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Minoru Yamasaki

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Minoru Yamasaki (December 1 1912February 6 1986) was a Japanese American architect, born in Seattle, Washington, a second-generation Japanese-American. A prolific architect, he is best known for his design of the World Trade Center, which was destroyed in the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Biography

File:DSCN4652 oberlinconservatory e.jpg
The Conservatory of Music at Oberlin College, designed by Yamasaki in 1963. The distinctive style is similar to Yamasaki's design of the World Trade Center

Despite a poor background, he earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Washington; he earned money to pay for his tuition by working at an Alaskan salmon cannery when not attending classes. After moving to New York City in the 1930s, he enrolled at New York University for a master's degree in architecture and got a job with the architecture firm Shreve, Lamb and Harmon, designers of the Empire State Building.

His first significant project was the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis, Missouri, 1955. Despite his love of Japanese traditional design, this was a stark, modernist concrete structure. It was so unpopular that it was demolished in 1972. Its destruction is considered by some to be the beginning of postmodern architecture.

He also designed several "sleek" international airport buildings and was responsible for the innovative design of the 1,360 foot (415 metre) towers of the World Trade Center, for which design began in 1965, and construction in 1972.

He was first married in 1941 and had two other wives before marrying his first wife again in 1969. Yamasaki died of cancer in 1986, fifteen years before Al-Qaeda members destroyed the towers on September 11 2001.

Works