Taiwan s Most Beautiful Church Designed by I.M. Pei

# Walking in Taiwan#In 2014, the Getty Foundation of the United States selected 10 of the world’s most beautiful 20th century buildings, one of which was the chapel designed by Master Pei at Taiwan’s Donghai University.
Donghai University is located in Taichung. In 1949, the government of Taiwan, China, set up 345 acres (140 hectares) by the United States Christian University Joint Board of Trustees. I. M. Pei attended a Christian school in Shanghai and participated in the board’s project to build a university in Shanghai under the guidance of architect Walter Gropius. It can be said that he has some connections with the board of directors. Therefore, the board decided to entrust I. M. Pei with the overall design. Zickendoft Babel accepted his first independent project. The important building of Lutheran Church in the university is to commemorate the founder of Time and Life magazine, the father of publishing, and Henry Lutheran III, a missionary, who was repaired with funds from the Lutheran Foundation.
I. M. Pei planned the slope, built the main building church next to the only big tree on the bare hill, and deviated it from the central axis to emphasize its own openness and simplicity. I. M. Pei invested a lot of personal emotions in this project. He decided to use his experience of blending Chinese and Western culture to combine the expressive spires of the Beijing Palace Museum, the Jinwa roof of ancient Chinese temples and the Gothic Cathedral in the West. At the same time, he also learned from the bending shell design of the master Felix Candela.
The whole church consists of four curved shell-shaped plates, slightly overlapping the front and back, acting as walls and roofs at the same time. The building base is an irregular hexagon. The church is 65 feet (20 meters) tall, without any supporting pillars, and natural light enters through the glass crevices where two pairs of shells overlap. The roof also has narrow gaps, according to the Oriental tradition, forming an infinite extension of the "line of day" feeling. The radian of each shell can keep itself upright without any additional support, but considering the factors of typhoon and earthquake in Taiwan, it is especially necessary to connect several shell pieces with an imperceptible bow, which makes the whole building a solid pyramid. This design is new in the use of four splitting surface sculptural combination into an open space.
It took seven years to build the Lusiyi Church. It was a work completed by Pei at the beginning of his career at the age of 39. It is also an example of the gradual maturity of his works.