Pei attended St. John’s Middle School as a boy in Shanghai. He was thus contacted in 1954 by its parent organization, the United Board for Christian Colleges, when all of its properties were lost to the war in China, and the United Board relocated to Taiwan. Pei’s Master Plan for newly founded Tunghai University loosely recalls Hua Tung University; each of the schools and administration are organized around individual courtyards along a central spine, with a chapel strategically located off-axis. Given the commitments of Pei’s work with William Zeckendorf, he transferred responsibility for realizing the campus plan and university buildings to C.K. Chang and C.K. Chen, two young architects he recruited in New York for the job. Pei went on to design Luce Chapel which, given the simplicity of its program, he felt comfortable doing from afar.
Design Team: I.M. Pei, Design Principal; C.K. Chang, C.K. Chen, Design Architects