Minoru Yamasaki

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Lore & Background

Minoru Yamasaki was born on December 1, 1912, in Seattle, Washington, the son of John Tsunejiro Yamasaki and Hana Yamasaki, issei Japanese immigrants. He graduated from Garfield Senior High School in Seattle and enrolled in the University of Washington program in architecture in 1929, graduating with a Bachelor of Architecture in 1934. During college, he was strongly encouraged by faculty member Lionel Pries and earned money working at a salmon cannery in Alaska for five summers, earning $50 a month plus 25 cents an hour in overtime. To escape anti-Japanese prejudice, he moved to Manhattan in 1934 with $40 and no job prospects. He wrapped dishes for an importing company until he found work as a draftsman and engineer. He graduated from New York University with a master's degree in architecture and joined the firm Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, designers of the Empire State Building. The firm helped Yamasaki avoid internment as a Japanese-American during World War II, and he himself sheltered his parents in New York City. After leaving Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, he worked briefly for Harrison & Abramovitz and Raymond Loewy. During his time with Harrison & Abramovitz, Yamasaki, a gifted watercolorist, also taught drawing at Columbia University. In 1945, Yamasaki moved to Detroit, securing a position with Smith, Hinchman & Grylls as chief designer. He left in 1949 and started his own partnership, working from Birmingham and Troy, Michigan. One of the first projects he designed at his own firm was Ruhl's Bakery at 7 Mile Road and Monica Street in Detroit. His first major project was the Pruitt–Igoe public housing project in St. Louis in 1955. Despite his love of traditional Japanese design, the buildings were stark, modernist concrete structures constrained by a tight budget. The housing project experienced so many problems that it was demolished starting in 1972, less than twenty years after completion. Its destruction was considered by architectural historian Charles Jencks to be the symbolic end of modernist architecture. In the 1950s, Yamasaki was commissioned by the Reynolds Company to design an aluminum-wrapped building in Southfield, Michigan. In 1955, he designed the terminal at Lambert–St. Louis International Airport, leading to his 1959 commission to design the Dhahran International Airport in Saudi Arabia. His first widely-acclaimed design was the Pacific Science Center, with its iconic lacy and airy decorative arches, constructed for the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. The building raised his public profile so much that he was featured on the cover of Time magazine. Yamasaki was a member of the Pennsylvania Avenue Commission, created in 1961, but resigned after disagreements. The campus for the University of Regina was designed in tandem with his plan for Wascana Centre; the original campus design was approved in 1962, and he was awarded contracts to design the first three buildings: the Classroom Building, the Laboratory Building, and the Dr. John Archer Library, built between 1963 and 1967. He designed two notable synagogues: North Shore Congregation Israel in Glencoe, Illinois (1964), and Temple Beth El in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (1973). He designed buildings on college campuses including Carleton College and Wayne State University, where the McGregor Memorial Conference Center incorporated motifs like an elevated base, repeated geometric patterns, white marble tiles and columns, a skylight, and a plaza with reflecting pools. In 1962, Yamasaki and his firm were commissioned to design his most well-known project: the World Trade Center, with Emery Roth & Sons as associate architects. The towers featured the "Skylobby" elevator system, which saved approximately 70% of the space required for traditional shafts. The elevators were the fastest at the time, running at 1,700 feet per minute. To anchor the towers to bedrock about 80 feet below soft soil, a slurry wall was used—digging narrow trenches about 3 feet wide, filling them with a clay-and-water slurry, then pumping in concrete. This created a watertight concrete bathtub. For wind-bracing, Yamasaki and structural engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan employed an exterior truss system. The first tower was finished in 1970.

Reader's Guide

Minoru Yamasaki's significance lies in his role as a leading architect of the mid-20th century, particularly as a master of New Formalism alongside Edward Durell Stone. His most famous work, the World Trade Center, introduced engineering innovations like the Skylobby elevator system, which saved about 70% of space compared to traditional shafts, and the slurry wall, which anchored the towers to bedrock while preventing flooding from New York Harbor. The project also used an exterior truss system for wind-bracing, developed with structural engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan. Yamasaki's career included notable projects such as the Pacific Science Center for the 1962 Seattle World's Fair, which earned him a cover of Time magazine, and the Pruitt–Igoe housing project in St. Louis (1955), whose demolition starting in 1972 was considered by architectural historian Charles Jencks to be the symbolic end of modernist architecture. He designed the terminal at Lambert–St. Louis International Airport (1955) and the Dhahran International Airport in Saudi Arabia (1959), the latter featured on the one riyal bank note. On university campuses, he designed buildings at Wayne State University, including the McGregor Memorial Conference Center, which used an elevated base, repeated geometric patterns, white marble, a skylight, and a plaza with reflecting pools. He also designed two synagogues: North Shore Congregation Israel in Glencoe, Illinois (1964), and Temple Beth El in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (1973). Despite the eventual demolition of Pruitt–Igoe, Yamasaki's legacy endures through the World Trade Center's design and his influence on large-scale urban architecture.

Did You Know?

• Yamasaki earned money for his tuition by working at a salmon cannery in Alaska for five summers, earning $50 a month plus 25 cents an hour in overtime.
• He moved to Manhattan in 1934 with only $40 and no job prospects, initially wrapping dishes for an importing company.
• The firm Shreve, Lamb & Harmon helped Yamasaki avoid internment as a Japanese-American during World War II, and he sheltered his parents in New York City.
• The Dhahran International Airport terminal building he designed was featured on the one riyal bank note in Saudi Arabia.
• Yamasaki's narrow-windowed style arose from his own personal fear of heights.