Hale Mānoa (East-West Center)

Congress set up the East-West Center in 1960 to build ties across Asia and the Pacific, and Pei was commissioned to design a group of buildings for it on the University of Hawaii's Mānoa campus. Hale Mānoa, Jefferson Hall and Kennedy Theatre, built in 1962 and 1963, are the three he worked on. They grew out of a partnership: the New York firm I. M. Pei & Associates handled most of the design, and McAuliffe Young & Associates, based in Honolulu, administered the project. In 1963 the three buildings won a National Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects. Hale Mānoa, completed in 1963, was designed to house 480 students.

The residence is a rectangular thirteen-storey tower of reinforced concrete cast in place, with scored concrete walls. Pei used here the waffle-like facade of several of his buildings from the same years, such as the University Plaza towers in New York: window surrounds of precast concrete, fitted with ventilating sills and sun shades, hold sliding windows of glass and aluminium. At ground level each end wall opens through a single large arch, and the lobby and lounges are enclosed in floor-to-ceiling glass and aluminium.

In 1999 the students lived in groups of ten, in two-level units that each had a shared lounge and bathroom; the single and double bedrooms were reached by an inside stair from the glass-walled lounge, set above or below them. The lifts stopped only at the lounge levels. The lounges are set back from the building's edge and ringed by open spaces with open-grill concrete railings, so that from a distance the tower seems to have an open floor every third level. The architectural photographer Darren Bradley also pointed out, in 2015, open-air communal kitchens that he considers ahead of their time.

The tower can be seen from outside, on the Mānoa campus, along East-West Road.