Minoru Yamasaki: Humanist Architecture for a Modernist World 9780300229868

Citation preview

MINORU YAMASAKI

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd i

29/7/2017 3:23 PM

MINORU YAMASAKI Humanist Architecture for a Modernist World

Dale Allen Gyure

Yale University Press New Haven and London

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd iii

29/7/2017 3:23 PM

For Jan, Matt, and Jeff

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd v

29/7/2017 3:23 PM

CONTENTS

viii

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd vii

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction

1

Chapter 1: Foundations

17

Chapter 2: Early Work

58

Chapter 3: A New Direction

90

Chapter 4: Staying the Course

122

Chapter 5: Modern Humanism

169

Chapter 6: Tall Buildings

217

Chapter 7: The Late Works

263

Conclusion

266

Notes

276

Illustration Credits

277

Index

29/7/2017 3:23 PM

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would not have been possible without the existence and support of the Minoru Yamasaki and Associates Collection at the Archives of Michigan and the Minoru Yamasaki Papers at the Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University. In particular, I would like to thank Mark Harvey, Andrea Gietzen, and Jessica Harden of the Archives and Elizabeth Murray Clemens at the Reuther Library. The following organizations, institutions, and individuals also were crucial in the research process, and I thank them all: the National Archives; the McGregor Foundation Archives; the Archives or Special Collections Departments at Carleton College, Harvard University, Oberlin College, Princeton University, Syracuse University, and the University of Washington; the Cranbrook Art Museum Archives (Leslie Edwards); the Virginia Historical Society; the Lloyd Library and Museum (Alex Herrlein); the Greenwich (Connecticut) Historical Society (Nola Taylor); the National Park Service, Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (Jennifer Clark); and the Library of Congress. In addition, Marc Frattasio was kind enough to share his images for New Haven Railroad projects. I visited numerous Yamasaki buildings while researching this book and would particularly like to thank Drew Barclay, Merle Branner, Lynda Charfoos, Peter Dubois, Baird Jarman Karen Katanick, John and Silvia Rowland, and Ken Siver for donating their time and providing access. Discussions and communications with Mardges Bacon, Guy Barron, Robert Bruegmann, Allan Hess, Paul Kidder, Thomas Leslie, Richard Longstreth, Jeffrey Ochsner, Tyler Sprague, and Bernd Trasberger were crucial in working through the salient ideas expressed in the text. David Patterson, Modris Pudists, and Harold Tsuchiya provided vital information about the inner workings of Yamasaki’s office, and my former students Caleb Fletcher, Philip Perkins, and Matthew Showalter conducted some interviews of those former employees. The fantastic staff of the Lawrence Technological University Library filled my endless requests for interlibrary loans with efficiency and grace. And Emily Matt created the plan drawings and patiently served as a sounding board for many of my ideas for the book. Katherine Boller and Sarah Henry of Yale University Press offered invaluable guidance and assistance, and Laura Jones Dooley’s editorial talents improved my manuscript immensely—thank you all. My greatest debt is to Henry Guthard and Keith Brown, who sparked my initial interest in Yamasaki and continue to serve as unequaled sources of information and wisdom about his architecture.

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd viii

29/7/2017 3:23 PM

INTRODUCTION

In early 2010, the chief financial officer of Minoru Yamasaki’s successor firm, Yamasaki Associates, in Troy, Michigan, announced that the firm was going out of business and that all employees had been terminated as of December 31, 2009, with the offices to close by the end of January. Yamasaki Associates at the time faced numerous lawsuits and default judgments from contractors, consultants, and former employees totaling millions of dollars. The event was reported with passing interest in the architectural journals and local newspapers but garnered little more attention than that. The announcement came forty-seven years to the month after Minoru Yamasaki had appeared on the cover of Time, placing him in select company with such luminaries as Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, Eero Saarinen, and Le Corbusier. In the intervening years Yamasaki’s reputation had faded to the point where he became a footnote to architectural history. After his death in 1986 he was largely forgotten until the tragic events of September 11, 2001, forced his most famous building into our collective consciousness. What do we know about the architect Minoru Yamasaki, beyond the fact that he designed the ill-fated World Trade Center? Or that he also designed the Pruitt-Igoe apartments in St. Louis, publicly destroyed just two decades after their creation as a symbol of the many woes of America’s postwar urban renewal orgy, then used by critics to symbolize the downfall of the entire modernist project? Most people familiar with modern architecture know at least that much. Others with a deeper understanding of twentiethcentury events might also recall that Yamasaki was labeled a “decorator” by adverse critics in the sixties and often grouped with Edward Durell Stone, Philip Johnson, and occasionally Paul Rudolph as representatives of a wayward, frivolous branch of design that became too obsessed with ornamentation and eventually died off. Those of us in academia might recognize that Yamasaki is not taught in architecture schools and is not the subject of serious academic scholarship. In the story of modern architecture’s postwar ascendance, there seems to be no room for Minoru Yamasaki. Thus, few of us are familiar with the details of his life or his work. How many know that he was not Japanese—despite his name—but an American born and raised in Seattle? Or that he struggled with racism throughout his career, particularly during the great fear engendered by the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, and that he narrowly rescued his parents from the notorious internment camps? How many realize that he worked for some of the biggest names in

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd ix

29/7/2017 3:23 PM

postwar design, including Wallace Harrison and Raymond Loewy, and that he was friends with such design icons as George Nelson (who more than once tried to convince Yamasaki to enter into a partnership), Alexander Girard, Florence Knoll, and Eero Saarinen? Or that he was hired as chief creative designer by one of the largest architectural offices in the country at age thirty-three with only a handful of built structures to his name? Yamasaki was one of the most respected and popular architects of the fifties and early sixties, moving in the highest circles of the profession and receiving continual recognition in the form of awards and publicity. He was known for much of his career as an innovator, among the first of his era to experiment with thin-shelled concrete, folded plate, and hyperbolic paraboloid roofs, aluminum parts, skip-stop elevators, bearing-wall office towers, and global architectural motifs. These facts have been lost to us. This book examines his architecture and its relation to midcentury modernism. The following pages present Yamasaki’s most significant buildings and projects while exploring the philosophy behind his designs, addressing such questions as why he became so popular, why he has faded from our consciousness, and how his work employed historical references (including non-Western) and humanist tendencies in an attempt to chart a new course for modern architecture beyond the narrow boundaries of functionalism, technological determinism, and machine abstraction that dominated at this time. Minoru Yamasaki (1912–1986) was a seminal architect in postwar America. He rose to prominence by forging a unique personal style that merged the modern materials and structural rationalism of postwar architecture with historical elements like arches, colonnades, and dramatic silhouettes. His self-proclaimed humanist designs evolved from a concern for users’ emotional and sensory experiences, striving for “serenity, surprise and delight” through principles assimilated from global historical architecture. His iconic buildings, such as the McGregor Memorial Conference Center (Detroit, 1955– 58) and the U.S. Science Pavilion (Seattle, 1959–62), garnered much acclaim, while his World Trade Center (New York, 1962–76) was among the most publicized projects in the world. In the seventies, however, detractors dismissed Yamasaki as a mere decorator who catered to popular tastes with sweet but empty confections. The overbearing scale of the Twin Towers and the public demolition of his Pruitt-Igoe public housing project (1950–56) were lightning rods for criticism, all of which reflected negatively on Yamasaki. And as the architectural profession shifted its focus toward a deeper engagement with social and theoretical matters, later critics ridiculed his work as shallow and disconnected from the crucial investigations of postmodernism and beyond. Recent studies have helped us better understand the preeminent architectural issues of the postwar era, uncovering information about the conflicts and complexities of midcentury architecture. Stone and Rudolph, two contemporaries who were frequently lumped with Yamasaki on the basis of flimsy visual evidence, have been the subjects of important books published in the last few years, and Johnson, probably the closest to Yamasaki in both aesthetic interests and critical response, is the subject of more studies each year. But architects and historians continue to ignore Yamasaki. He is neither discussed in the profession nor taught in architecture schools, and there are no in-depth studies of his architecture. Lacking objective evaluations, our notions of him are shaped by decades-old criticisms or casual observations. This book seeks to provide a thorough history and a balanced critical appraisal of Yamasaki’s career. It will cut through the myths and lay bare the architect’s

X

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd x

INTRODUCTION

29/7/2017 3:23 PM

0.1. Minoru Yamasaki.

designs and ideas, so that a new audience, one hopes less biased, will interpret him for themselves. Minoru Yamasaki’s career engaged multiple mid-twentieth-century architectural narratives, including humanism, historicism, and the “chaoticism” or lack of fundamental principles perceived by some influential commentators. Existing scholarship fails to adequately explain what it meant to declare oneself an architectural humanist in the fifties, or why some viewed the increasing popularity of decoration and the historical past as so threatening to the future of architecture in the early sixties. This study undertakes those tasks, locating Yamasaki’s architecture in its context and as a precursor to late-century developments like postmodern historical excursions and phenomenological explorations of human experience. My hope is that the book will inspire a reevaluation of Yamasaki’s career, so that his buildings can be judged on more objective terms, within their historical context, and stripped of the biases that have colored our perceptions to this point.

XI

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd xi

INTRODUCTION

29/7/2017 3:23 PM

CHAPTER 1

FOUNDATIONS

In 1964, the year that he unveiled his design for the world’s tallest buildings in New York City, Minoru Yamasaki received the Horatio Alger Award in recognition of his struggle from humble beginnings to international fame. The award was fitting—Yamasaki’s life was a characteristically American success story. He was born in squalid circumstances in Seattle, Washington, on December 1, 1912, to parents who had both emigrated from Japan just a few years earlier. Tsunejiro (John) Yamasaki, from Toyama, faced limited prospects as the third son of a rice-farming family and came to America seeking greater opportunities. Hana Ito, the eldest of twelve children in a Tokyo family, moved to Seattle with her mother and siblings, joining a grandfather who had established a tailoring business. The young couple participated in a traditional arranged marriage and quickly settled into the city’s sizable Asian community. Minoru was the eldest of two sons for the Yamasakis; his brother, Ken, born in 1918, would grow up to become a surgeon in the Detroit area (figure 1.1). 1.1. Hana, Tsunejiro, and Minoru Yamasaki, 1915.

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 1

29/7/2017 3:26 PM

Seattle By his own account, the built environment of Yamasaki’s childhood was less than ideal. The low-income Yesler Hill neighborhood where he was raised consisted of well-worn wooden structures resting uneasily on the slope of a steep hill. Later in life, Yamasaki remembered the flimsiness of the houses and the ever-present dirt and mud. For his first few years, the family had no hot water or indoor toilet. Despite these depressed surroundings, Yamasaki seems to have been a happy child. He enjoyed riding his bicycle around Seattle’s outskirts and from a young age was captivated by the surrounding landscape’s natural beauty. His intelligence allowed him to skip a grade in grammar school. He liked sports but chafed at his mother’s requirement that he take piano lessons after school. But Yamasaki’s childhood was by no means idyllic. He recognized early that although the people in his neighborhood looked like him, most of classmates and teachers did not. “I had been born and gone to school, much as any other youth lives in America,” Yamasaki wrote as an adult. “I was different, however. I had been stamped at birth by uncontrollable circumstances.” The prejudice Yamasaki encountered as a Japanese American Nisei on the West Coast in the early twentieth century shaped his life; subsequently he admitted that “it hurt me deeply.” He remained sensitive to his outsider status even as he became a successful architect. In various speeches and writings, Yamasaki recounted painful racial incidents from his childhood, such as when a woman refused to sit by his mother on the trolley, or when he and his teenage friends were barred from public places. Sometimes he made light of his otherness: for example, he liked to tell audiences about the time a slightly inebriated man approached him before a speech and asked whether Yamasaki would be speaking in English or Japanese. As a boy he had been taught to accept these episodes passively with magnanimity. “A word that I heard over and over again whenever there would be an incident or a slight was shikataganai, which means ‘it can’t be helped,’” he told a Time magazine interviewer.1 Young Minoru displayed no particular artistic tendencies. His strengths were in math and science, and he won a citywide mathematics competition as a high school senior with a perfect score. The first inklings of a future career appeared to him around this time. While a teenager, Yamasaki’s maternal uncle Koken Ito, who had an architectural degree from the University of California at Berkeley, visited the family. His architectural drawings fascinated the boy. Yamasaki recalled: “I almost exploded with excitement when I saw them. Right then and there I decided to become an architect. . . . Prior to this I had been barely conscious of art in painting, sculpture, or architecture; in high school I had taken a course in architectural drawing, but it had meant very little to me.” Now, however, something took hold, and Yamasaki found his calling. After graduating from Garfield High School in 1929, he enrolled in the architecture program at his hometown school, the University of Washington, just a few weeks before the bottom dropped out of the U.S. economy and the Great Depression began.2 Architecture School Washington’s Department of Architecture had been established in 1914. Not yet large enough to exist as an independent school or college, the department was housed in the College of Fine Arts. Its five-year architecture program followed a curriculum derived from Paris’s prestigious École des Beaux-Arts, bolstered by an affiliation with the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design in New York. Entering classes

