inoru Yamasaki embodied the American An engineer at heart, Yamasaki was at his best dream while feeling the sting of endemic when stimulated by a structural or material challenge. racism. He achieved professional success He idolised Mies and similarly believed in technology’s and international fame as a minority fundamental role in architecture. At the same time, Marchitect, whose ‘otherness’ marked him as a permanent however, he was wary of standardisation’s deadening outsider to the East Coast-oriented architectural culture impact and the prospect of a world dominated by of postwar America. Born and raised in Seattle, prefabricated building parts, which would remove Washington, as a poor child of Japanese immigrants, he most aesthetic (and some structural) decisions from the suffered routine racial discrimination from an early age. architect. Hence Yamasaki viewed the emergence of Growing up he was taught to accept these episodes precast concrete in the 1950s as an exciting alternative passively, with magnanimity. ‘A word that I heard over to prefabricated metal components. Concrete was and over again whenever there would be an incident or inexpensive and malleable, and if precast in the factory a slight was shikataganai, which means “it can’t be or workshop, its finish could be controlled. It returned helped”’, he told a Time magazine interviewer. In his architectural expressiveness to the designers, putting autobiography, A Life in Architecture, he elaborated OF CONGRESS ARCHIVE / THE LIBRARY KORAB BALTHAZAR them ‘back in charge again’. ‘I know from personal experience how prejudice and Yamasaki’s initial extraordinary foray into concrete bigotry can affect one’s total thought process … the Key works was St Louis Lambert Airport, the first airport of the MARIANNA GEFEN prejudice I experienced in Seattle hurt me deeply …’ Pruitt-Igoe housing, modern age, intended to accommodate the rapid A gifted child who excelled in school, particularly in St Louis, 1954 expansion of airline travel. Inspired by New York’s St Louis Lambert Grand Central Station, a rectangular, three-storeyed mathematics, Yamasaki turned to architecture after a International Airport, chance visit by a Japanese relative who had just received St Louis, 1956 terminal is topped by three huge cylindrical groined an architecture degree. He enrolled in his hometown McGregor Memorial vaults spanning ticketing and waiting areas. The University of Washington and financed his education by Conference Center, audacity of Yamasaki’s proposal required an entire team labouring in the gruelling Alaskan fish canning industry Detroit, 1958 of engineers to execute it, including Anton Tedesko, during the summers, where he averaged nearly 70 hours Dhahran Airport, Saudi the Austrian engineer and thin-shell concrete pioneer. Arabia, 1959 The vaults – 32 feet high but only four-and-a-half inches per week, rising to over 120 at the height of the season. Reynolds Metals HQ, Conditions were harsh, but Yamasaki was determined to Detroit, 1959 thick at their crown – were unprecedented in ambition. overcome the ethnic prejudices that trapped his Asian US Science Pavilion, Yamasaki directed his technical explorations along and Filipino co-workers in near-poverty. From that Seattle World’s Fair, 1962 two paths: continued precast-concrete experiments, point, his ‘philosophy and goal’ was to develop his Michigan Consolidated mostly using arches, in buildings of various types – such natural talents and use them ‘in a way that would make Gas Company, Detroit, as Dhahran Airport in Saudi Arabia and North Shore 1962 Congregation Synagogue near Chicago – in tandem with my life meaningful to both me and those around me.’ IBM Building, Seattle, Yamasaki graduated with an architecture degree in 1963 the pursuit of a new way to design tall office buildings. 1934 and moved to New York City. After serving a North Shore Congregation Yet despite his reputation as a skyscraper architect, decade-long apprenticeship working on large-scale Synagogue, Illiniois, 1964 when Yamasaki was awarded the World Trade Center projects for prominent firms, he was lured to Detroit Northwestern National commission from the Port Authority of New York in in 1945 by Smith, Hinchman & Grylls to be its new lead Life Building, Minneapolis, 1962, beating Walter Gropius and Philip Johnson, he’d 1965 designed only two tall buildings. designer with explicit orders to move the firm’s output World Trade Center, in a more modern direction. By 1963 he’d formed his New York, 1971 The Michigan Consolidated Gas Company in Detroit, own practice, been hired to design the world’s tallest Rainier Tower, Seattle, was an odd tower: a square 28-storey box overlaid with buildings and featured in a Time magazine cover story. 