Suzhou Museum: I.M. Pei Masterpiece

Oct 2021

The Suzhou Museum is one of the latest completed works of the famous architect I.M. Pei. The museum is located in the heart of his hometown, Suzhou in China. I.M. Pei combines his modernist style with the local traditional building of Suzhou.

Although the museum continues many geometric and visual elements like the squares, rectangles and pyramids in Pei’s design, the design still draws on many traditional Suzhou buildings, using white stucco walls and dark gray clay tiles. The ups and downs of geometric figures and the common tones in Suzhou form a unique mixture, representing the architect's ambition to reimagine Suzhou and Chinese traditional elements in the context of contemporary architecture.

In Chinese traditional and modernist architectural design, there are many elements that are combined, for example, geometric shapes and flow of lines. The gray lines on the exterior wall of the building are emphasized and highlighted. These lines define the shape of the building, just like traditional calligraphy. Combine the two styles into a new language and order, a modern and forward-looking design.

The architectural design of the central hall includes a series of dynamic geometric folds, starting from the octagonal shape, transitioning from triangles, rhombuses and rectangles in the middle, gradually rising to the top of the roof, echoing the folded roofs in traditional buildings, and at the same time introducing Plenty of space to allow a lot of natural light to enter the interior of the building.

The water pond in the center of the courtyard is also characterized by contemporary-style garden rock decoration, which echoes the landscape of the Humble Administrator's Garden beside it. The layering of these rocks forms a set of outlines and silhouettes on the white background wall, like a Chinese traditional splash ink landscape painting drawn on a piece of white paper.