for the architectural firm of Webb & Knapp, he formed his own partnership in 1955. Early in his career he created the Mesa Laboratory building for the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colo. (1968), which mimics the broken silhouettes of the surrounding peaks. His innovative East Building of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1978), was hailed as one of his finest achievements. Other works include Boston's John Hancock Tower (1973), Beijing's Fragrant Hill Hotel (1982), a controversial glass pyramid for a courtyard at the Louvre Museum, Paris (1989), and the Suzhou Museum (2006) in China. Pei's designs represent an elaboration on the rectangular forms and irregular silhouettes of the International Style but with a uniquely skillful arrangement of geometric shapes and a dramatic use of varied materials, spaces, and surfaces; in his Miho Museum (1997) in Shiga, Japan, for example, he achieved a harmony between the building, much of it underground, and its mountain environment. In 1983 Pei received the Pritzker Architecture Prize
Gruen, Victor : Victor Gruen , 1903-80, American architect, often called the inventor of the modern shopping mall, b. Vienna as Viktor David Grünbaum. In Vienna, he studied at the Technological Institute and Academy of Fine Arts, worked for Peter Behrens , and opened (1933) his own architectural firm. He fled Nazi Germany's annexation of Austria, moving (1938) to the United States and becoming a citizen (1943). His innovative design for the Lederer leather-goods shop (1939) on New York's Fifth Avenue was the first of several early retail projects. In 1951 he founded Victor Gruen Associates, bringing together an outstanding group of architects, engineers, and planners. The firm proved to be a major force in the design of renovated center cities and in the creation of the large shopping malls that came to dominate suburban commerce and entertainment. As an urban planner, Gruen was instrumental in formulating master plans for such cities as Fort Worth, Tex. (1955), Kalamazoo, Mich. (1958), Cincinnati, Ohio (1963), Fresno, Calif. (1965), and Tehran (1963-67). Among his most notable shopping-complex projects are the Northland Center (1954) in suburban Detroit; the Southdale Center (1956) in Edina, Minn., outside Minneapolis, America's first enclosed mall; the Cherry Hill Mall (1961), in the New Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia; and Midtown Plaza (1962), Rochester, N.Y.
Bibliography: See his Shopping Towns USA: The Planning of Shopping Centers (with L. Smith, 1960), Heart of Our Cities: Dianosis and Cure (1964), and Centers for the Urban Environment: Survival of the Cities (1973); biography by M. J. Hardwick (2004).
