Pei’s controversial 1989 work is now seen as an icon of the French capital

The modernist architect I. M. Pei, who was once pilloried for plonking a glass pyramid into the courtyard of the Louvre, turns 100 on Wednesday, 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% of Parisians said to be against the project at one point.

“I received many angry glances in the streets of Paris,” Mr. 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.” And the French daily Le Figaro, which had led the campaign against the “atrocious” design, celebrated its genius with a supplement on the 10th anniversary of its opening.

Mr. Pei’s masterstroke was to link the three wings of the world’s most visited museum with vast underground galleries bathed in light from his glass and steel pyramid. It served as the museum’s main entrance, making its subterranean concourse bright even on the most overcast of days.

Not obvious choice

Mr. Pei, who grew up in Hong Kong and Shanghai before studying at Harvard with the Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, was not the most obvious choice for the job, having never worked on a historic building before.

But the then French president Francois Mitterrand was so impressed with his modernist extension to the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC that he insisted he was the man for the Louvre.