Home
Topics
Authors
:
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z

I. M. Pei Quotes

American - Architect | April 26, 1917 -

The first decent building I did with my own practice was a chapel in Taiwan.

Practice Building My Own First Own

Contemporary architects tend to impose modernity on something. There is a certain concern for history, but it's not very deep.

History Deep Something Modernity

I arrived in the U.S.A. in 1935, to San Francisco. I got the boat from China, and I didn't even speak English. I could read a little, perhaps write a little, but that was all. It was a 17-day journey, and I learnt to speak English from the stewards.

Journey Speak Boat Write China Got

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

Mother Architecture Me Think Artist

I've never left China. My family's been there for 600 years. But my architecture is not consciously Chinese in any sense. I'm a western architect.

Family Architecture Never China Left

I came, I studied architecture in America, so my technical background's completely western. But my seventeen years, the formative years of one's life, and I can't say that the Chineseness in me is not there.

Life Architecture Me America Say

I have a great love for nature. That must have started somewhere down back home, I think, because my family own one of the better known gardens in Soochow, so I played there, and I lived there, and so I must have absorbed something there. So I continue to have a great interest in nature.

Family Nature Love Home Great Think

One thing I learn - I've been in practice now for half a century or more, and the most important ingredient for an architect to do a good building is to have a good client. I think a client counts for as much as fifty per cent.

Good Practice Building Think Learn

Even a beautiful piece of work can be overshadowed, destroyed, by something else.

Work Beautiful Something Destroyed

I'd been going to the Louvre since 1951. I thought I knew Paris and the French, but I didn't really. You know how easy it is to make friends when you are traveling. People are curious about you, you are curious about them. But you never really make friends that way. After the Louvre, I discovered that I have friends now because I have enemies.

Curious People Thought Friends You

First Prev page 12

Copyright © 2024 QuotesDict I. M. Pei quotes