Word: pei
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...felt cramped on its 115-acre Cambridge campus. Something had to give, and what gave was M.I.T.'s low-lying skyline. The next addition to the campus, to be ready by 1962, will be the 20-story, $5,000,000 Earth Sciences* Center, designed by Alumnus Ieoh Ming Pei...
...original idea was only for a nine-story building. But Pei convinced M.I.T. that a high-rise building-M.I.T. frowns at the word skyscraper-would not only help solve M.I.T.'s space problems but would also provide a focus for the other low roofs. The new structure would act like a flagpole in a public square, drawing the surrounding laboratories and dormitories into an organized composition. Since scientists tend to believe that change is the only tradition to operate in, Pei made his case...
Like an Airplane. Pei's laboratory is even more daring than it looks. It has no interior columns but is supported by reinforced concrete piers on either side of the building. The piers also hold all the elevators and mechanical equipment. Each floor is hung like a bridge span between the piers. By doing away with interior columns, Pei gives the building open space which can later be converted into either a library or an auditorium. The windows are ovals. Explains Pei: "Since the outer walls are trusses, I had to obey the stress lines developed in the truss...
...figure of 60 million as its U.S. auto census, shows how Americans use and enjoy their cars, and how architects try to solve the problems of resulting congestion. The display includes the maze of Los Angeles expressways, multiparking garages and motels. It shows the plazas of Rockefeller Center. I.M. Pei's Denver Mile-High Center, and Mies van der Rohe's Manhattan Seagram Building. It chronicles the mass move to the suburbs by displaying a variety of housing, ranging from Rafael Soriano's garden apartments in Los Angeles to the up-to-date housing of Levittown...
...bicycles ("I am 4 ft. 10 in. tall, and I've been waiting for a suitably sized bicycle for years"), and leaky fountain pens exported to Russia ("The consequences could be bad''). Occasionally, someone will attack a minor partyman. Item: an 'official named Kuo Pei-cheng was accused of keeping a 14-year-old girl up until midnight "so that he could help her with her own private five-year plan...