INTERVIEW WITH JOSEPH FUJIKAWA Interviewed by Betty J. Blum Compiled under the auspices of the Chicago Architects Oral History Project The Ernest R. Graham Study Center for Architectural Drawings Department of Architecture The Art Institute of Chicago Copyright © 1995 Revised Edition © 2003 The Art Institute of Chicago This manuscript is hereby made available to the public for research purposes only. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publication, are reserved to the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries of The Art Institute of Chicago. No part of this manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of The Art Institute of Chicago. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface iv Outline of Topics vii Oral History 1 Selected References 31 Curriculum Vitæ 33 Index of Names and Buildings 35 iii PREFACE Since its inception in 1981, the Department of Architecture at The Art Institute of Chicago has engaged in presenting to the public and the profession diverse aspects of the history and process of architecture, with a special concentration on Chicago. The department has produced bold, innovative exhibitions, generated important scholarly publications, and sponsored public programming of major importance, while concurrently increasing its collection of holdings of architectural drawings and documentation. From the beginning, its purpose has been to raise the level of awareness, understanding, and appreciation of the built environment to an ever-widening audience. In the same spirit of breaking new ground, an idea emerged from the department’s advisory committee in 1983 to conduct an oral history project on Chicago architects. Until that time, oral testimony had not been used frequently as a method of documentation in the field of architecture. Innumerable questions were raised: was the method of gathering information about the architect from the architect himself a reliable one? Although a vast amount of unrecorded information was known to older architects, would they be willing to share it? Would their stories have lasting research value to future scholars, or would they be disposable trivia? Was video-recording a viable option? How much would such a project cost? With a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, we began a feasibility study to answer these questions. Our study focused on older personalities who had first-hand knowledge of the people and events of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s—decades that have had little attention in the literature of Chicago’s architectural history. For nine months in 1983, I contacted more than one hundred architects in Chicago and suburbs and visited most of them. I learned not only that they were ready, willing, and more than able to tell their stories, they were also impatient to do so. Many thought such a program was long overdue. For each visit, I was armed with a brief biographical sketch of the architect and a tape- recorder with which I recorded our brief exchange. At that time, we considered these visits to be only a prelude to a more comprehensive, in-depth interview. Regretfully, this vision did not materialize because some narrators later became incapacitated or died before full iv funding was secured. Slowly, however, we did begin an oral history project and now, more than twelve years later, our oral history collection has grown into a rich source of research data that is unique among oral history programs worldwide. With the completion of these interviews, our collection of memoirists now includes more than fifty and the collection continues to grow each year. This oral history text is available for study in the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries at The Art Institute of Chicago. This interview is one of several dozen short interviews that were recorded in 1983 during the feasibility study. Surely each one of these narrators could have spoken in greater depth and at greater length; each one deserves a full-scale oral history. Unfortunately, thirteen of these twenty architects have already died, which makes these short interviews especially valuable. These interviews were selected for transcription, despite their brevity, because each narrator brings to light significant and diverse aspects of the practice of architecture in Chicago. We were fortunate to receive an additional grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts to process this group of interviews. Thanks go to each interviewee and those families that provided releases for the recordings to be made public documents. Thanks also go to Joan Cameron of TapeWriter for her usual diligence and care in transcribing; to Robert V. Sharp of the Publications Department and Maureen A. Lasko of the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries at The Art Institute of Chicago for the helpful suggestions that shaped the final form of this document; and, once again, to the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts for its continuing support, with special thanks to Carter Manny, its former director. Personally, I would like to thank John Zukowsky, Curator of Architecture at The Art Institute of Chicago, for his courage in taking a chance on me as an interviewer in 1983, when I was a complete novice in the craft of interviewing. Since then, I have learned the art and the craft and, more importantly, I have learned that each architect’s story has its own very interesting and unique configuration, often filled with wonderful surprises. Each one reveals another essential strand in the dense and interlocking web of Chicago’s architectural history. Betty J. Blum 1995 v The above preface remains unchanged since it was written. However the intervening years have brought change. Electronic communication has vastly increased in importance as a method by which information is transmitted. We are grateful to the Barker Trust for support to scan, reformat, and make this entire text available on the Art Institute of Chicago’s website, www.artic.edu. We are grateful for this opportunity to make Joseph Fujikawa's oral history accessible for research worldwide. Annemarie van Roessel deserves our thanks for her skillful handling of the process. Betty J. Blum Director, CAOHP November 2003 vi OUTLINE OF TOPICS Architecture Study at IIT with Mies van der Rohe 1 Study at Illinois Institute of Technology and Study at University of Southern California 7 Working in Mies's Office 9 Promontory Apartments, Chicago 11 Federal Center, Chicago 13 More About Mies and His Office 17 Office of Mies van der Rohe and Beyond 23 vii Joseph Fujikawa Blum: Today is September 13, 1983, and I am with Joseph Fujikawa in his office in Chicago. Why did you select architecture as a career? Fujikawa: Well, I was always interested in working with my hands and making things—you know, what everyone goes through with model airplanes and this sort of thing. It was always a thrill to create something, to think of making something and then actually making it. It seems kind of a natural chain of events to go into architecture, because I said, "Well, someday I'd like to design and build my own house." That was my ambition. Blum: Did you do that? Fujikawa: Yes. It took me a while, but I did it about fifteen years ago; built a house, finally. What a traumatic experience! Blum: Do you think it's easier to build a skyscraper than an individual home? Fujikawa: Exactly. Blum: Did you come to Chicago to go to school? Fujikawa: Yes. I was born in Los Angeles. Actually, I was attending the University of Southern California. I was a junior there, and then came the Second World war. Being of Japanese ancestry, along with a hundred thousand other people, we were removed from the West Coast, so, I went into a relocation center—that was a euphemism—in Colorado, and I was there for about three months until I was admitted to IIT [Illinois Institute of Technology]. I applied here because I'd heard that Mies was director, and I knew Mies only by 1 reputation and from a book that Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock wrote called The International Style. Blum: That was in the early thirties, and it was based on an exhibition at MoMA. Fujikawa: That was probably the first book on modern architecture that I was aware of. It was basically a collection of what Johnson and Hitchcock thought were buildings reflecting a new direction in architecture—you know, mainly from the twenties on. The Barcelona Pavilion of Mies's was in there. That really impressed me, and so I remembered the name Mies van der Rohe. When I heard that Mies was in Chicago, I wrote him, and he graciously said, "Sure, come," and I was admitted. This was during the war, so the school was very small. I think there were six or seven of us in the senior class. Blum: Can you recall who else was in school with you? Fujikawa: I know Ed Olencki, who is currently teaching in Ann Arbor, was one. Then there was another man named Leonard Claridge. He's knocked around quite a bit. I know he went out to California for a while to work for Neutra, and he taught in Colorado as well as at IIT. Then I'm not quite sure. I've lost track of him since then. And then, I think, Marshall Rissman, who I think is dead now. There was another boy from southern Illinois, Arthur Bastian. I'm sorry, I can't remember who the other one was. Blum: Are you the only architect from that class who is today practicing in Chicago? Fujikawa: I guess that's quite possible, yes. As I said, Marshall passed away. I bumped into Arthur Bastian on the bus one day, and I think he's still here in Chicago.