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Crowds around the world flow through the buildings designed by architect I.M. Pei; in Paris, they stream into the Louvre's Pyramid entrance. In Cleveland, they wander through the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. And in Hong Kong, they travel up and down the soaring Bank of China Tower.

Pei's death was confirmed by Thomas Guss, his press contact. He was 102.

His designs were widely praised -- but not always at first. When his large, glass pyramid opened at the entrance to the Louvre in 1988, it was not well-received.

"I would say the first year and a half was really hell," the architect said in a PBS documentary. "I couldn't walk the streets of Paris without people walking looking at me and saying: 

There you go again. What are you doing here? What are you doing to us? What are you doing to our great Louvre?

Two decades passed and, in 2009, NPR's Susan Stamberg 

. Henri Loyrette, the Louvre's director at the time, called it a masterpiece. He said that when you ask visitors why they are at the Louvre, they generally give three answers: for the 

 and for the Pyramid. It was not the first time shock has given way to admiration in architecture.

Pei didn't like labels. He said there's no such thing as modern, post-modern, or deconstructivist architecture. But he was considered a modernist. Back in 1970, he defined his approach in an interview for a documentary on one of his buildings -- the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

"If the problem is a complicated problem, then the building will result just that way," Pei said. "But then after that we have to simplify it. We have to eliminate the inessential."

That is pretty much the definition of modernism in architecture -- eliminate the inessential, leaving clean lines and spare geometric forms. But, he said, his architecture is not 

"There are many other elements that come into play to create a form," said Pei. "Space, which is what architecture really is. You have to have light. ... Light is terribly important."

What are shapes without light? he asked -- and added, "The light of the sun is magical."

Pei was born in Suzhou, China in 1917. He grew up in a house where gardens and airy pavilions merged with the landscape. Pei biographer Carter Wiseman says that the natural world

"Having come from China, where he was exposed to garden architecture, he had a very different concept of time," Wiseman explains. "He was interested in the sculptural properties of rocks. There was an affinity for nature and for history that most Americans do not get, no matter how hard we try."

Pei's father was a banker, his mother an artist. He came to the U.S. as a teenager in 1935, went to MIT and was influenced by the work of pioneering modernists Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Pei's privileged upbringing helped him navigate the alpha male world of architecture and real estate. He was able to schmooze with the powerful, which led to projects like the apartments on Manhattan's Eastside called the 

Pei didn't get everything right. His 1980s design for New York's 

, for instance, is still less-than loved.

 in Beijing, completed in 1982, uses a traditional Chinese design. In 1990, the 

 opened -- and his modern, soaring design instantly became one of the most recognizable skyscrapers in Hong Kong.

Pei inspired younger Chinese architects, like Pritzker Prize-winner Wang Shu; he says Pei "awakened" him. Wang believes Pei figured out a way to bridge East and West, old and new, and he thinks of Pei as a teacher -- someone who came before him, and whose successes and mistakes he learned from.

From the Macau Science Center to the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Pei continued building through 2009. His name, I.M. stands for Ieoh Ming, which roughly means "to make an indelible mark."  

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During his influential career, the Pritzker-winning architect designed everything from schools to skyscrapers. Known for spare, geometric forms, Pei said the goal was to "eliminate the inessential."

I.M. Pei, architect of some of the world's most iconic structures, dies at 102

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