When in 1984 I.M.Pei, then the most sought-after architect in America, presented his plans for a 70-foot glass pyramid in the 18th-century courtyard of the Louvre, the general reaction was outrage. This was an atrocity; it was "an annex to Disneyland". Because Mr Pei was Chinese-American, a foreigner twice over, he clearly had no understanding of the Louvre, or Paris, or France.
1984年，貝聿銘，當時美國最受歡迎的建筑設計師，計劃在18世紀的盧浮宮庭院里建造一座70英尺高的玻璃金字塔，人們普遍的反應是憤怒。這是一場暴行；這是“迪士尼樂園的附屬建筑”。因為貝聿銘是華裔美國人，這是兩個外國人的身份。很明顯，他對盧浮宮、巴黎或法國一無所知。
These remarks did not annoy him. As a man of courtesy and cultivation, with quick enthusiasms and wide, wide smiles, he took them in his stride. But he was surprised. He had been asked to design a new entrance for the museum and, instead of adding on some utilitarian concrete block, had created a great welcoming space: put a swirling staircase underground and capped it with a glow of transparency and light that did not touch, let alone hurt, the old ornamented facades. In short, he had taken his usual care. He had also expressed, once again, his two great passions in architecture.
這些評論沒有激怒他。作為一個有禮貌和教養的人，他熱情高漲，笑容燦爛，從容地接受了他們。但是貝聿銘很驚訝。他受邀為盧浮宮設計一個新的入口，他沒有添加一些實用的混凝土塊，而是創造了一個偉大的歡迎空間：他設計了一個地下的旋轉的樓梯，用透明的燈光覆蓋它，這種設計沒有觸及，更不用說傷害古老的裝飾立面。簡言之，他像往常一樣小心翼翼。而且，他也再一次表達了他對建筑的兩大熱情。
The first, as befitted a true modernist trained at MIT and Harvard, was for simple geometric forms, triangle, circle andsquare. On these he based all his buildings, which included the East Building of the National Gallery in Washington, the KennedyLibrary in Boston, the Museum of Art at Cornell, the Bank of ChinaTower in Hong Kong and the Museum of Islamic Art in Dubai. Slopes, as in rhomboids and trapezoids, delighted him; pyramids pleased him for their perfect stability. And when he dreamed of one in the Louvre—for he always did the dreaming, while associates did the drawing—it fitted exactly, to his mind, with the love of geometry and rationality that he saw everywhere in Paris.
第一，他是接受過麻省理工學院和哈佛大學教育的真正的現代主義者，他喜歡簡單的幾何形狀，三角形，圓形和正方形。他所有的建筑都基于這些幾何形狀，包括華盛頓國家美術館的東樓，波士頓的肯尼迪圖書館，康奈爾大學的藝術博物館、香港的中銀大廈和迪拜的伊斯蘭藝術博物館。斜坡，就像菱形和梯形一樣，使他高興；金字塔因其完美的穩定性而使他開心。貝聿銘夢想著在盧浮宮里建造一個金字塔——因為他總是在做夢，而他的伙伴們則畫畫——這與他在巴黎隨處可見的對幾何學和理性的熱愛完全吻合。
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