Design: Pei's Pyramid Perplexes Paris

The architect plans to put an expanded Louvre under glass

The Paris newspaper Le Monde indignantly compared it to "an annex to Disneyland." A consortium of French environmental groups said it would be suitable only if it were built in the middle of a desert. Worse yet, the General Inspector of National Palaces lamented that the architect, however distinguished, was a foreigner, alors.

The cause of all this furor is a plan by U.S. Architect I.M. Pei to build a 66-ft-high glass pyramid smack in the center of one of the sacred precincts of French culture: the courtyard of the venerable Louvre Museum. The structure, which will be lighted at night, will be surrounded by three smaller pyramids connected by triangular pools and fountains. The whole design in itself resembles a huge frozen fountain. It will be the centerpiece of a comprehensive expansion and reorganization of the Louvre ordered by French President François Mitterrand. No price tag has been put on the project, which is expected to take five years to complete. Mitterrand, an admirer of Pei's East Wing of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., personally selected the 66-year-old, Chinese-born architect for the job; and last week, despite the outcry over the glass pyramid, he officially approved Pei's plan.

Built over a period of eight centuries, the Louvre is an imposing palace but, notwithstanding its fabulous art collection, an impossible museum. The French call it un théâtre sans coulisses, a theater without a backstage. Some 90% of its space is crammed with exhibits of paintings and sculptures, leaving only 10% for such essentials as storage and offices, to say nothing of research and restoration facilities. For years expansion has been blocked by the fact that one entire wing of the U-shape building has been occupied by the Ministry of Finance, which Mitterrand is now moving to new quarters. The traffic flow of the 3.7 million people who trek through the Louvre every year is chaotic.

Visitors can get in and out at a dozen places, but there is no central entrance, no orientation. Anybody who decides to take a second look at a painting may have to retrace his steps for ten or 15 minutes.

"When President Mitterrand approached me," recalls Pei, "I was not so sure that anything much could or should be done about the Louvre. I certainly did not want to take part in a competition. I asked for three months to think about the problem—not to draw or design anything; to think." Some architects work from bursts of inspiration sketched on the proverbial back of an envelope. Pei arrives at his designs through the meticulous exercise of logical deduction. He concluded that a thorough revamping of the museum was possible without changing any of the existing architecture. The key: the creation of new space underground, a solution that, in various forms, had been urged before by other architects. Pei's plan calls for an extensive, 750,000-sq.-ft. subterranean level, including a grand entrance hall, shops, restaurants, audiovisual theaters, storage spaces and a parking area.