2

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 2

FOUNDATIONS

29/7/2017 3:26 PM

were small—only about twenty to twenty-five students per year— and the students often formed close relationships with their mentors. Such a relationship probably saved Yamasaki’s architectural career.3 His architecture school experience began well but faltered after a successful freshman year. Yamasaki was not good at drawing and struggled to grasp the complexity of designing a complete building in his sophomore design studio. Meanwhile his grades in structural engineering were outstanding, and this proficiency, coupled with nagging doubt, led him to contemplate changing his course of study. The switch might have happened if not for an influential professor: Lionel Pries, who cotaught sophomore and senior design studios (along with Lancelot Gowan) at Washington from 1928 to 1945. Pries was legendary for his outstanding drawing ability and inspirational manner. While steeped in the Beaux-Arts method, Pries encouraged students to forge their own approach to design without copying prominent architects. This meant that the emerging European modernism would not be rejected offhand but rather studied for its potential contributions, so that students could be “aware of the widest possible range of alternatives.” He also seems to have possessed the gift of knowing just how to motivate each student. As Yamasaki remembered his pivotal moment: “One evening I worked up the courage to ask him whether I should give up becoming an architect. He said absolutely not, that he had decided to leave me completely on my own to see how well I could develop, and he encouraged me with the prediction that I would become one of the best architects ever to graduate from the school. This greatly inspired me, renewing and confirming my dedication to the pursuit of architecture.” Pries displayed some of the “rough and unprofessional” drawings retained from his student days to demonstrate the rewards of practice and perseverance, and for the rest of the semester he provided “special criticism” to Yamasaki. The story indicates that Pries must have seen something in Yamasaki, as numerous students from that era at Washington recounted how he treated pupils differently, paying greater attention to those who showed promise. For the rest of his life, Yamasaki would acknowledge his debt to Pries.4 To finance his architectural education during the depression as his father suffered “severe” pay cuts at the shoe store where he worked, Yamasaki spent summer vacations toiling alongside Nisei and Filipino comrades in the grueling Alaskan fish canning industry, facing long hours, inadequate accommodations, low pay, and ethnic prejudice. The experience made a lasting impression on him. In the 1970s, as his career was waning, he would write an autobiography and devote one quarter of his life story to the canning jobs. Those five summers helped him forge a life philosophy and affected his attitude toward architectural design. He realized that “life could be lived more beautifully” and set about achieving that goal by capitalizing on his opportunities. “But when I looked at the older men around me in the canneries, destined to live out their lives in such uncompromising and personally degrading circumstances, I became all the more determined not to let that be the pattern into which my life would fall,” he wrote. “I had been blessed with certain natural gifts, but I knew that it would take hard work and steady application if I were to develop and use these in a way that would make my life meaningful to both me and those around me. This became my philosophy and goal.”5 Yamasaki earned a respite from this grinding cycle of stressful semesters and punishing summers before his final year in college. In 1933, Tsunejiro took the family to Japan for a brief visit. When they returned to Seattle after a few weeks, twenty-year-old Minoru

3

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 3

FOUNDATIONS

29/7/2017 3:26 PM

remained in Japan with relatives, eventually spending “a wondrous two months” there. The vacation remained a cherished memory, although he alleged that the Japanese architecture he encountered there had no effect on him. However, the confidence he undoubtedly gained from spending time immersed in the culture of his ancestors presaged a later trip in the early fifties that would prove to be a seminal event in his professional life. Yamasaki finished the final year of the architecture program with a strong record. He had absorbed the Beaux-Arts design method, vastly improved his drawing and painting skills, and demonstrated a real aptitude for engineering. Pries and Gowan had taught Yamasaki and his fellow students a method that led to variable aesthetic outcomes with no predetermined style. This can be seen to a certain extent in Yamasaki’s student projects, which displayed Beaux-Arts planning principles merged with Streamline Moderne or Modern Classical forms (figure 1.2). Pries and the Washington architecture department trained a significant group of highly talented architects just before and during the Great Depression, most of whom would remain on the West Coast and contribute to the evolution of modernism in that region. Welton Becket (’27), Paul Thiry (’28), George Nakamura (’29), Perry Johanson (’34), A. Quincy Jones (’36), Paul Kirk (’37), and Roland Terry (1935–40; no degree) were distinguished products of Washington’s program. But when Yamasaki received his bachelor’s degree in the spring of 1934, he had no intention of staying near home. Like many West Coast Nisei of his generation, he moved to New York City. He spent the next eleven years in the epicenter of 1.2. Minoru Yamasaki, County Courthouse project, University of Washington, 1933.

4

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 4

FOUNDATIONS

29/7/2017 3:26 PM

American art and architecture, employed by some of the largest and most famous firms in the country and learning the skills that would eventually lead him to success.6 New York City Unable to find work in a New York architecture office because of the economic downturn, Yamasaki took a job wrapping Noritake dinnerware for a Japanese importing firm to support himself. After a year he decided to enroll in New York University master’s program in architecture. At approximately the same time he began taking watercolor classes. Shortly thereafter, the university offered him a position teaching watercolor painting, proof of his improved artistic abilities. He accepted the opportunity to increase his income but remained frustrated in his career path until the spring of 1936, when a fellow student asked him to participated in a charrette to help architect Francis Keally finish drawings for the Oregon State Capitol. Keally was associating with the firm of Trowbridge & Livingston in a nationwide competition to rebuild Oregon’s capital building after a devastating fire. The team eventually won the contest over more than one hundred rivals. Yamasaki worked on the entry for just over two months and impressed Keally. Following the entry submission, however, he resumed his dish-wrapping job. Yamasaki left NYU without obtaining a graduate degree as he continued to search for a full-time position. In the spring of 1937 he finally gained a foothold when Keally called him in to assist on drawings for the upcoming New York World’s Fair. For the next year Yamasaki was engaged by Githens & Keally, including work on the firm’s most famous design, the Streamline Moderne Brooklyn Public Library (1935–41). Keally seems to have been his first true architectural mentor, and the elder architect held him in high regard; years later, when Yamasaki applied for an architectural license in New York State, Keally maintained in a letter of recommendation, “Of all the young men that I have come in contact with during the past ten years, I consider Mr. Yamasaki the most brilliant.”7 Shreve, Lamb & Harmon From this point on, Yamasaki found steady employment and obtained valuable experience in important architectural firms despite the ongoing financial depression. In early 1938 he left Githens & Keally for the much-bigger office of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, creators of the Empire State Building a decade earlier. The move would prove to be fortuitous, as the firm was busy with a number of large-scale, multi-million-dollar projects. In just a few years, Yamasaki would learn not only how to manage the practical aspects of his job, like making drawings, but also how to deal with contractors and supervise construction. The process of total design that had so eluded him in the second year of architecture school would become second nature. Shreve, Lamb & Harmon specialized in commercial office buildings and took a practical approach, which Yamasaki eventually found stultifying. The firm’s attitude, as summarized by founding partner Richmond H. Shreve, prized cost-effective efficiency over aesthetic innovation: “Finance dictates the fenestration,” he said, “rent roles rule the parti.” Yamasaki was unsympathetic with this mindset and asked to be transferred to the working drawings department. By late fall the firm moved him to the Metropolitan Life Insurance design team and its Parkchester housing project. Metropolitan Life, the second largest company in the United States, was embarking on a social experiment of sorts, taking advantage of recent changes in the New York State Insurance Code that allowed life insurance

5

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 5

FOUNDATIONS

29/7/2017 3:26 PM

companies to make direct investments in real estate and housing development. Working with the state, the city of New York, and the Shreve firm, Metropolitan Life planned to construct an immense housing complex on a 129-acre site in the Bronx. It was the first time that American planners used Le Corbusier’s “tower in the park” concept for a middle-class housing project. The scheme was so innovative that a model was exhibited at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Metropolitan Life eventually constructed fifty-one buildings on the site, housing over twelve thousand apartments. The eight- or thirteen-story buildings of red brick with terra-cotta trim and attached sculptures spread across a vast landscape dominated by open space. Playgrounds, athletic fields, trees, flower beds, and manicured lawns filled in the areas between buildings. Intended to be a self-sufficient community, Parkchester also included a movie theater, a branch of the public library, and numerous stores. Yamasaki’s exact role in the venture is unknown, but this experience surely influenced his own ideas about public housing and the necessity for amenities.8 Another massive undertaking that would occupy most of Yamasaki’s tenure at Shreve, Lamb & Harmon arose after America’s entry into World War II following the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The firm was commissioned to design and construct a fifty-million-dollar naval training station on Lake Seneca in west-central New York. The usnts Sampson, as it was named, would train navy recruits for the war and thus had to be planned and executed rapidly. Given the project’s scope, this was no easy task: hundreds of buildings and a full capacity of thirty thousand men. According to Yamasaki, he was made a supervisor because of his longevity with the firm. He recalled being in charge of a team of three to four subordinates, designing and constructing ten or so different temporary wooden buildings, including a registration building, a chapel, a barracks, and a garage (figure 1.3). “The experience of going through the total building process soon gave me confidence that I would be able to handle complete projects later in my architectural life,” he said. “The two years I spent at Sampson may well have been one of the key learning times of my entire career.”9 Although the Sampson commission brought Yamasaki new professional responsibilities and challenges, this was a period of personal tribulations. Life in Manhattan had made him aware of previously unforeseen possibilities regarding ethnic relations. “After I moved to New York, where the Orientals were such a small minority that we were accepted by all but a few bigots just as any other human beings, for the first time I fully realized how prejudice and bigotry can affect 1.3. Shreve, Lamb and Harmon (Minoru Yamasaki), Royce Chapel, U.S. Naval Training Station Sampson (Geneva, New York, 1942–43; demolished).

6

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 6

FOUNDATIONS

29/7/2017 3:26 PM

one’s total thought process,” he wrote afterward. But all was not perfect. When the government declared war on Japan, life for America’s Nisei community would become significantly more difficult. The discrimination he sought to avoid by leaving the West Coast caught up to him, and he responded by becoming an activist, joining other Nisei who had banded together to avoid persecution. A newspaper photograph of Yamasaki speaking to an unidentified group described him as “chairman of the Resettlement Council of Japanese American organizations in New York City.” As a member of the Japanese American Committee for Democracy, he served as a vice-chairman of its arts council along with artist Isamu Noguchi. The group was engaged in war relief and Japanese American resettlement issues; in the latter role, he became embroiled in a public dispute with local politicians. When a plan by the Church of the Brethren to open a hostel in Brooklyn for displaced Japanese Americans was criticized by New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia and Congressman John J. Delaney, Yamasaki and Eddie Shimano, a Nisei activist from Seattle, traveled to Washington to meet with Delaney. Although the congressman continued to oppose the hostel, it opened in May 1944 and eventually housed more than sixteen hundred people during its two years of operation.10 Before his participation in the strategically important Sampson Naval Station, Yamasaki’s background was thoroughly investigated and approved, but like other Nisei he remained suspect in the eyes of some fellow citizens. In his autobiography, Yamasaki related two specific episodes of prejudice from his Sampson tenure, although there were probably many more. In the first, he was falsely accused of being a potential spy by a local woman during an air raid drill; in the second, he was vigorously scrutinized by a new guard at the Sampson gatehouse. These annoyances, however, were trivial compared to the hostility faced by his parents back in Seattle. Tsunejiro, who had suffered drastic pay cuts during the Great Depression at the shoe store where he worked, was fired after twenty-five years of service; according to Yamasaki, this occurred the day after Pearl Harbor. Yet this would not be the family’s biggest problem. Within months, Tsunejiro and Hana were slated for removal to one of the infamous “relocation centers” where the U.S. government would illegally and unfairly imprison more than a hundred thousand people of Japanese ancestry—most of them American citizens—for the duration of the war.11 Unwilling to let this happen, Yamasaki moved his parents to New York. They arrived in the city to an already crowded living situation. In the late summer of 1941, Yamasaki, then twenty-eight years old, had met a twenty-two-year-old pianist from Los Angeles who captured his heart. Teruko (Teri) Hirashiki had come to New York on a scholarship to study music at the Juilliard School after earning a degree at the University of Southern California. After a speedy courtship the couple was married on December 5—just two days before Pearl Harbor. Teri moved into Yamasaki’s small, one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan’s Yorkville neighborhood, which he shared with his younger brother, Ken, a medical student at Columbia University. The addition of Yamasaki’s parents meant that five adults would occupy the cramped quarters. The time spent at Lake Seneca, then, was probably a respite from this hectic environment. Yamasaki would work on the Sampson Naval Station for almost two years. During that period he moonlighted as a renderer to help support his growing family and entertained notions of going into practice by himself, claiming to have been commissioned for “six or seven projects” whose plans were thwarted by government rationing

