Minoru Yamasaki

• Born: December 1, 1912
• Birthplace: Seattle, Washington
• Died: February 6, 1986
• Place of death: Detroit, Michigan

Architect

One of the first Asian American architects to gain national recognition, Yamasaki designed a number of award-winning buildings that featured a blend of modernism and classical details and emphasized functionality. Though his works are numerous and can be found throughout the United States and elsewhere, he is best known for designing the World Trade Center complex in New York City.

Born: December 1, 1912; Seattle, Washington

Died: February 7, 1986; Detroit, Michigan

Full name: Minoru Yamasaki (mih-NOH-rew yah-mah-SAH-kee)

Areas of achievement: Architecture and design

Early Life

Minoru Yamasaki was born in Seattle, Washington, the son of Japanese immigrants. Inspired by an uncle who worked as an architect, Yamasaki decided to enroll at the University of Washington to study architecture. He worked for Alaskan fish canneries during the summers to earn money for his tuition. Upon graduating in 1934, Yamasaki moved to New York and enrolled in a master’s degree program at New York University. For the next ten years, he worked as a draftsman and designer for several major architectural and design firms. In December 1941, he married Teruko Hirashiki, with whom he had three children. They would later divorce and then remarry.

Life’s Work

Yamasaki began a rapid rise to national prominence in 1945, when he was hired by the Detroit firm Smith, Hinchman & Grylls as chief of design. Four years later, he left the firm to become a partner in Hellmuth, Yamasaki & Leinweber, which established offices in Detroit and St. Louis. In St. Louis, Yamasaki built the Pruitt-Igoe housing project and the main terminal at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, demonstrating his talents as a disciple of modernist architecture. In 1959, he established his own firm, Yamasaki Associates, in Detroit. The following year, he was named a fellow of the American Institute of Architects and was honored by the University of Washington with the Alumnus Summa Laude Dignatus Award.

A serious illness in 1954 required Yamasaki to undergo a long convalescence, which included a sojourn abroad. Seeing the architecture of Europe and Asia prompted Yamasaki to rebel against the sterility and formulaic qualities of much modern architecture by introducing embellishments into his design. Yamasaki became a proponent of new formalism, a style that retains some of the rigid elements of the International Style while adding touches reminiscent of classical design. Yamasaki professed to imbue his work with three qualities: delight, serenity, and surprise.

Over the course of his four-decade career, Yamasaki designed numerous buildings in the United States and abroad, including the US consulate in Kobe, Japan; the Federal Science Pavilion, designed for the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle; and the Michigan Consolidated Gas building in Detroit. He designed buildings on the campuses of Wayne State University, Oberlin College, Princeton University, and Harvard University, as well as the IBM Building in Seattle and various buildings in locales such as Saudi Arabia and Iran.

In 1962, Port Authority officials selected Yamasaki to complete his most prominent commission yet: the World Trade Center in New York City. Modeling his work on Mies van der Rohe’s famous twin high-rise apartment complex in Chicago and his own IBM Building in Seattle, Yamasaki created the massive Twin Towers, which were the tallest buildings in the world at the time of their construction. The towers were surrounded by a series of smaller buildings on the sixteen-acre site. Groundbreaking took place in 1966, and Yamasaki worked closely with engineers and construction personnel to ensure that the building met his clients’ needs. The complex was completed in 1976.

Though many in the architectural community did not consider the World Trade Center a triumph of art and design, the Twin Towers became quite popular with the public and were soon recognized as a symbol of the United States’ global dominance. Yamasaki took on numerous commissions in the 1970s and early 1980s, but none of his later works matched the scale or the renown of his earlier project.

Significance

A controversial architect, Yamasaki rebelled against the stark, functionalist designs of modernist architecture, reintroducing classic embellishments to public buildings. He developed a strong personal philosophy regarding the function of architecture, insisting that buildings should be designed to accommodate the people using them. His buildings would continue to inspire later generations of architects for decades after his death.

Bibliography

Mogilevich, Mariana. “Big Bad Buildings: The Vanishing Legacy of Minoru Yamasaki.” Next American City 3 (2003): 24–27. Print. A retrospective of Yamasaki’s contributions to American architecture, stressing his failures.

Van Hoffman, Alexander. “Why They Built Pruitt-Igoe.” From Tenements to the Taylor Homes: In Search of an Urban Housing Policy in Twentieth-Century America. Ed. John F. Bauman, Roger Biles, and Kristin M. Szylvian. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 2000. 180–205. Print. A detailed account of Yamasaki’s unsuccessful public-housing project in St. Louis.

Winther-Tamaki, Bert. “Minoru Yamasaki: Contradictions of Scale in the Career of the Nisei Architect of the World’s Largest

Building.” Amerasia Journal 26.3 (2000/2001): 162–89. Print. A scholarly assessment of Yamasaki’s career designing public buildings and the impact of his Asian American heritage.

Yamasaki, Minoru. A Life in Architecture. New York: Weatherhill, 1979. Print. Autobiography providing Yamasaki’s perspective on his career and personal life.