About this talk

Running time: 31 minutes

One of the foremost architects of his generation, Ieoh Ming Pei's reputation rests on buildings such as the John Hancock Tower in Boston, the Mile High Centre in Denver, the Louvre in Paris and the Bank of China in Hong Kong.

While he kept faith with the founding principles of the International Style, he applied them to buildings that were all his own. In this talk, part of a series conducted by the architectural publisher John Peter from the 1950s onward, Pei discusses the enduring influence of Frank Lloyd Wright (see The World's Greatest Architect), the crucial distinction between having a style and designing with style in mind, the limits to technology's influence on architecture, French hostility towards his Louvre redevelopment, and the difference between the European and American traditions: "they built Rolls Royce, we built Ford".