User:Generalissima/Minoru Yamasaki

Minoru Yamasaki (山崎實, Yamasaki Minoru, December 1, 1912 – February 6, 1986) was a Japanese-American architect.

Early life and education

On December 1, 1912, Minoru Yamasaki was born a Nisei in Seattle, Washington, to Tsunejiro Yamasaki and Hana Yamasaki née Ito. Both his parents were recent immigrants to the United States from Japan. His mother Hana had immigrated alongside her mother and siblings to live with her grandfather, who owned a tailoring business in Seattle. Yamasaki's father, seeking work outside of his family's farming estate in rural Toyama Prefecture, accepted an invitation from his brother and settled in Seattle shortly after 1900.^[1]^[2]

Yamasaki at age 17, from the 1929 Garfield High School yearbook

During his childhood, Yamasaki lived with his family in low-income tenements in Yesler Hill, Seattle, some lacking hot water or an in-unit bathroom. The family commonly faced racial discrimination, His father worked odd-jobs to supplement the family's income, at times assisted by Yamasaki himself. He did well in elementary and high school, once winning a citywide mathematics competition; however, he was unable to participate in extracurricular activities due to his mother's insistence that he study piano. Although he previously had little interest in art or architecture, he became fascinated with the field after meeting his maternal uncle Koken Ito, a recent graduate of architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. He graduated from Garfield High School in 1929, and enrolled in the University of Washington following his father's opposition to him traveling to Japan for work.^[3]^[4]

University of Washington and cannery work

Inspired by his uncle's architecture sketches, Yamasaki entered the University of Washington's fledgling department of architecture, following a curriculum largely based on material from the École des Beaux-Arts and the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design. Although prolific in structural engineering courses, he struggled with drawing and design, and considered switching majors to engineering during his second year at the university. His professor Lionel Pries strongly encouraged him to continue, stating that he had great promise as an architect and showing him poor-quality sketches he made in college.^[5] Other notable instructors during his time at the University of Washington included Lancelot Gowen and Harlan Thomas.^[6]

Without financial support from his father due to the Great Depression, Yamasaki spent most summers working at fish canneries in southeastern Alaska alongside other Asian-American workers, where he and the rest of the mainly Nisei workforce faced low wages, long hours and poor living conditions. He was paid between seventeen and twenty-five cents per hour ($3.10 to 4.56 per hour in 2024) over the course of a 126-hour workweek during the peak of the canning season. Provisions for workers at the canneries was poor quality, mainly consisting of rice and salmon. In his memoirs, Yamasaki reported high rates of beriberi among cannery workers, and theft of food from the manager's storehouse out of desperation.^[5]^[7]

In one incident, while feeding fish into the "Iron Chink" (a machine designed to gut and process fish), Yamasaki was harassed by a supervisor to work faster. He responded by swinging his steel-tipped pole at the supervisor, missing him but leading him to fall backwards into a bin of the rotting fish. Due to the factory's staffing issues, the supervisor was unable to fire him, but took away his summer bonus. His loss of control during the incident startled Yamasaki; his experiences working in the Alaskan canneries left a deep impact on him, leading him to later recount in his memoris that "the repugnance I felt for the way we employees were exploited convinced me that, under such oppression, I could not live with any degree of personal pride."^[8]^[7]

The University of Washington's architecture department gave out a yearly scholarship for the students with the highest grades, allowing for study at the École des Beaux-Arts and travel across Europe. This was abruptly halted in 1933, when Yamasaki qualified. His father, seeing this as an act of racial discrimination, took him to stay with relatives in Japan for the summer; Yamasaki reported greatly enjoying the vacation, but seeing little inspiration in Japanese architecture.^[9]^[10]

New York University

Yamasaki's work with New York architect Francis Keally allowed him to gain an early foothold in the industry.

