Swan lake song

American playwright John Guare once said of the ballet: “[It] makes us look at those bodies; it makes us listen to that music; it makes us wonder at the geometry of the way they come together. The way that extraordinary space is controlled and given such emotional force.”

In this month’s ARCHITECT, we’ve explored the building environment in much the same way. Guare’s statement is one of sensory exploration; it reveals a thoughtful and critical way of witnessing, processing and experiencing both dance and dancer. It is with this same thoughtfulness that we’ve approached Doha’s Museum of Islamic Art in our cover story.    

Inspired by the architecture of LeCorbusier, Mies and Gropius, IM Pei has constructed a modern masterpiece—austere in colour and material, understated in scale, restrained in design, perfect in geometry.

In the same way Guare witnesses ballet dancers demonstrating extraordinary control over their environment, so does Pei’s museum, with its raw, simplistic form, control the island on which it’s built. It completely dominates, yet is inherently limited, by the space it occupies.

According to Pei, the final design of the building is the result of an incredibly emotional and profound journey. He travelled across Europe, Africa, India and Asia seeking the essence of Islamic architecture from which to draw inspiration. He left the Great Mosque of Córdoba disappointed. He found frustration in Jama Masjid. Even the Umayyad Great Mosque of Damascus left him wanting more.  

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In what Pei has called “one of the most difficult jobs [he’s] ever undertaken”, the cornerstone of Qatar’s cultural movement was inspired by a simple ablution fountain—and its geometric progression from octagon to square and square to circle—in Cairo’s Mosque of Ibn Tulun.

And, much as Guare is inspired by the form of the dancers, the melody that dictates their movement and the geometry of their interaction, so was Pei inspired by the playfulness with which light and shadow bring to life the patterns and severity of desert architecture. IM Pei’s iteration of this concept is equal parts passion, simplicity, beauty and genius. 

As I write about IM Pei and his achievements in architecture, two things keep popping into my mind. First, a fact.

This month, IM Pei turns 92. While he continues to design for Pei Cobb Freed & Partners and his sons’ Pei Partnership Architects, he is effectively retired. Pei is commonly considered the last master of modernist architecture and the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha is his final masterpiece; his swan song, as it were. It is quite literally the end of an era.

The second thing that I cannot seem to put out of my mind is a very famous exchange in 1920 between a young baseball fan and his superstar idol after a scandal broke and it was announced that the latter would leave the game for good: “Say it ain’t so,” begged the boy. “I’m afraid it is, kid,” replied the slugger. After the thrill of meeting one of my architectural heroes, never before have I felt so much like that little boy.

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