Minoru yamasaki biography channel
Minoru Yamasaki was a Japanese-American architect, best known for designing the original World Trade Center in New York City and several other large-scale....
Minoru Yamasaki
Biography
Master architect Minoru Yamasaki (1912-86) was a first-generation Japanese American (or Nissei) born in Seattle, Washington.
Yamasaki studied architecture at the University of Washington, spending his summers working at an Alaska cannery to pay his tuition. He joined the Detroit firm of Smith, Hinchman & Grylls as head of design in 1945. An important commission that came in during those years was for an annex to the Federal Reserve Branch Bank in Detroit.
The “annex,” really a much larger building that dwarfed the original branch bank next door, became downtown Detroit’s first major post-war building and first major International Style building.
Minoru Yamasaki, a name that resonates with elegance and innovation in the realm of modern architecture.
In 1949 he and two other former Smith, Hinchman & Grylls employees established their own firm, Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth, with offices in Detroit and St. Louis.
In 1951 the firm received the commission to design the Lambert-St.
Louis Municipal Air Terminal, the first work