Yamasaki received his Bachelor of Architecture from the university in 1934. He moved to New York City and enrolled in a graduated architecture program at New York University (NYU). Unable to find architectural work due to the poor economy, he took up a job wrapping Noritake dinnerware for a Japanese import firm. He excelled in a watercolor painting course at the university and accepted an offer to teach the course at the university for the 1935-1936 school year.^[11]^[6] He was asked to help finish drawings for Francis Keally and Trowbridge & Livingston's submission for the design of the Oregon State Capitol. Yamasaki's work on the project greatly impressed Keally, whose entry was chosen out of over a hundred submissions. Frustrated by a lack of full-time employment, he dropped out of NYU in 1936, and briefly returned to his previous dish-wrapping position.^[6]

Career in New York

In 1937, Keally offered Yamasaki a position as a drafter at Githens & Keally during preparations for the 1939 New York World's Fair. Yamasaki would spend the next year with the partnership, working on a number of projects, including the Brooklyn Central Library. Biographer Dale Gyure described Keally as Yamasaki's "first true architectural mentor", noting that he became a reference for Yamasaki later in his career.^[11]

Yamasaki supervised the design of the now-demolished Royce Memorial Chapel at USNTS Sampson.

In early 1938, Yamasaki left Keally's firm to work at Shreve, Lamb & Harmon. There, he participated in the firm's design of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company's expansive Bronx housing project, Parkchester. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States' entry into World War II, Yamasaki joined the firm's design team for the Sampson Naval Training Station, a large project requiring designs for several hundred buildings. Yamasaki was tasked to supervise a small team of subordinates to design temporary wooden buildings for the station, including a barracks, garage, and the Royce Memorial Chapel.^[11]

Widespread anti-Japanese discrimination spread across the United States following the outbreak of war against Japan. His father was fired the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Fearful at his parents' slated incarceration in the internment camps, Yamasaki moved his parents in with him in New York. This led to cramped conditions at his apartment in Yorkville, as his parents joined himself, his younger brother, and his newlywed wife, pianist Teruko Hirashiki. During the war, Yamasaki became a political activist against racial discrimination, serving as the Vice-Chairman of the Japanese American Committee for Democracy's arts council alongside Isamu Noguchi. Yamasaki met with New York congressman John J. Delaney, attempting to negotiate his support for a resettlement hostel in Brooklyn.^[12]

Yamasaki was frequently subject to racial harassment during the war. He was grabbed on a subway by a man demanding to know whether he was Chinese or Japanese; he refused to answer and said he was an American citizen, leaving the assailant to run off the train at the next stop. He attempted to rent an apartment at a building he had helped design. The manager rejected him stating that his "children might get into fights with the other children", even though he did not yet have children.^[13]

Although work for the Sampson Naval Station occupied much of his time, he took up additional jobs as a renderer for private practice and as a night school architecture instructor at Columbia University. While teaching at Columbia, he became close friends with George Nelson, an architectural instructor and associate editor of the magazine Architectural Forum; the two began collaborating on a number of small projects. They signed their work "Nelson & Yamasaki, Architects". When Yamasaki cautioned that clients may be unwilling to hire a designer with a Japanese surname, Nelson responded that "[if a client] doesn't want you, he won't have me".^[14]^[15] Nelson made several attempts to form a formal business partnership over the following years, but was unable to convince him.^[15]

Following the completion of his work at Sampson, Yamasaki's hours were cut, and he was asked to take a two-week unpaid break from the company. Instead, he left Shreve, Lamb & Harmon to accept a position at Harrison, Fouilhoux & Abramovitz. He came to admire the work of his employer Wallace Harrison, with more experimental and modernist designs than his previous employer. Yamasaki would later cite the firm as a major influence on his career. He designed a concept for an contemporary apartment conversion which was published in the November 1944 edition of Architectural Forum, likely due to Nelson's work with the periodical. At around this time, Yamasaki left the firm to work with industrial designer Raymond Loewy at Nelson's suggestion. He came to dislike employment with Loewy, stating that he felt that the "idea of designing a skin around a machine whose form had already been decided" was unfulfilling, although he enjoyed designing a personal residence for Loewy during his time with the company.^[16]^[15]

Career in Michigan

In November 1945, after accepting a position with a considerably higher salary from the Michigan architecture firm Smith, Hinchman & Grylls (SH&G), Yamasaki moved with his family to Detroit, Michigan. He was unable to find good housing, and initially settled for tract housing. With his new salary, he attempted to move to a more desirable suburb, such as Birmingham or Bloomfield Hills, but was prevented due to redlining practices. In 1947, he chose to settle into an early-19th century farmhouse in Troy which he renovated and dubbed "Old Willow". Soon after moving to Detroit, Yamasaki made friends with regionally prominent architects such as Eero Saarinen and Alexander Girard, designing a house in Grosse Pointe Farms with the latter.^[17]^[18]^[19]

