The Chinese-American designer had endured a roasting from critics before the giant glass structure opened in 1989, with up to 90 per cent of Parisians said to disapprove of the project at one point.
PARIS: The modernist architect I M Pei, who was once pilloried for plonking a glass pyramid into the courtyard of the Louvre, turns 100 Wednesday (Apr 26) with his controversial creation now an icon of the French capital.
The Chinese-American designer endured a roasting from critics before the giant glass structure opened in 1989, with up to 90 per cent of Parisians said to be against the project at one point.
"I received many angry glances in the streets of Paris," Pei later said, confessing that "after the Louvre I thought no project would be too difficult."
Yet in the end even that stern critic of modernist "carbuncles", Britain's Prince Charles, pronounced it "marvellous".
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