7

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 7

FOUNDATIONS

29/7/2017 3:26 PM

of building materials. And he returned to Columbia as a part-time architectural studio instructor, probably for the night school. It was during this short-lived teaching career that Yamasaki became friends with George Nelson, who was forging his own path as a designer and would go on to worldwide renown. Nelson was four years older, had studied at Yale University, published articles in major architectural journals and won the Rome Prize, lived and traveled abroad, and was already helping to define the new profession of industrial designer. When they met, Nelson was teaching architecture at Columbia and serving as an associate editor at Architectural Forum, by far the most-read and most influential architectural journal in the country. Despite their apparent differences, the two men quickly formed a bond that would last a lifetime. Harrison, Fouilhoux & Abramovitz Yamasaki and Nelson became friendly enough that they began to collaborate on side ventures. The extra income came in handy when, in 1943, Yamasaki was laid off from Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, which finally succumbed to the expansion and contraction that so many firms suffered during the depression and war years. Once the Sampson Naval Station was completed there was insufficient work to retain him. But Yamasaki was not unemployed for long. In early January he landed a position with Harrison, Fouilhoux & Abramovitz at a substantially higher salary. Under the leadership of Wallace Harrison, the firm was aesthetically more experimental and committed to a full exploration of modern architecture, and these attributes were more to Yamasaki’s liking. In subsequent years he said that he made the switch “because I wanted to be with a firm which believed in a much stronger emphasis on design.”12 Although he spent less than a year with the firm, Yamasaki continued to acquire relevant experience and to prove his abilities as a designer. He admired Wallace Harrison and enjoyed his brief stint in “Mr. Harrison’s marvelous office,” regarding it as a model for when he would open his own business. Such thoughts were clearly on his mind at the time. He was thirty-one years old and had been employed steadily in other people’s offices for more than six years. The pressure of supporting a family was augmented by the birth of his first child, a daughter he and Teri named Carol. Yamasaki and Nelson began signing the drawings for their mutual projects “Nelson and Yamasaki, Architects,” and they talked seriously of opening an office. No doubt adding to his mounting confidence was his first publication. The November 1944 issue of Architectural Forum carried a three-page article on Yamasaki’s “Postwar Project for a Converted Apartment in New York City” (figure 1.4). The article—perhaps influenced by Nelson’s editorial position at the Forum—outlined Yamasaki’s proposed renovation of a 1929 apartment building into a more modern structure with a dramatic sliced corner entry, simplified facade, and new room arrangements. With its wide windows and abundant terraces, the absence of historical elements, and the exposure of the steel frame at the lobby level, the drawings showed Yamasaki adopting the “contemporary style” favored by Harrison and Abramovitz rather than the Shreve firm’s conservative architecture.13 The drawings revealed Yamasaki’s ideas about design in general and multistory housing structures in particular. The revised floor plans were appealing, but the proposal’s highlight was the open foyer created by removing the existing walls from one corner of the building. This established an unexpected sense of openness on a tightly packed urban street. The move permitted Yamasaki to express

8

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 8

FOUNDATIONS

29/7/2017 3:26 PM

the building’s true structure while also providing an indoor-outdoor transition space. He accentuated the building’s difference from its neighbors by dropping this “open foyer” slightly below the level of the sidewalk, a technique he would return to decades later for the ibm Building and Rainier Bank in Seattle. The nearly transparent lobby, smaller in footprint than the building above, used a configuration later popularized by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s 860–80 Lake Shore Drive apartments (1948–51). The two units on each of the building’s floors included generous terraces recessed from the facade, and a small L-shaped planter in the foyer’s corner allowed for a bit of greenery to enliven the manmade landscape. Such attempts to provide access to nature, however feeble, echoed the urban planning precepts of the Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne (ciam) as outlined in its Athens Charter, published a year earlier. They would also reappear in all of Yamasaki’s future housing projects.

1.4. Minoru Yamasaki, apartment renovation project (1944; unbuilt).

Raymond Loewy Associates There is no indication that the apartment conversion was ever undertaken. But its publication surely boosted Yamasaki’s confidence, and the article initiated a relationship with Architectural Forum that would prove fruitful in the coming years. Coincident with the piece, Yamasaki left Harrison’s office and, as usual, quickly landed a job with another high-profile firm. Nelson had suggested that he consider working for an industrial designer, perhaps in preparation for their potential partnership. Accordingly, in November 1944 Yamasaki joined the office of Raymond Loewy, the French-born pioneer of American industrial design. By this time Loewy was already famous for conceiving an astonishing array of products ranging from razors and cigarette packages to refrigerators and airplanes. The new firm of Raymond Loewy Associates, incorporated earlier that year, was divided into four operational sectors: product design, packaging, transportation, and “Specialized Architecture”; Yamasaki probably

9

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 9

FOUNDATIONS

29/7/2017 3:26 PM

worked in the architecture sector. He stayed with Loewy for only a year, however, feeling unfulfilled because, as he explained years afterward, “the idea of designing a skin around a machine whose form had already been decided was distasteful to me.”14 A Major Change The year 1945 would be eventful for Minoru Yamasaki. He solidified his status as a talented young architect and, through Nelson, moved deeper into New York’s circle of architectural tastemakers. At some point during the year he became friendly with Douglas Haskell, an associate editor for Architectural Record and sometime adjunct instructor at Columbia. Haskell had been an early champion of modern architecture in his tenure as the architecture critic for the Nation in the 1930s. Their friendship would serve Yamasaki well. After Haskell became chief editor of Architectural Forum in 1949— a post he would hold for fifteen years—he ceaselessly promoted Yamasaki, contributing in no small part Yamasaki’s rise to fame. As Yamasaki would tell a colleague, “I feel that much of my getting somewhat known in the architectural world has been due to a persistant [sic] publishing of my work by Doug Haskell.”15 Nelson continued his effort to persuade Yamasaki to join him in a new architecture and design firm. Simultaneously, he pursued his own interests and reached new levels of success. Nelson’s revolutionary Storage Wall was published in Life in early 1945, catching the attention of D. J. De Pree, head of the Herman Miller furniture company. De Pree subsequently recruited Nelson to serve as his chief designer. According to historian Stanley Abercrombie, Nelson was so committed to partnering with Yamasaki at the time that Yamasaki “became another party to the negotiations” between Nelson and De Pree. In the end, Nelson signed with Herman Miller, temporarily suspending his dream of a Nelson-Yamasaki venture. But the idea would not die so easily; Nelson resurrected it in 1951 with a detailed plan that once again failed to sway his friend.16 By autumn, Yamasaki was disillusioned with Loewy’s office and ready for another career move. He did not have to look far. Fortuitously, he was contacted by a representative from Detroit’s premiere architectural firm, Smith, Hinchman & Grylls. Despite its undeniable success, the firm sought a new, more modern direction after World War II and was eager to find a talented architect to spearhead this initiative. George Hellmuth, a Smith, Hinchman architect from St. Louis, was apparently given the task of recruiting a new chief designer. His search led him to New York and Yamasaki. How that happened or what designs garnered Hellmuth’s attention remain unknown. Yamasaki certainly had enough experience to be attractive to Smith, Hinchman—particularly with large projects— since he had been practicing in some of the best-known firms in the city, but there was no individual commission that demonstrated his overall talents. It is possible that friends like Nelson and Haskell were influential in promoting him. Whatever the reason, in November 1945 Yamasaki made the momentous decision to leave New York, his home for over a decade, and move his growing family to Detroit.17 Detroit The Yamasakis arrived as the city was beginning the process of converting itself from the “Arsenal of Democracy” back into a midwestern industrial city after World War II. Detroit had been the early twentieth-century equivalent of the Silicon Valley as the home to America’s high-tech automobile industry, but with the coming of war the manufacturers converted their plants to the making of weapons

10

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 10

FOUNDATIONS

29/7/2017 3:27 PM

and military vehicles. By war’s end it boasted over 1.5 million residents and a metropolitan population of around 3 million—both swelled by the flood of migrants who flocked to the area in search of war production jobs. Despite the city’s industrial image, the wealth and taste of Detroit’s auto executives equaled any other city’s upper crust. Perhaps the best measure of its cultural inclinations was the Cranbrook artistic community. In an idyllic setting twenty-five miles north of downtown, newspaper publisher George Gough Booth had established America’s premiere Arts and Crafts community. Under the leadership of Eliel Saarinen, the Cranbrook Academy of Art’s impressive roster of instructors and students in the thirties and forties included many individuals who would substantially influence postwar art and design, including Charles and Ray Eames, Ralph Rapson, Harry Bertoia, Florence Knoll, Ruth Adler Schnee, and Eero Saarinen. The elder Saarinen’s reputation brought notable architects to the secluded location for lectures and visits; students became used to the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, and Alvar Aalto touring the Saarinen-designed campus.18 Detroit in the midforties also was architecturally rich, containing examples from leading architects of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including a public library by Cass Gilbert, Paul Cret’s art museum, skyscrapers by Daniel H. Burnham & Company, a McKim, Mead & White bank, theaters by C. Howard Crane, an H. H. Richardson armory, a Wright house in the suburbs, and scores of Albert Kahn structures, including private houses, civic buildings, offices, and the many industrial buildings for the auto industry that made him famous. Alongside these were the work of talented local architects such as Wirt Rowland, whose Art Deco creations helped make Detroit a center of that style.19 Smith, Hinchman & Grylls Yamasaki brought the modernist sensibility to Smith, Hinchman that the firm craved. Early in his tenure, he directed a competition entry for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis (figure 1.5). His scheme imagined a group of dissimilar, orthogonal buildings aligned in a formal pattern across the riverfront property, with the key places contained within an ellipse bounded by an open-air exedra at one end and a “Campfire Theater” at the other. All of the buildings were low, with the exception of a single tall, slablike “Living Memorial” at the river’s edge, connected to a circular auditorium. The proposal included much green space and made a determined effort to relate to an existing city plan authored in 1947 by legendary planner Harland Bartholomew. The competition entry represented the earliest evidence of Yamasaki’s ideas about organizing a collection of buildings. Out of nearly two hundred entries, his was one of only fifteen to be “short listed” by the competition jury, failing to advance to the next round and losing to his future friend Eero Saarinen. Among Yamasaki’s initial responsibilities with Smith, Hinchman was a series of Michigan Bell Telephone Company exchange buildings throughout the state and a plan for a group of state office buildings near the capitol in Lansing (figure 1.6). For the government complex he conceived a group of four new structures: twenty-three- and seven-story office buildings, a supreme court building, and a structure for the state museum and archives. All exhibited his modernist influence on the firm, which was known previously for its stylistically eclectic designs. The proposed buildings revealed Yamasaki’s reliance on European modernist clichés: rectangular or square slab buildings lifted off the ground on pilotis. The spacious, light-filled lobbies,

11

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 11

FOUNDATIONS

29/7/2017 3:27 PM

12

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 12

FOUNDATIONS

29/7/2017 3:27 PM

reflecting pools, and small courtyards would become harbingers of his mature work. A covered walkway that spanned the axis to connect the tallest office block with its T-shaped and shorter counterpart evoked Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus building (1925–26). While the group plan was balanced, with buildings paired on either side of a mall-like main axis extending westward from the rear of the state capitol, the structures’ varied forms and heights instilled a measure of informality to the whole. The scheme was never constructed according to these designs, although the Stevens T. Mason Office Building arose years later with alterations so extensive that Yamasaki disowned it. Architectural Forum published an article on the complex in early 1947 full of drawings and photographs of the model; although Yamasaki was not credited by name, the work was so vastly different from the firm’s previous designs that his impact was obvious, and three drawings of interior spaces depicted in the article were obviously in his hand.20

1.5. Smith, Hinchman & Grylls and Minoru Yamasaki, Jefferson Expansion Memorial Competition entry (1947; unbuilt). 1.6. Smith, Hinchman & Grylls, Michigan State Office Complex project (Lansing, Michigan, 1946–47; partially constructed in different form). Yamasaki in front row, far left.

