Before he designed the rebellious and energetic Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, with its angled facade and elevated cylindrical performance space overlooking Lake Erie in Cleveland; before he attracted acclaim and controversy for famously modernizing the entrance of Paris’ historic Louvre Museum in 1989 with a 71-foot-tall glass and stainless steel pyramid that one critic described at the time as a “gigantic, ruinous gadget” (but which has since become a beloved French icon); even before he first came into mainstream prominence by reimagining the East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. and Boston’s John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum as dynamic, trapezoidal monuments in the late 1970s, Chinese-American architect Ieoh Ming Pei—known internationally by just five letters: I. M. Pei—was in Hawai‘i, working on what would become one of the most internationally significant projects in the United States.

The year was 1960. On the heels of Hawai‘i statehood one year prior, Hawai‘i’s Territorial Delegate to Congress John A. Burns and then-Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson had both introduced bills calling for the creation of a new international university in the newly minted Aloha State. This proposed facility “for the intellectuals of the East and the West” was intended to foster cooperative study, research and training for the purposes of promoting improved relations and understanding between the United States and countries in Asia and the Pacific.

“At the [c]enter itself, people will engage actively in what is perhaps the most precious freedom of all—the freedom to pursue ideas,” Burns told a Senate Subcommittee in 1959. “One real strength of the [c]enter is that it is not a one-sided institute of propaganda. People will meet there on humanly equal terms and will engage in genuine dialogue from which each will learn and to which each will contribute.”

A cross-cultural exchange with students from throughout the United States and Asia may seem commonplace today. But during the early 1960s—a time when many Americans had experienced more than two decades of conflict in the Pacific, including the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese Navy, the Korean War and what was then an escalating conflict with North Vietnam—the idea of “East meets West” was a revolutionary one.

The implications of such a gathering place were not lost on Pei, who was himself an immigrant from China with a dual identity. Born into a wealthy family as the son of a banker in Guangzhou, China, Pei remained deeply attached to his birthplace throughout his life.

“I feel that China is in my blood no matter where I live,” he wrote in a 2004 article for the People’s Daily. “China is my root.” Pei’s designs for the Bank of China Tower in 1982, with its triangular and diamond-shaped structure made to resemble prosperous bamboo shoots, was designed in homage to his father, who previously managed the bank’s headquarters there. At the same time, Pei always considered himself a Western-trained architect. He earned his degrees at MIT and Harvard, and went on to design an array of notable urban landmarks in the United States, including the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, the JPMorgan Chase Tower in Houston, Baltimore’s World Trade Center, Baltimore’s World Trade Center, and the Four Seasons Hotel New York in Manhattan. Pei was working on the new L’Enfant Plaza in Washington D.C. when he was ultimately tapped to design five out of the first six of the East-West Center’s new buildings in 1960. (Edmondson Hall on McCar- thy Mall was later designed by architect Albin Kubala.) “Much of my work until [the East-West Center] was mostly here in the United States and also a bit in Europe. So [the] East-West Center gave me the opportunity to return; to go back home, so to speak. Home again,” said I. M. Pei, in a 50th anniversary commemoration of the Center in 2010.

With Pei on board, things were moving fast. The architect designed nearly the entire East-West Center in less than a year and the new school broke ground the following spring, in May 1961. By September 1962, three of Pei’s buildings were completed and opened: Lincoln Hall, a four-story residence hall for faculty and senior scholars; Hale Kuahine, a four-story women’s dormitory with space for 120 students; and the 800-seat Kennedy Theatre. The remaining two buildings—Hale Mānoa, a 13-story men’s dormitory capable of housing 480 students; and Jefferson Hall, a four-story conference center, administrative office, and cafeteria— were opened the following September.

True to the mission of the East-West Center, Pei’s designs imbued a sense of balance to the new school. With deeply cantilevered roof beams and grand archway columns, Jefferson Hall (which today is the Imin International Conference Center) has the formal monumentality of any of the world’s most impressive exhibition halls—but its looming overhead deck is countered by the spacious walkways on the lower level that overlooks a lush Japanese garden, complete with a koi stream, stone pagoda, and coral shower tree originally planted by then-Prince Akihito and Princess Michiko of Japan. Directly across East-West Road, Kennedy Theatre may appear to stand in opposition to Jefferson Hall. But the two buildings are united by common aesthetics, mirroring each other’s cornice lines, overhead beams, and column treatments.

The facade of Hale Mānoa features staggered rows of solid panels and spaces that correspond to the building’s interior plan of floors that alternate between sleeping quarters and common areas, such as kitchens, bathrooms and storage. Pei drew inspiration from Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation, a mid-century modernist housing complex concept that first emerged in France and Germany. Like Le Corbusier’s La Cité Radieuse in Marseille, Hale Mānoa’s design includes open-air kitchens and communal terraces, perfectly suited to receive the breezes coming down from Mānoa and the Ko‘olau.

Whether through glass pyramids or across spacious concrete structures, openness seemed to suit the late Pei, both in architecture and life: “I. M. Pei was not only a great architect but an engaging and approachable human being,” remembers Dr. William Chapman, interim dean of UH Mānoa’s School of Architecture. “I attended the American Academy of Arts and Letters ceremony in 1979, when Pei won the Gold Medal for Architecture. We talked for a good 15 minutes, standing over a model of one of his buildings. I was a mere graduate student, he was a significant architect, but he had time to talk and ask me about my own career plans. ... We are lucky to have not one but an entire complex of buildings at the East-West Center and Kennedy Theatre.”

“At the time, it was a rather novel idea to once again bring East and West closer together. Today, it seems like so natural. ... It was very much needed to bring the two together,” recalled Pei in 2010. “I was happy to be able to play a small role in that.”