Best known for creating the glass pyramid at the Louvre museum in Paris, Ieoh Ming Pei is a role model to many architects and designers, as he is to David Adjaje (on the honors committee of the Royal Institute of British Architects) who nominated him for the award: 'I remember as a young student first visiting the Louvre in Paris and marvelling at its extraordinary ability to unify and modernise what was a much loved but disparate institution, and beholding its magnificent, gravity defying, glass pyramid,' he said, following the RIBA's decision announced October 6.