Talented Friends Unfortunately, Yamasaki’s professional success was balanced by ongoing personal disappointment. He had moved to Detroit expecting to find a nice house for his family in a comfortable neighborhood. Minoru and Teri had welcomed their second child, a boy they named Taro, in December 1945, just after their relocation (son Kim followed in 1947). Yamasaki’s substantial income meant that he could afford to live in the affluent suburbs north and east of Detroit like Grosse Pointe, Birmingham, or Bloomfield Hills, home to many of the Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors executives. But the family’s housing search brought them face to face with the same unfortunate discrimination they had endured elsewhere. Their Japanese heritage made them unwelcome in these communities. Yamasaki had to settle for what he deemed “a very poor place in a typical tract neighborhood” until he found a 125-year-old farmhouse in an unincorporated area outside of Troy, twenty miles from his downtown office.21 The sting of prejudice may have been offset by the circle of talented artists and architects that Yamasaki came into contact with in and around Detroit, including Eero Saarinen. The Finnish-born, American-raised designer had grown up in the Cranbrook art community, and still lived and worked there in the late forties. Yamasaki seems to have met Saarinen in 1946, when Saarinen was beginning to attract attention for furniture designs like the Womb Chair, and buildings such as Drake University (various projects, 1945–57) and the John Entenza house (with Charles Eames, 1945–49); the international fame that would accrue to Saarinen, beginning with the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (1947–65), was on the near horizon. The two men would cultivate a close relationship and friendly rivalry over the next fifteen years. In the midfifties, when Yamasaki applied for an architectural license in Washington State, Saarinen wrote a glowing reference letter, calling him one of the six best architects in the United States and “a brilliant designer and a sound architect.” He then chided Yamasaki in a personal note: “Your probable reaction ‘Oh!—only one of six!’” Saarinen also recommended Yamasaki to potential clients. Conversely, their relationship may have persuaded Saarinen to choose Smith, Hinchman as associated architects and engineers to create specifications and working drawings for the General Motors Technical Center (1948–56), begun while Yamasaki was still with the firm.22 In the late 1940s, Yamasaki also met Alexander Girard, another multitalented artist and designer based in the region. Known mostly for his textile and fabric designs for the Herman Miller Company—

13

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 13

FOUNDATIONS

29/7/2017 3:27 PM

executed under Director of Design George Nelson—Girard was actually a highly trained architect, receiving diplomas from the Royal Institute of British Architecture, the Royal School of Architecture in Rome, and New York University. He had moved to Grosse Pointe to open a studio during World War II and subsequently designed some houses in the area. Girard was responsible for organizing the legendary show “An Exhibition for Modern Living” at the Detroit Institute of Arts, which showcased the furniture and interior design of talents such as Nelson, Saarinen, Knoll, the Eameses, and himself. Yamasaki teamed with Girard for the design of at least one house in Grosse Pointe, and there is an indication that the duo sought a more lasting collaboration (figure 1.7). The Yamasaki Archives contain a contract, dated May 2, 1949, that establishes the firm of “Girard and Yamasaki.” The document is unsigned, and there is no evidence that the partnership was ever established, but it demonstrates once again Yamasaki’s knack for befriending talented individuals who would rise to the highest levels of their professions.23 Federal Reserve Bank Annex An early opportunity for Yamasaki to demonstrate his abilities in Detroit came with the commission for an annex to the Federal Reserve Bank branch building. The original 1927 structure by Graham, Anderson, Probst & White was a four-story, Modern Classical block that stood on a corner site in the city’s financial district. That building was already overfilled by the midforties. The government subsequently purchased three adjoining parcels in anticipation of expansion and hired Smith, Hinchman & Grylls as architects. Yamasaki acquired the project, and his team presented the bankers with three options: enlarge the existing building by attaching an annex in the same style; remodel the older building’s exterior to match a “contemporary” annex structure; or find a way to meld the two as individual buildings manifesting different times and styles.

14

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 14

1.7. Alexander Girard and Minoru Yamasaki, Daniel Goodenough house (Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, 1950).

FOUNDATIONS

29/7/2017 3:27 PM

The Federal Reserve branch’s vice president, Ernest C. Harris, chose the third option, prompted by the firm’s calculations that this would be the most cost-effective decision. With that concept as a basis, Yamasaki designed an annex to be placed alongside and slightly behind the bank but seamlessly connected to it internally. This solution respected the original building’s integrity while minimizing visual discord with the new construction (figure 1.8). The annex was a nine-story rectangular structure, 115 feet long and 95 feet deep, rising out of the side of its classicized neighbor, which was reconfigured inside so that the two buildings became one unified interior space. The older building was gutted, leaving only the exterior walls and some underground vaults, and its entrance was sealed over with matching materials. For the new building Yamasaki emphasized the steel frame, not only highlighting it at the lobby level by recessing the columns 3 feet from the attached curtain wall (in keeping with his previous work), but also making sure that the structural supports remained visible behind the continuous bands of horizontal windows marking each floor. He covered the frame with an attractive skin of white marble spandrel panels (to complement the older building’s marble facade) and green-tinted glass. The building’s innovative curtain wall and the small plaza in front of the annex attracted the most attention from commentators. Rejecting the normal practice of placing the marble over a brick wall backing, which could be up to 12 inches thick, Yamasaki—with Smith, Hinchman’s engineers—devised an extremely thin curtain wall of only 1½ inches of marble backed by 2 inches of rigid foam glass

1.8. Smith, Hinchman & Grylls (Minoru Yamasaki), Federal Reserve Bank and Annex (Detroit, 1949–51).

15

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 15

FOUNDATIONS

29/7/2017 3:27 PM

insulation. This novel wall system opened up more than a thousand square feet of space throughout the building. Yamasaki demonstrated his facility with International Style modernism in the annex, not only through the visible structure and horizontal windows, but also by adapting Le Corbusier’s advice to turn flat roofs into outdoor rooms. He converted nearly half of the older structure’s roof space into a terrace for the bank’s employees, directly accessible through separate men’s and women’s lounges on the merged building’s fourth floor. And although there was no effort to incorporate pilotis to create space beneath the building, he did include a landscaped entrance plaza off the sidewalk. Setting the new building back from the line of its neighbor gave the annex a separate identity that made its different style and larger size less jarring and allowed for a tiny urban oasis of sunlight and greenery to offset the stark manmade landscape. There was no precedent for this type of plaza in Detroit. The building itself was unique for the city. Not only was Yamasaki’s annex the first downtown construction since the 1930s, but it also was Detroit’s first postwar curtain wall structure. Because the local building codes were not conducive to his proposed wall system, Yamasaki had to justify its existence to the Board of Standards and Appeals. He had no difficulty persuading the board—and the client— of the technique’s safety and economy, and construction proceeded without a hitch. The annex was completed in 1951, followed by renovations on the older building. Dedication occurred in 1953. The annex quickly became a local favorite, applauded by the local press as a “Gold Palace” and admired by Architectural Forum, which deemed it “a shining example for architects and building owners in every US city” of the harmonious merger of old and new. The Federal Reserve Bank Annex would no doubt enhance his emerging reputation, but he would profit from it, if at all, at his own firm and not Smith, Hinchman; the building was published after Yamasaki departed. “I decided I only wanted to work on architecture which could be made inspiring so, after four years, I left the firm,” he said. After an apprenticeship lasting more than a decade and spanning numerous positions in two major cities, Yamasaki was ready to head his own architectural practice.24

16

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 16

FOUNDATIONS

29/7/2017 3:27 PM

CHAPTER 2

EARLY WORK

In the summer of 1949, at age thirty-six, Minoru Yamasaki opened a new architectural office with two other Smith, Hinchman architects— Joseph W. Leinweber and George Hellmuth (figure 2.1). Leinweber was the senior member of the trio. Nearly a decade older than Yamasaki, he had worked with him on several projects, including the Michigan state capitol office buildings and a Michigan Bell Telephone facility in Birmingham. Leinweber had briefly studied architecture at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in the late 1910s, and began working at Smith, Hinchman in 1922. As a vice-president, he took the biggest risk in leaving the firm with his younger colleagues. Of the three, Leinweber seems to have filled the role of office administrator to Yamasaki’s designer. Hellmuth, born in St. Louis in 1907, had established connections in that city that would prove essential in the firm’s early years. The son of an architect, he received undergraduate and graduate degrees in architecture from Washington University, then obtained a diploma from the École des Beaux-Arts at Fontainebleau, France. He returned to the United States in some of the darkest days of the Great Depression and was unable to find employment in St. Louis’s architectural firms (including that of his father). Hellmuth was fortunate eventually to secure a position with the city, spending the next seven years as a junior architect designing municipal structures and forging

2.1. Joseph Leinweber, Minoru Yamasaki, and George Hellmuth view a model of the Pruitt-Igoe Apartments (early 1950s).

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 17

29/7/2017 3:27 PM

relationships with members of St. Louis’s political inner circle. But the desire to enter private practice eventually led him away from his hometown and to Detroit, where he joined Smith, Hinchman in 1939.1 That Yamasaki was ready to leave the firm by early 1949 seems clear, given his flirtation with a partnership with Alexander Girard in the spring of that year. Two prominent factors appear to have influenced his decision. The first dealt with the lack of quality he perceived in the designs of big offices due to the realities of financial pressures. “It seemed to me that the makeup of a large (several hundred men) office is such that its primary concern has to be to make as much money as possible, forcing it to take almost any kind of work,” he wrote in an unpublished precursor to his autobiography. As he recalled later in life, “I had gained experience in the designing of large projects, but had also learned that the turnover in such big firms works against the creation of sensitive, responsive architecture.” Yet given Yamasaki’s status within Smith, Hinchman and the attractive resources at his disposal—including an in-house engineering department—he probably would have been given the leeway to make more expressive designs for the firm had he so desired.2 A second reason for his dissatisfaction, therefore, is more compelling. Yamasaki was disappointed with large office bureaucracy. Within the first few years at Smith, Hinchman he had begun to chafe at the restrictions placed on nonpartner designers. By tradition, all client contact was initiated by the firm’s principals, meaning that junior architects, even if given the lead on a design, had to communicate with the client through a senior colleague. Yamasaki wanted direct interaction with those for whom he was building, and the system frustrated him. Exacerbating this inefficient practice was the fact that if the client requested subsequent modifications, the original designer was often excluded from the process (this appears to have happened to Yamasaki with the Stevens T. Mason Office Building). Almost thirty years after leaving Smith, Hinchman, he remained annoyed about these circumstances. “I was never permitted to meet with the client,” he claimed in a 1970s interview.3 By striking out on his own, then, Yamasaki could be his own boss (with equal partners), free to communicate with clients and to stretch his imagination unfettered by the bonds of hierarchy. In an unusual move, the three men split their partnership into two offices with separate names. Hellmuth, Yamasaki & Leinweber (hyl) would be based in St. Louis, and Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth (lyh) would work out of Detroit. Yamasaki would be the chief designer for both branches. Although the division may have made sense in terms of client distribution and network connections, it would prove to be untenable—and even dangerous to Yamasaki’s health—in the long run. St. Louis In the initial year and a half of its existence the firm garnered nearly fifty commissions, including single-family houses and small office design and remodeling. More of these opportunities came from the Detroit area, but the largest and most important jobs were in St. Louis. Through Hellmuth’s connections with the St. Louis political establishment, hyl secured the opportunity to design a series of public housing projects. These permitted Yamasaki to continue exploring an interest in multistory housing that began with Parkchester during his tenure at Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, while also providing him with subject matter for his first published writings. After World War II, St. Louis—like almost all major American cities—faced the dual dilemma of both a housing shortage and a

18

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 18

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:28 PM

declining population, and these were not new problems. The city had been one of only a handful of municipalities to lose residents in the 1930s despite a continuing migration of southerners. Harold Bartholomew’s 1947 report, prepared for the city’s planning commission, estimated that slums and blighted districts comprised 35 percent of the city’s landmass and warned that “this cancerous growth may engulf the entire city if steps are not taken to prevent it.” This fear, along with the increasing flight of middle-class white residents to the surrounding suburbs, spurred reformers into action. The movement acquired a leader when Joseph M. Darst, a real estate developer who prominently featured slum clearance as part of his campaign platform, was elected mayor in 1949. Darst would leave office after four years with a record of more than seven hundred public housing units erected, with seventeen thousand units under construction and another four thousand planned.4 A strong argument can be made that only New York and Chicago rivaled the zeal for constructing public housing in St. Louis. Like those cities, a combination of private and federal funding sources aided residents in their turn to public housing. This marked the beginning of the era of governmental largesse, when cities used abundant federal funding to clear entire neighborhoods of low-income residents, destroying their buildings and communities to make way for highways and apartment towers. Darst and his supporters fervently hoped that such moves would both solve a housing shortage and clean up the city to entice suburbanites to return to downtown. When the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran a thirteen-week series on the city’s housing problems (entitled “Progress or Decay?”) in 1950, the paper supported Darst’s strategy of slum clearance and new construction. The city had success earlier with a handful of public housing experiments in the 1930s and, in conjunction with the Public Works Administration, had established a Slum Clearance Committee as early as 1933. And Bartholomew’s report, which would directly influence Yamasaki’s housing designs, was meant to stimulate progress and eventually entice residents downtown. Darst echoed other mayors across the country: “If we can clear away the slums and blighted areas of this city, and replace them with modern, cheerful living accommodations,” he announced at his inauguration, “people will stop moving out of the city into the county, and many will start moving back.” But the scope of his scheme was much larger than any previous effort in St. Louis, and the key ingredient would be the high-rise apartment building rather than the two- or three-story garden apartments that city leaders—and Bartholomew—had favored earlier.5 Legislative initiatives aimed at addressing America’s dire housing situation helped Darst and his allies. The Federal Housing Act of 1937 initiated the United States Housing Authority to oversee the construction of publicly subsidized housing. Each new unit had to be balanced by the demolition of a substandard housing unit, and although the federal government provided funding, a local public housing authority would own and operate the new housing. Under the agency’s auspices, the city created the St. Louis Housing Authority and set about planning three projects—Carr Square Village, Clinton-Peabody Terrace, and the John J. Cochran Gardens—in the worst areas of blight near downtown. Demolition for the first two began in 1940 and 1941, respectively, but the onset of World War II delayed the third. And although Carr Square and ClintonPeabody were completed in 1942 under wartime emergency provisions, Cochran Gardens remained stalled. As planners awaited the war’s end, however, passage of the Missouri Urban Redevelopment

