I.M. Pei, acclaimed architect who designed the Louvre’s pyramid, dead at 102

I.M. Pei, who was revered as one of the last great modernist architects, has died, Pei Cobb Freed & Partners confirmed. He was 102 years old. Although he worked mostly in the United States, Pei will always be remembered for a European project: his redevelopment of the Louvre Museum in Paris in the 1980s. He gave us the glass and metal pyramid in the main courtyard, along with three smaller pyramids and a vast subterranean addition to the museum entrance. Pei was the first foreign architect to work on the Louvre in its long history, and initially his designs were fiercely opposed. But in the end, the French — and everyone else — were won over. 1/13 Architect I.M. Pei has died at the age of 102. Here, he’s seen in 1985 with an architectural model of the Louvre Pyramid in Paris. Click through the gallery to see his life and work in pictures. Credit: PASCAL GEORGE/AFP/Getty Images At its opening in 1989, the New York Times declared the pyramid “a technological tour de force: it is exquisitely detailed, light and nearly transparent.” “The pyramid does not so much alter the Louvre as hover gently beside it, coexisting as if it came from another dimension,” wrote architecture critic Paul Goldberger.