I.M. Pei

I.M. Pei’s glass pyramid at the Louvre (1989) overcame massive public controversy to become one of Paris’s most iconic structures, drawing over 10 million visitors yearly. The Chinese-American architect, awarded the Pritzker Prize in 1983, blended modernism with historical context more gracefully than #8 Norman Foster. His East Building of the National Gallery (1978) in Washington, D.C., uses a trapezoidal site to create a triangular atrium flooded with natural light, housing a 30-foot mobile by Calder. The Bank of China Tower (1990) in Hong Kong rises 367 meters on a structural exoskeleton, a feat of geometry that mirrors the bamboo plant’s strength.