19

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 19

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:28 PM

Corporations Act of 1945 furthered the cause by stipulating that private speculators who revitalized blighted districts could receive tax exemptions and abatements. By this time the U.S. Housing Authority had evolved into the Federal Public Housing Authority (pha) and become more active in teaming with local governments to erect housing for defense workers. Finally, just months after Darst took office, the Federal Housing Act of 1949 included federal funds for cities for slum clearance and urban revitalization—including public housing blocks. These governmental initiatives enabled Darst and his contemporaries in other cities to realize their dreams. Darst asked the federal government for twelve thousand public housing units and received initial permission for almost half of them. Just days after Congress passed the 1949 Housing Act, Darst revealed altered plans for Cochran Gardens that doubled its size. He had visited New York City— the only metropolis in the country to erect a substantial amount of public housing structures before the late forties—and had apparently been impressed by its immense housing developments; on returning to St. Louis he rejected existing plans to construct Cochran Gardens as low-rise row houses. To carry out his new vision, the mayor directed the Housing Authority to hire the architectural firm of Hellmuth, Yamasaki & Leinweber. Whether Darst knew of Yamasaki’s experience with Parkchester—which he might have seen on his New York trip— is not known, but he probably was acquainted with Hellmuth, who had worked in St. Louis’s city government for years before joining Smith, Hinchman in Detroit. Cochran Gardens Hellmuth, Yamasaki & Leinweber presented its vision of Cochran Gardens in the summer of 1949. Intended exclusively for low-income families and located near the downtown core, the project would create a thousand dwelling units in twelve tall towers, each thirteen stories high. The towers were staggered but aligned across the rectangular site in identical orientation, along an almost north-south axis. In plan, the proposal resembled the zeilenbau apartment building pattern promoted by German architects of the 1920s such as Walter Gropius and Ludwig Hilberseimer and favored by ciam. The zeilenbau (“row construction”) concept relied on economical slab buildings, identical in their long and thin forms, arranged in a manner that maximized light and air in the individual units and open space on the ground. Yamasaki tried to offset the monotonous duplication of matching buildings with green areas and an asymmetrical road system (figure 2.2). The apartment buildings themselves were concrete-framed and brick-faced rectangular structures, pinched in the middle, where an intermediate zone held terrazzo-tiled lobbies, elevators, and stairways. On either side of this middle section were four apartments each (or eight per floor) arranged around double-loaded corridors in an in-line plan, with configurations ranging from one to five bedrooms. For the individual apartments, most of which had two or three bedrooms, Yamasaki designed combined living-dining areas separated from the kitchen by a freestanding wall. The project’s most notable features were the balconies extending from the living-dining room of each apartment, enhancing every resident’s opportunity for fresh air and sunlight. In addition to being functional, the balconies, which appeared on both the long and short sides of each slab, provided visual complexity and broke up the dull, flat uniformity common to many multistory apartments. Yamasaki’s emphasis on the balconies and their psychological effects linked Cochran Gardens to

20

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 20

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:28 PM

his first published work, the New York apartment building remodeling of 1944.6 In an article on Cochran Gardens published soon after the complex opened, the architects (that is, Yamasaki) explained their “design approach,” contrasting it to the “statistical approach” often used to create public housing: “To achieve our goal we tried to eliminate the stigma often attached to such projects, and it was imperative to avoid a feeling of regimentation. To help accomplish this, the spaces between the buildings were as carefully studied as the units, building heights were varied, design details such as entrances were individually considered, and primary colors were used on balcony doors.” These considerations were on display when the preliminary studies were viewed by citizens’ groups, who complained that the towers would lead to unacceptable levels of population density. So Yamasaki adjusted the proposal by lowering the height of most of the structures. As constructed, four of the buildings at Cochran Gardens were twelvestory towers, two were seven stories, and six were six stories (figure 2.3). The complex housed more than three thousand people in 704 units spread across eighteen acres. It would prove to be a success,

2.2. Hellmuth, Yamasaki & Leinweber, Cochran Gardens Apartments model (St. Louis, 1949–53; demolished). 2.3. Cochran Gardens Apartments.

21

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 21

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:28 PM

encouraging the Housing Authority in its vision for the future. The St. Louis chapter of the aia awarded Cochran Gardens its gold medal in 1953, and that same year the project received an honorable mention at an Architectural League of New York exhibition.7 The Debate on High-Rise Public Housing As he entered the world of public housing design, Yamasaki published his first articles in architectural journals and gave his initial speeches at national conferences; not coincidentally, they were on the topic of high-rise apartment buildings. In doing this he joined a national debate spurred by the changes wrought by the federal Housing Act of 1949 and the accumulative pressures on city governments to address slum conditions and housing shortages. The debate pitted advocates of low-rise structures like Catherine Bauer, Lewis Mumford, and Elizabeth Wood (executive director of the Chicago Housing Authority) against high-rise proponents like Haskell and Yamasaki. Interestingly, the arguments on both sides began from the premise that high-rise housing was the worse alternative. In a speech Yamasaki gave at a National Association of Housing Officials’ regional conference, published in modified form in both the organization’s Journal of Housing and in the Journal of the aia, he argued in favor of the high-rise. He recognized that high-rise housing was far from ideal, but to require all public housing to be two or three stories tall amounted to “sticking our collective heads in the sand.” Although it was healthier and more natural for humans to live at ground level, he admitted, this was not always practical. The reasons for multistory construction, he confessed, “seem to be all economic.” Tall apartment buildings were the better solution in most cases, Yamasaki alleged, for several reasons: they were the best chance for clearing slums, the “cancers of our cities”; land costs were excessive in larger cities; high-rises could achieve more favorable population densities; and fewer but taller buildings allowed more outdoor space for residents.8 The issue remained hotly contested. Beginning in 1952, as the first generation of apartments deriving from the housing act were being constructed, architects, planners, sociologists, psychologists, and other commentators argued over the advantages of either low-rise or high-rise buildings in architectural and planning journals. In general, the low-rise advocates cited the negative effects of multistory buildings on residents’ quality of life. “Privacy of the tenant’s quarters and of his storage, his easier contact with the out-of-doors for sitting out, for gardening, or hammering on something in the backyard, for easier supervision of his children and their play, for laundry drying, seeing his neighbors, having a bicycle, etc., are attributes of the low-density walk-up projects,” wrote architect Julian Whittlesey. “These and many other things contribute to a fuller family and neighborhood life.” Row houses or walk-up garden apartment buildings with four to eight families on each floor, shaped in a cross, H, or Z, were broadly touted for their advantages. But even in cities like Chicago, in many ways a model for the nascent public housing movement, planners quickly recognized that taller buildings would eventually become a necessity. Whittlesey and other writers highlighted two devices architects had begun to experiment with to make taller apartments more livable: skip-floor elevators and galleries.9 Skip-floor (or skip-stop) elevators were a relatively new architectural idea. Promoted as a cost-cutting measure, skip-floor elevators traveled only to designated floors instead of stopping at every floor. For example, a fourteen-story building might have elevator stops on the third, sixth, ninth, and twelfth floors. In such a case no resident

22

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 22

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:28 PM

2.4. Minoru Yamasaki, drawing of a gallery for the Pruitt-Igoe Apartments (early 1950s).

would have to walk up or down more than two flights of stairs to reach an elevator, which was considered an acceptable inconvenience. According to Whittlesey, the first versions of this system appeared simultaneously in the United States and France in the thirties, though only a handful of skip-floor buildings had been constructed by 1950. Promotors asserted that cost-effectiveness was only one of many advantages of skip-floor elevators—in fact, they had the potential to change the entire design of multistory housing structures. Whittlesey emphasized that their incorporation let architects create buildings with reduced corridors (they could be largely eliminated on many floors) and superior cross ventilation. Characteristically, this resulted in the kind of long, narrow slab buildings that European architects had advocated for decades. The gallery addressed both circulatory needs and the desire for fresh air so crucial to multistory structures. Galleries were corridors moved to the building’s edge and left open to the elements. When combined with apartment units lined along one side of the building, cross ventilation would be much easier to create for the residents’ rooms. Galleries could also serve as communal, connected balconies. Often called “sidewalks in the sky” or “street decks,” galleries became popular in continental Europe and England in the midfifties. Not everyone was convinced of their efficacy, however. Some critics wondered whether open galleries were practical in northern American climes; others pointed out the potential danger of unsupervised children falling to their deaths. But Yamasaki and gallery supporters viewed them as one of the few ways—along with generous ground-level landscaping and good air circulation—to humanize these massive structures. Contemporary articles on hyl’s apartment work in St. Louis listed the many benefits of the gallery, including its ability to serve as a playground for younger children (under a mother’s watchful eye), a circulation path, a front porch, a storage area, and above all, a place where neighbors could interact and establish the basis of a community, just like on the street. One publication featured Yamasaki’s drawing of an open-air gallery to underscore these qualities, depicting a woman with a laundry basket, a baby carriage, a small child in a crib set up in the gallery, and a toddler on a tricycle.

23

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 23

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:28 PM

To emphasize its safety, the vignette prominently displayed a perforated screen (or chain-link fence) across the gallery’s open side (figure 2.4).10 Pruitt-Igoe Yamasaki would employ both the skip-floor elevator and the gallery for his subsequent St. Louis apartments. In January 1950, with Cochran Gardens moving toward construction, the Housing Authority altered its plans for the next complex, to be located in the DeSotoCarr neighborhood, less than a mile west of Cochran Gardens. The Housing Authority originally wanted to level the existing seventyfour-acre site and continue the city’s housing renewal with a mixture of privately funded middle-income housing and lower-income public housing like Cochran Gardens. But now it decided to use the entire development for low-income residents. The project would be divided into three parcels: M-4 (later named for Captain Wendell O. Pruitt, a black military pilot and Tuskegee airman), a thirty-two-acre site on the west side; M-5 (named after William L. Igoe, a white congressman and former chairman of the board of police commissioners), an adjacent twenty-five-acre tract in the middle; and to the east, a seventeen-acre plot called M-6 (named for African American lawyer and civic leader George L. Vaughn). hyl received the commission for this vast undertaking along with another housing project (M-7, or the Joseph L. Darst Apartments) in a different section of the city. The Pruitt Homes would constitute the largest portion of the new complex, which Yamasaki envisioned as a heterogeneous mix of low- and high-rise structures scattered on a verdant landscape. In his preliminary plans, Pruitt consisted of six-story buildings, while Igoe and Vaughn contained two- and three-story buildings. The most

24

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 24

2.5. Hellmuth, Yamasaki & Leinweber, Pruitt-Igoe Apartments (St. Louis, 1950–56; demolished). Ted McCrea, photographer.

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:28 PM

spacious units—of three to five bedrooms—would be housed in two-story row houses. But when hyl submitted the proposal, the Housing Authority demanded that the firm achieve higher densities. The only way to follow this directive would be to make taller buildings. By the time the project was presented for federal approval in early 1951, the Housing Authority had drastically altered the scheme, but the overall vision remained an intermingling of tall and short structures. The Pruitt Homes’ capacity expanded to more than fifteen hundred units to be distributed unevenly: one third would be housed in eleven-story towers, two-thirds in two-story row houses. The Igoe Apartments would contain almost as many units arrayed in sixteen towers and seventy row houses. When construction finally began, Pruitt-Igoe had been enlarged even more (figure 2.5). As built, the complexes were enormous and monolithic. Pruitt contained 1,736 dwelling units and Igoe held 1,134, all within thirty-three high-rise structures of eleven stories; the Housing Authority eliminated all of the row houses. This final iteration was essentially forced on hyl by the authorities’ demands for higher densities. In a 1965 article, Yamasaki offered an explanation that he would repeat for the rest of his career, claiming to have designed Pruitt-Igoe with a density of thirty units per acre, only to have the pha force him to almost double the density to fifty-five.11 Unfortunately for Yamasaki, the insistence on cramming more people into less space was not the only constraint on design. Just like every other architect dealing with federally subsidized housing, he faced extreme cost-saving measures and unwavering requirements. Designers were warned that these endeavors would be complicated; for example, a journal article on “Working with Washington on Housing” warned architects considering public housing that their “ingenuity may be cramped by its standards and preconceptions.” The extensive regulations covered an amazing array of details, from the size of furniture allowed in apartment units to the proper distance between buildings. The pha required architects designing complexes to space the buildings according to height; single-story buildings had to be at least 50 feet apart, and each story above that added 5 feet more to the buffer. Moreover, the government encouraged architects to design these projects so that buildings occupied no more than 35 percent of the net ground area. Designers also had to incorporate play and recreation spaces on the property. In multibuilding projects such as those Yamasaki designed for St. Louis, the rules mandated playgrounds for children under age eight at a rate of 50 square feet per dwelling unit. Older children and adults required

