When, on May 16, 2019, at the age of 102, the architect IM Pei died, he was—as Paul Goldberger put it— “the quintessential New Yorker.” What makes an architect a quintessential New Yorker? Sure, he had a townhouse on Sutton Place and a weekend house in Katonah. He left the city with scores of towers and the iconic Javits Center. He employed up to 300 architects at his office near Gramercy and had his hundredth birthday party in the Rainbow Room. But that’s not it. Rather, his status as the high-priest of New York architecture culture has to do with a particular—suspect—kind of exceptionalism that defines his preeminence in a profession known for introversion: he was charming.
Cynthia Davidson hinted at this theme in her 2016 blockbuster Log interview with Pei’s long-time business partner, Harry Cobb, who confessed “He [Pei] never had much interest in talking to architects. He was interested in the clients, or, more specifically, the patrons (…) I mean, why chat with Peter Eisenman when you could be chatting with Bunny Mellon?” Cobb went on to say that “He and Eileen [Pei’s wife] were in the world of dinner party A-lists, a world of money, power, and art.” Critic Martin Filler, in his May 24 obituary of Pei for the New York Review of Books, made the point explicit: “Pei’s social skills were so highly developed that few seemed to notice his deficiencies as a designer or his fundamental want of originality.” Filler taps into an established dialectic between social skills and design skills, between charisma and artistry, between industry and academia.
In fact, this scorn and suspicion for social architects is a prejudice rooted in perhaps the most well-known depiction of the profession of architecture, The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. In the novel, the protagonist Roark disdained parties, and the villains, Guy Francon and Peter Keating, were the archetypal charmers and schmoozers. It’s as if the choice is between honest hard work and unwholesome hobnobbing. This a self-flagellating prejudice for designers working in New York. Is talking really so toxic? What is the point of being in the big city if not for the abundance of social encounters, connections, collaborations? Why put up with the subway if you never plan on leaving the drafting board?
“The Quintessential New Yorker” James Coleman