Minoru Yamasaki
“The Man behind the Twin Towers”
American architect Minoru Yamasaki was born in 1912, the son of Japanese immigrants.
Growing up in Seattle Washington, Minoru was inspired to become an architect after his uncle
Koken Ito, designer of the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, paid his family a visit. After graduating from
high school Minoru enrolled in college at the University of Washington. Paying for college was
a difficulty for the impoverished Yamasaki. He spent five straight summers laboring in salmon
canneries in Alaska. This factory work was at times dehumanizing and rough, but it made him
even more resolute and driven. Yamasaki would graduate with a degree in architecture from
the University of Washington in 1934.
With a college degree and a mere $40 in hand Minoru Yamasaki set out for New York City. He
went to New York City for two reasons. First, job prospects were bleak for architects in
Washington and secondly, the Pacific Northwest was a very discriminatory place for the son of
Japanese immigrants. Minoru received his first big break in architecture when he volunteered
his services to the firm Githens and Keally to help them win a design contest for the new
Oregon State Capitol. Once the firm won this competition, Yamasaki was hired as a designer.
He would stay at this firm for just two years before becoming a designer, draftsman, and job
captain with Shreve, Lamb, and Harmon. Coinciding with this new position, Yamasaki became a
part-time instructor at Columbia University specializing in architectural design.
Yamasaki moved from New York City to Detroit, Michigan in 1945 to take the position of chief
architectural designer for the firm of Smith, Hinchman, and Grylls. After acclimating himself to
this new city and designing buildings in Lansing and Detroit, Yamasaki entered into a new
partnership with Joseph Leinweber and George Hellmuth. It was in this new firm that Yamasaki
rose to national prominence by designing the Pruitt-Igoe Housing Project in 1952 in St. Louis
and the Lambert Field St. Louis Terminal Building (1956). “Praised for its originality, the
Terminal Building received a first honor award in 1956 from the American Institute of
Architects.”
This success though had huge physical costs for Minoru. Job stress and public pressure
hospitalized him with high blood pressure and ulcers. Minoru had spread himself too thin. He
decided that things in his life had to change. Yamasaki decided to focus on smaller projects and
even to travel the world. He traveled throughout Japan, India, the Middle East and Europe.
While in Japan, Minoru would experience a creative epiphany recognizing the “ancient tools of
sunlight, surface and surprise.
“The Japanese impact brought to full flower his ideas about delight and serenity
in architecture and about the need, as he described it, to consider what happens to a human
being as he goes from space to space, and to provide the delight of change and surprise for
him.”
The material that would allow Yamasaki to bring delight to the general public would be precast
concrete. Minoru Yamasaki’s search for this new contemporary ornamental style would be
expressed through his design of the Macgregor Memorial Community Center (1958) at Wayne
State University in Detroit and the Reynolds Metals Company Building in Southfield Michigan
(1959). These two buildings would receive first honor awards (1959, 1960) from the American
Institute of Architects. The Macgregor Conference Center’s pool of water, integral to the design,
and its podium, environment-controlling wall, and skylighted central hall are features that are
common to many buildings designed by Yamasaki.
Following the construction of these two award winning buildings Yamasaki started his own firm
in suburban Detroit called Yamasaki and associates. By 1963, Yamasaki was ready to build his
first skyscraper in downtown Detroit, called the Michigan Consolidated Gas Company Building.
Yamasaki was trying to achieve “aesthetic thinness” and verticality through its construction.
Minoru saw the distinctive narrow windows as offering splendid views of the river and the city,
while giving a sense of security and relieving the feeling of acrophobia that many people
experience in high-rise buildings.
From this point on, Yamasaki became identified as one of the top architects of skyscrapers. His
tallest and most famous hi-rise was the World Trade Center in New York City (1972-1973).
After receiving this commission from the Port Authority of New York City, Yamasaki drew up a
five building complex that surrounded a five acre plaza. What’s most remembered were the
two 110 story towers that dominate the plaza. At 1,362 feet (415 meters) and 1,368 feet (417
meters) the “Twin Towers” spent approximately one year as the world’s tallest buildings.
Yamasaki planned the five acre plaza to promote street level activity, and designed a lace-like
exterior wall to reduce the scale, and modulate light and shade. Like the Michigan
Consolidated Gas Company Building, the World Trade Center has chamfered square floors that
rise without interruption from the ground to the sky. Not everyone was enamored with these
monoliths. One critic called them “cycloptic”, while another disliked their overbearing size.
“The tight columns of the curtain wall seem opaque; any intricacy is overwhelmed by the
exterior walls’ uninterrupted run to their full height.” Yamasaki would dismiss his many critics
and would predict that these buildings would be revered in the future as integral elements of
the Manhattan skyline. He would be right until September 11, 2001 when terrorists flying jet
planes would crash into the Twin Towers quickly causing their collapse and destruction. Minoru
Yamasaki would pass away in 1986 having created eighty-five major commissions around the
world and becoming the first Japanese-American architect to preside over an internationally
active and influential building design firm.
1. Why did Minoru Yamasaki move to New York City after he received his college degree?
2. How did Minoru Yamasaki’s visit to Japan change his viewpoint on Architecture?
3. What makes the Macgregor Conference Center such a special building?
4. What things both positive and negative did people say about the World Trade Center’s
Twin Tower skyscrapers?