With the passing of great modern architects like IM Pei and Kevin Roche, monumental architecture is becoming less relevant for today's society, says Aaron Betsky.

I heard a story a few years ago about the late IM Pei. Architect Sandi Pei, an old family friend, told me his father made a pilgrimage to Taliesin West, where I live and teach, to meet Frank Lloyd Wright.
After driving across the country, he pulled up to Wright's "winter encampment", only to have Mrs Wright's Irish wolfhounds jump all over his car, barking and snarling. He turned around and never met the master.
It seems a fitting image by which to remember IM Pei, somebody who respected tradition and sought to continue it in his own way, but who was modest in both how he did so and in his personality, and stayed away from confrontation. If Wright exuded charisma and indulged in endless experimentation, and if younger architects each worked hard to create their own style while rebelling against their parents, Pei sought to make simple things that yet aspired to his version of architectural mastery.
Pei respected tradition and sought to continue it in his own way
There is more than the loss of an architect here. With Pei's death, the last of the modern monument makers has passed. One after the other, those masters (all male) who updated the notion of designing structures for important institutions, by devising a stripped-down mode, have died.
Pei outlived not only most of his peers but also most of the p...