Quotes by I. M. Pei

The essence of architecture is form and space, and light is the essential element to the key to architectural design, probably more important than anything. Technology and materials are secondary.

Architecture must not do violence to space or its neighbors.

In northern architecture - the cathedrals of Europe and all the little churches - the details, the carving of stone, become necessary because the light is not there to help you very much. You have to enrich surfaces. The desert reduces form to its simplest nature. There is no need for gargoyles or flying buttresses in the desert.

It is good to learn from the ancients. Im a bit of an ancient myself. They had a lot of time to think about architecture and landscape.

A lasting architecture has to have roots.

To me, form doesnt always follow function. Form has a life of its own, and at times, it may be the motivating force in design. When youre dealing with form as a sculptor, you feel that you are quite free in attempting to mould and shape things you want to do, but in architecture, its much more difficult because it has to have a function.

Modern architecture needed to be part of an evolutionary, not a revolutionary, process.

I think the artistic side of architecture was natural to me. My mother was an artist and a poet.

Ive never left China. My familys been there for 600 years. But my architecture is not consciously Chinese in any sense. Im a western architect.

I came, I studied architecture in America, so my technical backgrounds completely western. But my seventeen years, the formative years of ones life, and I cant say that the Chineseness in me is not there.

The Louvre for me is a wonderful experience. Because it continues; it didnt get cut off. It was actually a continuous involvement all the way, and a lot of people have come and gone, come and gone; but Im still here.