The original Detroit Federal Reserve Building, with Yamasaki's addition behind it

Yamasaki was appointed the chief designer of SH&G, a firm which had been extremely prominent in Detroit during the construction boom of the 1920s and sought to regain its former standing in the postwar era. His first major project at the firm was a design for a large government office park near the state capitol in Lansing. This project was ultimately never built, but received favorable reviews from industry press such as Architectural Forum. He also designed a Bauhaus-influenced office for Michigan Bell in Birmingham; this modernist proposal, adjacent to the English Gothic city hall, angered residents of the suburb. He later recalled that "fourteen of them marched down to the main telephone office in Detroit to protest the hot dog stand architecture."^[20]

While at SH&G, Yamasaki was also commissioned to design an expansion to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Detroit Branch Building. In contrast to the initial 1920s neoclassical structure, he designed a nine-story office tower with a steel and glass façade influenced by the International Style. The annex was set back from the street to allow for the creation of a small plaza. Unlike the typical practice of placing marble over a thick brick backing, Yamasaki designed an exterior façade which placed a 1.5 in (4 cm) sheet of marble on a 2 in (5 cm) layer of foam glass insulation, allowing for over 1,000 sq ft (90 m²) more of floor space across the entire building. The initial structure was gutted, with its entrances sealed off and its roof converted into a terrace for employees, accessible through the employee lounges of the annex. The office, completed in 1951, was the first building with a mainly glass façade in downtown Detroit and the first new construction in the neighborhood since the 1930s. It strongly influenced future developments in the vicinity.^[21]^[22]

Hellmuth, Yamasaki & Leinweber

Yamasaki grew uncomfortable with the strict organizational structure of SH&G, which prevented him from directly meeting with clients, and excluded him from working on their requested revisons. In mid-1949, colleagues George F. Hellmuth and Joseph Leinweber, Yamasaki left the company and formed a new architecture firm. Leinweber took an administrative role, while Yamasaki became the partnership's chief designer. As the firm took up contracts in the St. Louis area, it was soon split into two separate offices with separate names: the branch in Detroit operated as Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth (LYH), while the branch in St. Louis was titled Hellmuth, Yamasaki & Leinweber (HYL).^[23]^[24]

Cochran Gardens

Hellmuth's previous work in the St. Louis area connected the fledgling firm with Joseph Darst, a real estate developer recently elected as the city's mayor. The city had cleared its expansive slums in favor of major housing developments during the early 1940s, but World War II had delayed the construction of the third of three planned developments, titled John J. Cochran Gardens. The Housing Act of 1949, passed shortly after Darst took office, provided the funding to restart the Cochran Gardens project. Inspired by the high-rise housing projects in New York City, Darst greatly expanded the scale of the development, and contracted Hellmuth, Yamasaki & Leinweber to design the housing complex.^[25]

Yamasaki's design for the gardens included a thousand housing units spread across twelve rectangular apartment blocks, each thirteen stories high, featuring concrete frames and brick facing. They were connected by large areas of green space and an asymmetrical road system; the development took up a total of 18 acres (7.3 ha). Each apartment building narrowed at its midpoint, where a central lobby connected to the rest of the building via stairways and elevators. Each housing unit featured either two or three bedrooms with a combined living-dining area connected to a large balcony, serving both to provide access to fresh air and to break up the monotonous façades. Writing in the Architectural Record, Yamasaki stated that he sought to take a "design approach" rather than a statistical approach to the complex, writing that in order to "eliminate the stigma often attached to such projects [...] it was imperative to avoid a feeling of regimentation."^[26]

Local citizen's groups disapproved of the high population density the towers would bring. In response, Yamasaki lowered and varied their heights, with four buildings at twelve-stories, two at seven-stories, and six at six-stories. The final design housed around 3,000 people in 704 units. The project was considered a major success; St. Louis chapter of the American Institute of Architects presented it with its gold medal for 1953, and it recieved a mention at the Architectural League of New York's annual exhibition that year.^[26]

