Louvre Pyramid

The Louvre Pyramid is a large glass and metal pyramid, surrounded by three smaller pyramids, in the main courtyard  of the Louvre Palace  in Paris. The large pyramid serves as the main entrance to the Louvre Museum. Completed in 1989, it has become a landmark of the city of Paris.

 

Commissioned by the President of France François Mitterrand in

1984, it was designed by the architect I. M. Pei, who is

responsible for the design of the Miho Museum in Japan,

theMasterCard Corporate Office Building in Purchase, New York,

the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland, 

Place Ville Marie in Montreal, and the National Gallery of Art in 

Washington, D.C. among others. The structure, which was

constructed entirely with glass segments, reaches a height

of 21.6 metres (about 71 feet); its square base has sides of 35

metres (115 ft). It consists of 603 rhombus-shaped and

70 triangular glass segments.

The pyramid structure was engineered by

Nicolet Chartrand Knoll Ltd. of Montreal and Rice Francis Ritchie  

of Paris.

The pyramid and the underground lobby beneath it were created

because of a series of problems with the Louvre's original main entrance, which could no longer handle the enormous number of visitors on an everyday basis. Visitors entering through the pyramid descend into the spacious lobby then re-ascend into the main Louvre buildings.

For design historian Mark Pimlott, "I.M. Pei’s plan distributes people effectively from the central concourse to myriad destinations within its vast subterranean network... the architectonic framework evokes, at gigantic scale, an ancient atrium of a Pompeiian villa; the treatment of the opening above, with its tracery of engineered castings and cables, evokes the atria of corporate office buildings; the busy movement of people from all directions suggests the concourses of rail termini or international airports."

Several other museums have duplicated this concept, most notably the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. The Dolphin Centre, featuring a similar pyramid, was opened in April 1982, by Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester. The construction work on the pyramid base and underground lobby was carried out by the Vinci construction company.