1977 a precast-concrete screen with narrow lozenge-shaped Yet he still was barred from joining exclusive country windows. Searching for an alternative to standard tall clubs or purchasing a house in the wealthier suburbs Quote building design had led Yamasaki to try concrete as ‘We build buildings that an alternative skin, but his interest soon switched to outside Detroit because of his ethnicity. are terribly restless. Yamasaki rose to prominence with a distinctive And buildings don’t go structural matters. He discovered kindred spirits in approach that married core Modernist beliefs such as anywhere. They shouldn't Seattle engineers John Skilling, Jack Christiansen and structural determinism and functional aptness with a be restless’ Les Robertson, who were resurrecting the old-fashioned ‘humanist’ orientation that fused ideas and elements notion of load-bearing walls. Their innovation included from architecture’s global history. This latter interest narrow supports closely spaced around the building’s arose after a recuperative tour of world architecture, perimeter to carry the weight, creating partition-free from Europe to Asia, undertaken after surgery for interiors. The Skilling engineering firm would become life-threatening stomach ulcers in late 1953. He distilled pioneers in the development of the framed-tube his mature vision into three self-explanatory principles, structure. Subsequently, with Seattle’s IBM Building, Reputations which he called ‘serenity’, ‘surprise’, and ‘delight’. Yamasaki and his engineers had the first opportunity to These qualities are synthesised in his masterpiece, test their theory. The design was only months ahead of the McGregor Memorial Conference Center (1955-58) the World Trade Center. at Wayne State University in Detroit. The building is Lured by the promise of a marquee skyscraper in the infused with memories of Yamasaki’s travels, in striking world’s architectural capital, Yamasaki had to reconcile Minoru Yamasaki contrast to his previous work, which tended toward his small-scale sensitivities with his egotistic dreams. Miesian boxiness and a simple language of visible metal The Port Authority had hired him because they were 1912-1986 frames with glass-and-brick infill walls. To the McGregor impressed by his unique synthesis of human-oriented Center’s conventional square plan with internal atrium, design with engineering acumen. In the end, the project he added touches of Classical, Gothic, Mughal, Islamic nullified the former qualities. Serenity, surprise and and Japanese architecture, finished with luxurious delight were difficult to find in such enormous brute travertine end walls, marble-sheathed columns, teak objects or the vast windswept plaza. Despite the wall panels and exquisite stainless-steel details, all project’s aesthetic failures, there were successes: the surrounded and contained by a tranquil reflecting pool. buildings functioned wonderfully and quickly achieved 45 ST LOUIS POST-DISPATCH LOUIS ST ‘ Ada Louise Huxtable memorably described the World Trade Center as the world’s daintiest architecture for the BALTHAZAR KORAB ARCHIVE / THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ARCHIVE / THE LIBRARY KORAB BALTHAZAR world’s biggest buildings’ MATTHEW GARIN MATTHEW OF CONGRESS ARCHIVE / THE LIBRARY KORAB BALTHAZAR OF CONGRESS ARCHIVE / THE LIBRARY KORAB BALTHAZAR almost full occupancy. Essentially, the Twin Towers ‘Dainty’ wouldn’t be the only dubious epithet of a eliminate the row houses and green river, and shrink the evolved to counter ‘The Pruitt-Igoe Myth’, shifting were technological marvels, illustrating the efficacy gendered nature to be directed toward Yamasaki’s work: individual units. The resulting buildings – all slab blocks TIME culpability from the architects to the government’s of framed-tube construction. a comprehensive list would include terms like ‘frilly’, – were institutional and imposing, a far cry from the misguided and underfunded public housing initiatives. Yet the Trade Center’s critical reception affected the ‘precious’, ‘prissy’, ‘saccharine’, ‘lacy’ and ‘epicene’. more human-scaled community Yamasaki had intended. The consensus today is that such public housing projects course of Yamasaki’s remaining career. Architectural Such descriptions were firmly connected in the public Cheap construction, forced segregation, restrictive were doomed from the outset, but Yamasaki died well journalists unanimously praised the proposal at its mind with women and their ‘frivolous’ obsession with income policies and managerial indifference to tenants’ before this revisionist movement gained momentum. 1964 unveiling, but raged against a slightly modified decoration. To his detractors, much of Yamasaki’s work needs and requests turned Pruitt-Igoe into a disaster. The Pruitt-Igoe