After his retirement, I.M. Pei continued to work as a design consultant with his old firm. The studio was involved in such projects as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland (1995) and the German Historical Museum in Berlin (2003). Alongside these occasional commissions, he embarked on meaningful collaborations on projects with his sons: The dearest and most special of them was the Suzhou Museum (2006), which was built within a short walking distance from Pei’s ancestral home in the historical heart of Suzhou. Pei’s sons, in fact, have been running their own company for 30 years. Chien Chung “Didi” Pei (b. 1946, Boston) and his younger brother Li Chung “Sandi” Pei (b. 1949, New York) are the founders of PEI Architects in Manhattan. They founded their practice, formerly Pei Partnership, in 1992, two years after their father retired from a full-time practice from his office, Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, where the brothers had worked since graduating from Harvard GSD, with Didi contributing to the design of the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (1978), the Grand Louvre in Paris (1993), and Fragrant Hill Hotel in Beijing (1982), the first modern project in China designed by a western architect. In his own right, Sandi played a leading role in such projects as the MIT Arts + Media Technologies Facilities in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1982) and, more prominently, the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong (1990). READ MORE