I. M. Pei was a Chinese-American architect born in Guangzhou in 1917 who drew early inspiration from the garden villas of Suzhou. After studying in the United States, he worked at Harvard's design school and then ran his own firm from 1955, designing buildings such as the Mesa Laboratory in Colorado and the East Building of the National Gallery of Art. In the early 1980s he designed a glass-and-steel pyramid for the Louvre in Paris, which drew fierce criticism before becoming a famous entrance. He won the Pritzker Prize in 1983, often called the Nobel Prize of architecture.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.