When Ieoh Ming Pei, one of the most lauded architects of the past 50 years, was first asked to renovate The Louvre in Paris, his reaction was unequivocal: ‘You cannot touch the Louvre, it’s sacrilege.’
His solution was both revolutionary and simple — he built a glass pyramid in the centre of the forecourt that concealed a subterranean entrance way. Scorned at the time as a modernist intrusion on the 16th- and 17th-century building, the Pyramid is today celebrated as a statement of bold, high-tech futurism, and indicative of an architect who made his reputation by creating buildings at the intersection of art, history and culture.