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....

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