2.6. Typical interior, Pruitt-Igoe Apartments.

25

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 25

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:28 PM

another 50,000 square feet for the first hundred units plus 120 square feet extra for additional units. Further guidelines addressed the buildings’ orientation on the site.12 The web of pha bureaucratic restrictions grew more tangled inside the apartment towers (figure 2.6). Each apartment needed at least two exposures, with one window required in every room where living, sleeping, eating, or cooking occurred, and glazing equal to 10 percent of the apartment’s total square footage. Apartments also had to include a living room and kitchen (with dining space incorporated into either), bedrooms separated and equipped with clothes closets, a full bathroom, a linen closet, a coat closet, and a general storage space. Further requirements included a refrigerator and cooking unit (or at least the necessary utility connections for these), hot and cold water lines, space for a clothes washer (unless the building had central laundry facilities), electric lighting, and heat (except in the very warmest cities). Every type of room had its own minimum space, and within the rooms the different pieces of furniture had standardized sizes. And the total cost of each dwelling unit had to be kept below $1,750. These multiple regulations, while arising from a legitimate effort to make low-income housing livable, tied architects’ hands, giving them little leeway and forcing them to eschew aesthetics; in the end, designing complexes such as these were more about space planning and cost estimating than anything else. In an article on a much smaller public housing development that Yamasaki designed for Benton Harbor, Michigan, the editors of Progressive Architecture complained that because of federal restrictions, architects needed to have “the dexterity of a magician . . . to make the allowable square feet anything better than a series of cramped, little boxes—let alone providing anything that falls under the heading of amenity.”13 The thirty-three towers in Pruitt-Igoe were identical rectangular slabs, all eleven stories tall (figure 2.7). Each was 170 feet long and pinched in the middle section (labeled the “rib unit”) to 29 feet, leaving roughly square-shaped “end units” to anchor the buildings. Yamasaki here first employed the rare combination of galleries and skip-floor elevators that the architectural press had speculated about (figure 2.8). In this combination, the elevators in each building stopped at the fourth, seventh, and tenth floors. Laundry facilities were located on these elevator floors. Descriptions of the buildings pointed out that each elevator serviced twenty families—as if that were a selling point and not indicative of the overly crowded densities planned into the project. The galleries, which were only on elevator floors, were 85 feet long and 11 feet deep and oriented south for sunlight. They were supposed to fulfill all of the functions described by Yamasaki: circulation, storage, leisure, and community building. Counter to the recommendations of the ciam but following American practice, the Pruitt-Igoe buildings were really just stacks of apartments, with neither roof terraces nor common areas at ground level. Yamasaki “lifted” the buildings by leaving their first floors partly unsheathed, creating breezeways that both emphasized the buildings’ modern construction and provided circulatory routes through the complex. Above these spaces, the buildings’ concrete frames were faced with simple brick walls punctured by unadorned square and rectangular windows. Yamasaki strove for variability in the complex by altering the brick colors, causing a range of light to dark structures that gave each building its own (and only) identity. Architectural journal articles on public housing or apartment complexes emphasized the importance of providing residents with carefully landscaped sites and provisions for outdoor living, and the pha’s minimum standards governing the spacing of apartment

26

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 26

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:28 PM

buildings were intended to leave as much open space around them as possible. In keeping with these ideas, Yamasaki tried to counter the towers’ sterile effects through spacing and landscaping. He placed each building 200 feet from its neighbor in an attempt to create a sense of openness. He proposed a green “river” of grass and playgrounds winding casually through the site to offset the buildings’ rigid formality, an element that intentionally harmonized Pruitt-Igoe with Bartholomew’s plan for a “river system of parks” in the blighted area surrounding St. Louis’s business section. And he aligned the Pruitt-Igoe buildings—originally to be heterogeneous in height, with different and alternating footprints and elevations—in ranks along east-west axes that correlated to the neighborhood street pattern (making them easier to connect to the existing utility grid) but staggered them along slightly curved streets (the Housing Authority straightened these out by the end of the design phase). When the Housing Authority meddling reduced the project to identically high

2.7. Pruitt-Igoe Apartments. 2.8. Gallery, Pruitt-Igoe Apartments. Henry T. Mizuki, photographer.

27

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 27

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:28 PM

towers, this orderly march of buildings lost its variety and became more institutional and imposing.14 Unfortunately, the combination of the pha’s tight-fisted specifications, unfavorable local costs, and limitations on public housing construction imposed by the Truman administration during the Korean War severely altered hyl’s proposal before construction commenced. Beyond the increased density levels forced on the architects, other austerity measures resulting from pha policies included eliminating public toilets, insulation on steam pipes, and metal safety grilles on some of the galleries; failing to paint concrete block walls in galleries and stairways; using poor-quality hardware and materials; trimming the window sizes; and severely reducing the landscaping and playgrounds. In order to squeeze the necessary units into the allotted buildings, Yamasaki had to make sacrifices: for example, some five-bedroom apartments had only one bathroom, with living-dining-kitchen areas the same size as those in smaller two-bedroom units. In addition, construction costs in St. Louis were extraordinarily high—a factor the Housing Authority cited in its own defense at the time. A scholar evaluating Pruitt-Igoe in the 1970s found that the unit cost for public housing projects in the city was 60 percent above national averages and accused local building contractors of committing “highway robbery” by ridiculously inflating their bids.15 Perhaps just as outrageous to our contemporary sensibilities as the cheapening of the project through such cost-cutting measures is that Pruitt-Igoe was legally segregated. Like many places in America, St. Louis had Jim Crow laws that segregated schools, hospitals, and parks. Even though the Supreme Court had struck down restrictive covenants on real estate in 1948 in Shelley v. Kraemer—a case that originated in St. Louis over the sale of a home not far from where Pruitt-Igoe would be built—gentlemen’s agreements continued unabated in the city and elsewhere. And city officials saw no problem with racially segregating the new housing developments. In its earliest stages, Pruitt-Igoe was planned only for African American residents, even though the neighborhood demolished to make way for it was racially mixed. This changed in early 1951, when the Housing Authority decided to house whites in the Igoe Apartments and blacks in the Pruitt Homes. In practice, once the complex opened both Pruitt and Igoe became entirely populated by African Americans. The St. Louis Housing Authority’s segregationist policies for public housing remained until the Supreme Court declared de jure segregation unconstitutional in the landmark 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.16 When the Pruitt Homes and Igoe Apartments opened, they were viewed in a much different light than today, and Yamasaki’s combination of skip-floor elevators and galleries augured a new direction for high-rise housing. Architectural journals praised hyl’s attempt to work within severe budgetary restrictions, and the entire public housing movement across America had yet to become tainted by the adverse effects of warehousing vast numbers of urban poor. Pruitt-Igoe was considered an architectural success, and the publicity it generated benefitted hyl. Lambert–St. Louis Airport The firm’s rising profile led to more exciting and architecturally demanding commissions. hyl’s good fortune with St. Louis municipal projects continued when the firm was hired to design an airport terminal. In the early 1950s, commercial air travel was still relatively new and different, but those with an eye toward the future realized

28

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 28

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:28 PM

that flights would increase exponentially in coming years. Most of America’s airports were small and simple, far different than today’s enormous, sprawling structures. St. Louis’s airport was situated in farmland approximately twelve miles northwest of downtown. It was hallowed ground in the history of American aviation, having been used for flying activities since 1920 under the direction of Major Albert Bond Lambert, who had flown with Orville Wright; before that it served as a balloon launching site. A young Charles Lindbergh flew mail routes out of Lambert Field and took off from there in the Spirit of St. Louis for New York and aviation glory with his solo crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. The fledgling airfield was able to boast of the first air traffic control system by the end of its initial decade, and it became the first municipally owned airport in the country when purchased by the city in 1927. The following year Lambert Field became part of the Transcontinental Air Transport Company’s coast-to-coast service, which allowed passengers to travel from New York to Los Angeles in an amazing forty-eight hours via a combination of air and railway segments. A small terminal was constructed to house commercial airlines, and the nearby McDonnell Aircraft Company (as well as other, smaller aircraft manufacturers) adopted the field its home base. By the beginning of World War II, Lambert Airfield had become a regional hub for air travel, befitting St. Louis’s status as the nation’s eighth most populous city and the largest between Chicago and Los Angeles. During the war, Lambert Airfield was a naval air station; afterward, the Missouri Air National Guard and Marine Corps Reserve were stationed there. When attention swung back to commercial travel after 1945, the existing structure proved incapable of handling the huge upsurge in passenger traffic, despite numerous bond issues approved by St. Louis voters. There had been about 40,000 commercial passengers using the airport in 1938; that figure surpassed 250,000 by 1950 and was expected to rise to at least 600,000 by 1960. In light of this extraordinary growth, and anticipating the future of jet aircraft for commercial travel, the city of St. Louis retained hyl, in consultation with airport experts Landrum & Brown of Cincinnati, to create a new terminal building and expand the runways. Since none of the firm’s architects had any familiarity with airport design, the team inspected the best-known terminals in the country, such as New York–LaGuardia and Washington National, as well as smaller airports in Atlanta, Dallas, Philadelphia, and Boston, to get a sense of best and worst practices. They also undoubtedly reviewed the existing literature on airport design, which although scant was unanimous in recognizing that circulation and expandability were the most imperative design factors given the future escalation of air travel. “The National Airport Plan for 1953, of the Civil Aeronautics Administration in the Department of Commerce, indicates a need over a three-year period for 2,232 airports and improvements at 2,583 others, for a total expenditure of $650 million,” wrote the editors of Progressive Architecture in a commentary on airport design. But this great need could not be met with contemporary techniques. “After studying hundreds of airport terminal buildings,” the editors concluded that “very few of them solve well the fundamental problem of getting the passenger from ground transportation to air carrier with as little inconvenience and expense as possible.”17 Whereas planning for the future was very much an inexact science, organizing proper passenger, aircraft, and baggage circulation was relatively straightforward, though still subject to disagreement. An Architectural Forum article on “New Thinking on Airport Terminals” outlined the challenges. According to the author, three fundamental

29

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 29

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:28 PM

types of operational classifications dominated airport design. “Unit system” arrangements consisted of a series of individual units for each airline—ticket counter, waiting room, baggage service, airplane gates, and other facilities—creating what the author called “a complete little separate terminal of its own.” This approach had deficiencies, namely long, corridor-dominated buildings with no central source of flight information, and a number of inconveniences. In contrast, the “centralized system” grouped all airline ticket counters around a central waiting area and combined baggage services into one. The “consolidated system” was generally proposed as the best solution for the future (although it had yet to be successfully implemented), with all airlines operating out of a single ticket counter. The Civil Aeronautics Administration recommended the centralized system, while airport expert Albert Heino, architect for United Airlines, advocated for separate “unit terminals interconnected and developed around a public center,” because decentralization was the only way to achieve the necessary space to allow access to airplanes by ground transportation and to avoid passenger congestion.18 Another consideration for airport architects was where to locate the airplanes for boarding and deplaning. This was still the propeller age, before jet aircraft brought a new set of safety concerns. Jetways had yet to be invented, and although there were some unusual arrangements for bringing airplane and passengers together, the most common method entailed passengers walking out of the terminal building, onto the tarmac, and up a portable stairway into the aircraft. Given that airplanes were already large and constantly increasing in size, the arrangement of the planes became one of the most important features of airport design. Two methods had evolved by the early fifties for the smooth operation of the process. The first simply lined airplanes along the perimeter of the terminal building. Alternatively, the finger scheme used piers extending from the main terminal like fingers from a palm, with the airplanes grouped along these piers. Similar to the terminal plans, experts debated the most appropriate solution. Although the proper arrangement of space inside new terminals and airplanes outside them may have been disputed, all sides seemed to agree that these buildings were to be considered as functional objects, and aesthetic discussions were generally avoided. Heino reminded readers that “an air terminal is a machine and its principal job is to simplify the transfer of passengers and cargo from ground to air transportation.” Likewise, a 1952 Architectural Forum article began with an epigraph by architect George J. Wimberly: “The greatest problem for any airport designer is to remember that a terminal is nothing but a transit shed and that the main object is to get passengers out of the plane and on their way, or vice versa, with as little architectural obstruction as possible.” This message was reinforced by the article’s subtitle, which condemned most airport terminals for being “civic monuments when they should be pipelines for passengers.” And of the six questions the author presented as fundamental to any architect designing a terminal, five were functional, while the sixth—“Is its architecture simple and expressive of the building’s function?”—emphasized aesthetics’ role in service to function. Only in the final paragraph did the author elaborate this position, reproaching airport designers for failing to make buildings “at once functional and expressive of the exciting movement and drama of air travel” or that interpret “the dynamics of flying and a flying age,” and instead relying on the familiar comfort of monumentality. The author concluded with an admission that all was not lost in terminal design, citing Yamasaki’s Lambert–St. Louis Airport, then