Pruitt–Igoe

Aerial view of the Pruitt–Igoe complex, c. 1970

In January 1950, while the Cochran Gardens were under construction, the Public Housing Administration authorized a new, larger housing development. A 74 acres (30 ha) site was divided into 3 parcels, initially dubbed M-4, M-5, and M-6; these were later renamed to Pruitt, Igoe, and Vaughn respectively, with the project collectively dubbed Pruitt–Igoe.^[α] Yamasaki, as part of HYL, was commissioned to design the complex. His initial design featured a mix of low and high-rise structures, with six-story towers in the Pruitt section and alternating two and three story buildings in Igoe and Vaughn. Three-to-five bedroom units were placed in a series of two-story rowhouses.^[28]

St. Louis Lambert International Airport

Yamasaki's interior for the St. Louis Lambert International Airport

Connections through Hellmuth's father, George W. Hellmuth, allowed the firm to receive a prominent commission for the terminal of St. Louis Lambert International Airport in Missouri. Yamasaki's design for the terminal incorporated a series of high-arched concrete domes reminiscent of egg shells. This design was highly praised and drew widespread attention to the firm.^[23]

Michigan work and New Formalism

World Trade Center

Yamasaki at his home in Troy, 1967

Later life and death

Personal life

He married pianist Teruko Hirashiki on December 5, 1941.^[29]

Notes

^ For aviator Wendell O. Pruitt, Congressman William L. Igoe, and lawyer George L. Vaughn.^[27]

References

^ Gyure 2017, p. 1.
^ Yamasaki 1979, p. 9.
^ Gyure 2017, p. 2.
^ Yamasaki 1979, pp. 9–11.
^ ^a ^b Gyure 2017, p. 3.
^ ^a ^b ^c PCAD.
^ ^a ^b Yamasaki 1979, pp. 13–17.
^ Gallagher 2015, pp. 3–4.
^ Gyure 2017, pp. 3–4.
^ Yamasaki 1979, pp. 17–18.
^ ^a ^b ^c Gyure 2017, p. 5.
^ Gyure 2017, p. 7.
^ Gallagher 2015, p. 7.
^ Gyure 2017, pp. 7–8.
^ ^a ^b ^c Yamasaki 1979, pp. 21–22.
^ Gyure 2017, pp. 9–10.
^ Yamasaki 1979, p. 22.
^ Gyure 2017, pp. 10–11.
^ Gallagher 2015, p. 13.
^ Gallagher 2015, p. 11.
^ Gallagher 2015, pp. 12–13.
^ Gyure 2017, pp. 13–16.
^ ^a ^b Gallagher 2015, pp. 13–15.
^ Gyure 2017, p. 18.
^ Gyure 2017, pp. 19–20.
^ ^a ^b Gyure 2017, pp. 20–22, 267.
^ Gyure 2017, p. 24.
^ Gyure 2017, pp. 24–28.
^ Yamasaki 1979, p. 20.

Works cited

Flowers, Benjamin (2009). Skyscraper: The Politics and Power of Building New York City in the Twentieth Century. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 9780812202601. JSTOR j.ctt3fj409.
Gallagher, John (2015). Yamasaki in Detroit: A Search for Serenity. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. ISBN 9780814341209.
Gyure, Dale Allen (2017). Minoru Yamasaki: Humanist Architecture for a Modernist World. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300229868.
Michelson, Alan (2005–2024). "Minoru Yamasaki". Pacific Coast Architecture Database. University of Washington. Retrieved August 19, 2024.
Nakatani, Sanae (2017). Nisei Designs: Cultural Producers Negotiating Identities During the Cold War (PDF) (PhD thesis). University of Hawaiʻi.
Saloman, David L. (2002). "Divided Responsibilities: Minoru Yamasaki, Architectural Authorship, and the World Trade Center". Grey Room. 7: 86–95. JSTOR 1262589.
Winter-Tamaki, Bert (2000). "Minoru Yamasaki: Contradictions of Scale in the Career of the Nisei Architect of the World's Largest Building". Amerasia Journal. 26 (3): 162–188. doi:10.17953/amer.26.3.4k1377213463365j.
Yamasaki, Minoru (1979). A Life in Architecture. Tokyo: John Weatherhill, Inc. ISBN 9780834801363.