30

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 30

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:28 PM

under construction, as “probably the outstanding example of successful terminal architecture in the US.”19 When commentators did address the issue of the terminal building’s appearance or attractiveness to the public, they focused on amenities or wrote in vague, general terms. So Heino emphasized that “the city here puts its best foot forward and creates a first impression of its life and culture. The architecture should take on a local color and be representative of the home, industrial and commercial life of the community. It is hoped that we shall have no baroque, renaissance or classical air terminals.” A thick book on airport design encouraged architects to strive to impart a favorable impression, which was done through parking and baggage facilities and food and beverage services, not via space, form, or materials. But if a consistent thread meandered through many of these writings, it was the belief that American architects had a unique chance to establish design standards and precedents for a building type in its nascent stages, and they were letting it slip away. The postwar airport era began with statements of confidence, such as this one by Heino: “Here is an opportunity to develop an American aviation architecture, and I am sure that American architects will not miss the chance.” But as more air terminals appeared, others were less optimistic. “For here, in this relatively new building form completely free from tradition, most US architects have missed a great opportunity,” lamented the editors of Architectural Forum seven years later. “Instead of responding with buildings at once functional and expressive of the exciting movement and drama of air travel, most of them have transferred clichés to the broad, exciting sweep of the airfield. Instead of interpreting the dynamics of flying and a flying age they have resorted to monumentality.”20 Like other airports around the country, St. Louis’s existing terminal building was historically inspired and obsolete in operation. City Architect Albert A. Ostburg’s classically inspired terminal, opened in 1933, was a two-story, rectangular structure with arched entries, pilasters, and an entablature. Only 13 percent of its total square footage was for the public. It had been constructed with the help of a $2 million bond issue approved by city voters in 1928. Fifteen years later, the increase in passenger and airplane traffic necessitated a $4.5 million bond in 1943, followed by almost $10 million the following year. It became clear that these inadequate gestures would not keep pace with the rapidly escalating industry.21 hyl and Landrum & Brown analyzed the complex requirements of airports and presented their report in 1952. Airline travel was becoming so popular that they refused to predict potential flight volumes beyond 1960, in keeping with expert recommendations. Expansion would therefore need to be a key element of the design. Following contemporary thinking, as outlined in the Forum article, the architects were guided by three fundamental criteria in their planning efforts: “Provide maximum comfort, convenience, and efficiency for passengers, public, and tenants. Provide maximum efficiency in space utilization, operation, and revenue production. Provide for simple expansion at least practical cost and inconvenience.” But two related, unwritten desires drove Yamasaki, the project’s chief designer. He wanted the airport to be the gateway to the city, and he wanted the terminal building’s highlight feature to be a dramatic “great room.”22 Yamasaki would profess his admiration for New York’s Grand Central Station and its role as inspiration for the Lambert–St. Louis Airport to several writers. He knew the building intimately after years of living in Manhattan. Grand Central, he felt, was able to project a

31

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 31

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:28 PM

sense of drama befitting one’s arrival in a great city, unlike the airports he visited. That drama and excitement, along with a welcoming feeling, was imparted by the train station’s main lobby—the “great room.” This concept, more than anything else, influenced Yamasaki’s design for the airport terminal. “In Grand Central, the great room dramatized this sense of having come to New York,” Yamasaki said. “Thus, if we could create a great room at St. Louis, perhaps those who arrive here would begin their experience in this city in an exhilarating way.” For his great room, Yamasaki settled on the idea of a large, open space covered by something interesting, like the grand barrel vault over Grand Central’s lobby with its depictions of astronomical constellations. The great room idea fortuitously carried with it functional advantages, Yamasaki thought—its lack of obstructions allowed visitors to see everything at once and easily find their way around.23 Perhaps inspired by Grand Central’s semicircular thermal windows and its association with the monumental architecture of ancient Rome, Yamasaki chose to construct his terminal from arched forms (figure 2.9). He conceived of a rectangular, three-storied terminal topped by three huge cylindrical groined vaults. The audacity of his proposal required an entire team of engineers to execute it. The official structural engineer for the project was William C. E. Becker, a local engineer who had created the Jewel Box (1936), a widely admired modernist glass and steel greenhouse in Forest Park. Becker in turn consulted with architect Edgardo Contini and the engineering firm Roberts & Schaefer. But the driving force behind the construction was Anton Tedesko, an Austrian engineer and thin-shell concrete pioneer. Tedesko had been involved in the first true experiments with thin-shelled concrete vaulting with Dyckerhoff & Widmann in Germany in the 1920s; the company then sent him to Chicago in 1932 to work with Roberts & Schaefer on extending this kind of construction to the United States. By the early fifties he had probably accumulated more experience with concrete shells than anyone in the world.24 Tedesko had designed the first generation of American concrete vaults at the Brook Hill Dairy Barn exhibit (Chicago World’s Fair, 1933), Hayden Planetarium (New York City, 1934), and Hershey Arena (Hershey, Penn., 1936). They were extremely rare at the time and considered to be at the vanguard of modern technology. The original uses of thin-shell concrete vaults were in utilitarian structures; before 1950 most examples were airplane hangars or storage facilities. Some visionary designers, however, were beginning to inject artistry into these buildings. Pier Luigi Nervi, the Italian engineer, was becoming a leader in this movement with his sports stadia and exhibition spaces, and Felix Candela would soon be crafting fantastic concrete shapes in Mexico. Shell construction was attractive to these designers because it capitalized on concrete’s plasticity, allowing for distinctive shapes while offering great economy and structural stability. There were many difficulties with shell construction, but often they were worth the trouble, for the results could be amazing. An article surveying the use of thin shells in the United States boasted that “in shell structures there is a new freedom, plastic grace, flexibility of use, and open molding of space worthy of development and discipline by the arts.”25 Yamasaki, then, was operating at the leading edge of modernism with his airport design. It would be one of the most advanced architectural engineering feats in the world up to that point. Only two other American buildings, coincident with his airport, could compare in terms of structural boldness. The first was Matthew Nowicki’s

32

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 32

2.9. Minoru Yamasaki, Lambert–St. Louis Airport terminal (early 1950s). 2.10. Hellmuth, Yamasaki & Leinweber, Lambert–St. Louis Airport terminal. The fourth vault to the right was added by HOK in the late 1960s (St. Louis, 1951–56).

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:28 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 33

29/7/2017 3:28 PM

J. S. Dorton Arena (Raleigh, N.C., 1949–52), an exhibition space originally built for the North Carolina State Fair. Nowicki was a brilliant Polish architect whose untimely death in an airplane crash deprived twentieth-century architecture of one of its most inventive practitioners. In 1949, as he began to conceive of the arena’s design, Nowicki was hired as a faculty member at Cranbrook, where he associated with Eero Saarinen on the design of Brandeis University in Massachusetts. The Dorton Arena introduced both the hyperbolic paraboloid and the suspension roof to American architecture. Its saddle-shaped metal roof was not supported from below in the traditional fashion; instead, it rested on a bed of steel cables stretched between two gigantic parabolic arches leaning away from each other. Because there were no internal supports, the entire interior space was free from obstructions. Saarinen and Nowicki may have shared similar ideas about the role of form in modern architecture and might have discussed them during their time at Cranbrook. It is probably more than coincidental that America’s second great feat of postwar structural dynamism was Saarinen’s Kresge Auditorium at mit (1950–55), designed almost contemporaneously with Dorton Arena. Here the architect created a large thin-shell concrete dome from one-eighth of a sphere that touched the ground in only three places. The concrete shell was 18 inches thick at the edges but only 3½ inches at the apex. Both Dorton Arena and Kresge Auditorium included glass curtain walls to fill in the spaces between structural supports. Yamasaki’s triple vaults for the Lambert terminal would cover an uninterrupted interior space 412 feet long and 120 feet wide (figure 2.10). Each would be gracefully curved, rising from four corner points to create a groin-vaulted ceiling 32 feet from the floor at its highest point. The vaults included exterior diagonal ribs—at Tedesko’s urging—to stiffen the arches and reduce their thickness; as a result, the concrete was only 4½ inches thick at the crown. This marked a significant savings of material over the 6-inch-thick shells proposed

34

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 34

2.11. Lambert–St. Louis Airport

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:28 PM

2.12. Section, roof plan, and main floor plan, Lambert–St. Louis Airport terminal.

by the city’s chief engineer of bridges and buildings. A protective copper sheathing was applied to the roofs, while the ceilings were plastered and painted white.26 Yamasaki chose the great room concept for functional reasons, but the vaulted ceiling had aesthetic benefits (figure 2.11). First, visitors noticed this roof. Such structural visibility was a central tenet of Yamasaki’s design sensibility that would never falter. The vaults also imparted a particular impression both outside and inside the space. Yamasaki likened them to parachutes and stated that their curved shape seemed “somehow appropriate to the physical principles of flight.” On the interior, visitors would experience another effect: “By subduing the lighting of the vault we hoped to create the effect of a twilight sky forming a serene canopy over bright little shops and busy ticket counters,” he explained. Whether consciously or not, this may have been his counterpart to Grand Central’s famous astronomical ceiling.27 hyl laid out the Lambert–St. Louis terminal as a finger plan with airplane gates lined up along a single spur, more than 500 feet long, extending perpendicular from the terminal (figure 2.12). The proposal allowed for other fingers to be added and for the terminal itself to be enlarged via future vaults (which happened in the 1970s, when a fourth vault was constructed). Beneath the dramatic roof structure the terminal building had three levels. From the parking lot or drop-off zone visitors entered into the open room beneath the vaults. Ticketing services and airline offices occupied the eastern end, concessions, a waiting area, and an escalator were in the middle, and the western end held a kitchen, restaurant, and small circular bar. None of the interior features of this room were taller than 7 or 8 feet so that the expansive glass infill beneath and between the vaults would not be blocked. When their flights were ready, travelers took an escalator down one floor to access the boarding gate section, where they could sit in a smaller room before walking out to the

35

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 35

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:28 PM

airplane. The baggage claim section was also on this level. The lowest story, on grade with the runways, held mechanical equipment and airport offices. Yamasaki separated the dining section from the busy main floor with a Harry Bertoia screen, 48 feet long, 8 feet tall, and fabricated from a series of square and rectangular metal plates painted bright colors and hung from a steel frame. Bertoia’s unique sculptures would complement a half dozen Yamasaki buildings before the artist’s untimely death in 1978, demonstrating the architect’s commitment to enhancing users’ experiences of his buildings by employing highquality art pieces wherever possible. Bertoia was a gifted multimedia artist and former student and instructor at Cranbrook, where he met the Eameses, the Saarinens, and Florence Knoll. He achieved acclaim with his iconic welded-steel Diamond Chair in the early fifties, conceived a few years after helping the Eameses produce their original bent plywood chairs. He also worked with the Saarinens on their entry for the Smithsonian Institution’s art museum competition in 1939. The Diamond Chair was distributed by Knoll Associates, the avant-garde furniture company run by Knoll and her husband. The Knolls recognized his talents and hired him to produce whatever products he could imagine. The Cranbrook connection further helped Bertoia obtain a commission for his first piece of architectural sculpture when Saarinen asked for a metal screen for the General Motors Technical Center cafeteria. Bertoia later contributed pieces to Yamasaki buildings at Princeton University and in Minneapolis, Buffalo, Denver, and Richmond, Virginia. Yamasaki admired Bertoia’s work so much that he commissioned a private sounding sculpture for his home in the early seventies.28 The Lambert–St. Louis Airport made Minoru Yamasaki an architect to watch. It lifted him into a new, high-profile realm that he would inhabit for two decades. Published accounts in popular and professional sources—which were far more extensive than for any of his previous buildings—unanimously lauded this “Grand Central of the Air.” Accolades began with an aia Honor Award in 1956 for the Transportation category. He joined an even more select group when the airport appeared in a spring exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York entitled “Buildings for Business and Government.” There the Lambert–St. Louis terminal was displayed with such future icons as Saarinen’s General Motors Technical Center, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s (som) United States Air Force Academy (1954–62) and Chase Manhattan Bank (1955–61), Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building (1954–58), and Edward Durell Stone’s U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, India (1953–59). These exemplars, chosen by curator Arthur Drexler, demonstrated how patronage of modernist architecture by government and big business was changing America’s architectural landscape.29 Additional recognition came when urban planner Frederick Gutheim included Lambert in an aia exhibition in Washington, D.C. “Ten Buildings in America’s Future” was part of the organization’s centennial celebration. This heterogeneous mixture of buildings displayed Yamasaki’s work alongside that of Saarinen, som, and Frank Lloyd Wright. According to Gutheim, these buildings demonstrated the qualities of an emerging American architecture, including the frank expression of structure, the humanization of the man-made environment, the more meaningful use of space, and the reincorporation of color, painting, sculpture, and decoration into architecture. Beyond the exhibition in the nation’s capital, millions of Americans were exposed to Yamasaki’s design when Life magazine reported

36

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 36

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:28 PM

on the show and celebrated the Lambert terminal’s “spacious, dramatic effect” and future expandability.30 Other St. Louis Work As hyl became better known in St. Louis, the firm found more opportunities to design a wider range of local buildings, from small business offices to a significant government project. In 1951, for example, hyl received the commission for a new central facility for the storage of Department of Defense files. The relatively unknown U.S. Military Personnel Records Center, not far from Lambert–St. Louis Airport, would remain Yamasaki’s largest building for many years and, like the Pruitt-Igoe experience, would eventually culminate in disaster. The commission called for a hybrid warehouse–office building to serve as the central depository of military service records for all branches of the armed forces, some dating back to the nineteenth century. The architects needed to accommodate the thousands of workers required to process more than fifty thousand pieces of mail arriving at the facility, in addition to making storage space for a core of thirty-eight million military personnel files that would increase over time. After spending a year and a half studying the problems involved, visiting similar military facilities, and discussing the project with key participants, hyl released its report, which proposed not one but nine schemes, ranging from simple square and H plans to rectangular slabs and multibuilding complexes. Initially, the Defense Department suggested a square structure, six stories high. But hyl questioned the functionality of such a plan. Although it offered economic advantages, the square plan interfered with departmental relationships, limited the amount of room each department could occupy, and created problems with vertical circulation, and the architects rejected this option.31 The Records Center as built was a rectangular six-story structure with a smaller one-floor annex connected at the rear (figure 2.13). At 728 feet long and 282 feet wide, with an immense interior space of more than 1.3 million square feet, it was one of the largest buildings in the country at the time of its opening. The main block housed offices on the lower floors and record fi les above. These storage floors had more than 200,000 square feet of uninterrupted interior space. Because of the need for constant communication among floors, Yamasaki employed escalators—then relatively novel in office buildings—rather than elevators. The annex building contained meeting rooms and a cafeteria. To address both the extraordinary space requirements and cost limitations, hyl used a reinforced concrete frame and floor system and concrete block walls. Aluminum spandrel panels covered the walls on the exterior at floor level. Tall, narrow tripartite windows with minimal aluminum mullions in-between established a partly transparent effect, and the combination of windows and spandrels gave the building a pronounced horizontal emphasis. As expected, both records and employees multiplied over the years. By 1973, the facility’s holdings exceeded fifty-two million items, and the number of Defense Department staffers needed to handle them exceeded two thousand. The building was getting crowded and approaching its capacity when disaster struck. Early one summer morning, a fire broke out on the top floor. By the time officials declared the fire extinguished four and a half days later, an estimated sixteen million to eighteen million irreplaceable military records had been destroyed. Subsequent government investigations concentrated on the building’s fire safety features—or lack thereof. hyl was

37

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 37

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:28 PM

exonerated because the Records Center had been constructed at a time of contentious debate over the proper methods of protecting paper files and books. During their research, the architects had received conflicting opinions from experts on the necessity of sprinkler systems. Unlike the present, archivists and librarians were split on the issue: some facilities refused to install them, fearing inadvertent water damage over fire damage, whereas others considered them indispensable protective devices. The client chose to do without them, so the building was designed with no sprinklers and virtually no firewalls other than those separating the records from office rooms. Ironically, in 1956—the year the Military Personnel Records Center opened—the National Archives and Records Service instituted a policy that all future records buildings needed to be equipped with sprinklers and smoke detection devices. It did not, however, require retrofitting existing buildings. After the 1973 disaster, which necessitated the removal of the sixth floor, the government installed fire walls and sprinklers. Schools By late 1951, hyl/lyh could be considered a successful architectural firm. Although only two years old, the partners were working on Cochran Gardens, Pruitt-Igoe, a private housing development of more than a thousand apartments in downtown St. Louis called Plaza Square (unbuilt), and the Military Personnel Records Center, in addition to numerous smaller commissions—and they were soon to become involved with Lambert–St. Louis Airport. But as a young firm the partners needed to continue to extend their range in order to

38

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 38

2.13. Hellmuth, Yamasaki & Leinweber, Military Personnel Records Center (St. Louis, 1951–56). Henry T. Mizuki, photographer.

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:28 PM

secure future opportunities; perhaps for that reason, hyl/lyh became involved in school design. Over the next five years the firm, mainly through the Detroit branch, would specialize in educational commissions, with schools a mainstay of its repertoire. The unprecedented baby boom of postwar America spawned seventy million babies between 1946 and 1964 with eighteen straight years of elevated fertility rates. As this mass of children grew older they entered school, and the nation’s public school systems were not ready for them. School construction skyrocketed as educators scrambled—and often failed—to construct buildings on time. Echoing the worst aspects of the contemporaneous public housing movement, schools were erected quickly and cheaply. This atmosphere also produced a new type of school building: simple, easy to construct, and capable of expansion when necessary. The firm’s entrée into the world of school design came with two nearly simultaneous projects. hyl was hired—possibly through alumnus Hellmuth’s Washington University connections—to assist Swiss architect Alfred Roth with working drawings on a commission for a Catholic parochial school in the St. Louis suburbs while Roth was a visiting professor at Washington. The first school design to come out of the office was an addition to the St. Paul Catholic School in Grosse Pointe, Michigan (1949–51) (figure 2.14). lyh was hired to sandwich a fourteen-classroom facility into a space between two existing Tudor Gothic buildings. Their solution was a two-story structure in the form of a U attached to the school on the west side. Yamasaki made an effort to blend in by in-filling a steel frame with brick walls and limestone window sills and panels, but the new building was truly modern, best demonstrated by the degree of openness and transparency that characterized the classrooms and corridors. And he rejected Roth’s vertical circulation system, preferring to use the long hallways common to American school design. 32 Over the next decade, Yamasaki would be involved in the design of more than forty schools, most in the Detroit suburbs (figure 2.15). In addition to supplying steady work and income, these schools established him as an expert in the field. Before assisting Roth, Yamasaki had not participated in educational design, so in the early years he threw himself at the challenge with typical gusto, immersing himself in school environments and consulting with anyone who would be affected by his buildings. “He and his staff spent a full six months in and around the school, talking with administrators, teachers,

2.14. Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth, St. Paul Catholic School addition (Grosse Pointe, Michigan, 1949–51).

39

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 39

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:28 PM

custodians and cooks, in order to determine just what was needed and expected,” recalled an educator at one of Yamasaki’s first schools. “Preliminary plans were drawn, scrutinized, and revised time after time until everyone was satisfied” (figure 2.16). This level of commitment—along with its successful results—led to extensive peer recognition, with frequent invitations to participate in school design conferences with educators and such prominent school architects as William W. Caudill and Lawrence Perkins.33 Yamasaki’s work incorporated all of the crucial advances that differentiated postwar schools from previous generations. The baby boom brought enrollments to unprecedented levels, and administrators and architects struggled to keep pace. Modern design, with its skeletal construction and reliance on lightweight, prefabricated

2.15. Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth, unknown school project, early 1950s. 2.16. Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth, Grosse Pointe University School plan (Grosse Pointe, Michigan, 1951–54).

Library LIBRARY

CLASSROOMS Classrooms

CLASSROOMS Classrooms

Classrooms CLASSROOMS

Classrooms CLASSROOMS

COURT Court EXISTING Existing

Kindergarten KINDERGARTEN

Cafeteria CAFETERIA

Aud. AUD.

FIRST FIRST FLOOR FLOOR

40

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 40

0

100 Feet FEET

North NORTH

GYMNASIUM Gymnasium

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:29 PM

2.17. Sections and plan, typical classroom, Grosse Pointe University School.

materials, proved indispensable to this task. The newer schools featured low, one-to-two-story profiles, large windows, wide hallways, and outdoor courtyards. Above all, educators sought cost efficiency and flexibility. Adaptability was necessitated not only by rising birthrates but also by progressive pedagogical experiments such as team teaching, audiovisuals, individualized activities, and active learning techniques. Just as he proved willing to innovate at Pruitt-Igoe with the relatively untested combination of skip-stop elevators and galleries, Yamasaki took an uncommon approach to one aspect of school design. His particular contribution to the national discourse on educational architecture came in the area of classroom lighting. Before artificial lighting became widely used in urban schoolhouses by the 1920s, architects literally reshaped and reoriented school buildings in an effort to control the amount and direction of natural light entering the classroom. Light was considered essential for maintaining students’ eyesight; it also was prized for its alleged germicidal qualities. By midcentury, though, issues concerning the amount of light available in classrooms had essentially been resolved, and attention had switched to the type of light. Architects supplemented fluorescent ceiling lights with natural light through the abundant windows common to schools of this era. Whereas most designers worked with bilateral lighting, usually involving a bank of windows in the exterior wall and a clerestory in the wall separating the classroom from the hallway, Yamasaki became entranced by toplighting and worked out his ideas in a series of skylighted buildings. Although he was not alone in exploring the potential of skylights— school architects like Ernest Kump Jr. and John Carl Warnecke in California and Caudill, Rowlett & Scott in Texas were also experimenting with them—Yamasaki’s use of them in a northern climate and the extent of his commitment was exceptional. In a few situations, such as the Grosse Pointe University School (1951–54) and the Lincoln Elementary School (Livonia, Mich., 1954–56; demolished), Yamasaki used toplighting in each classroom, varying from a pyramidal skylight atop a hip roof to a prismatic skylight on a flat roof (figure 2.17). This innovative usage impressed Architectural Record

41

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 41

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:29 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 42

29/7/2017 3:29 PM

editor Frank Lopez. “While the device of the center skylight over the one-room unit is naturally not brand new,” he declared, “I don’t recall any modern example that uses it, nor any of the few old ones that used it so well.” Usually Yamasaki deployed the skylight lengthwise above a corridor as a way to drop light into the center of a building and then have it enter the rooms lining the hallway via clerestories (for classrooms) or large glass panels (for activity rooms or overlooking landscaped courtyards).34 An early instance of such usage was at the Benjamin Franklin Jr. High School in Westland, Michigan (1955–56) (figures 2.18, 2.19). There Yamasaki organized the school along a long, wide central corridor as the main axis (which he labeled the “Main Street”) that opened onto common rooms such as the gymnasium, auditorium-cafeteria, library, and administrative offices; a gabled aluminum and glass skylight ran longitudinally above this corridor. Instead of the traditional single building, he also adopted a finger plan for the school, meaning that perpendicular to this Main Street was a secondary axis that lined four separate classroom structures along an odd canopy of plastic barrel vaults resting on a framework of spindly steel legs. Each structure held six classrooms, and they were all separated by courtyards. This meant that moving between buildings required students to walk outside under the canopy—another recent development in the school buildings of California and the Southwest that Yamasaki adapted for a much different climate. His distinctive approach to school design drew praise from the architectural establishment. In 1959 the Franklin Jr. High School would earn Yamasaki an aia Merit Award.35 Yamasaki’s talents were such that the journal School Executive presented him with an award for the design of the Grosse Pointe University School (figure 2.20). Despite his accomplishments in a specialized field and the steady work that it brought into the office, however, Yamasaki stopped designing elementary and secondary school buildings in the late fifties. The experience had lasting effects on his design philosophy, however, giving birth to some of the architectural tendencies that would become part of his mature repertoire and giving him his earliest opportunities to design on a smaller scale and with more occasions to relate his buildings to a surrounding landscape. For example, it was in his early school buildings that Yamasaki became enamored with the canopy or covered walkway. In the Detroit-area schools his entrance canopies evolved from a thick, projecting roof and heavy, concrete or masonry-sheathed columns

< 2.18. Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth, typical hallway, Benjamin Franklin Jr. High School (Wayne, Michigan, 1955–56). < 2.19. Main entrance, Benjamin Franklin Jr. High School. Balthazar Korab, photographer. 2.20. Minoru Yamasaki receiving “The School Executive Better School Design Competition 1953 Award” for “Outstanding Architectural Design.”

43

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 43

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:29 PM

(Abner E. Larned Elementary School, Detroit, 1951–54) to a curious system of rolled steel and plastic parts at Franklin Jr. High School (figures 2.21, 2.22). In some places, such as at the Franklin and Grosse Pointe University schools, the canopy became a fully covered walkway. Within a few years Yamasaki started incorporating the small-scale canopy or covered walk in noneducational projects, such as at the Northwest YWCA (Detroit, 1956–59), the Birmingham (Mich.) Unitarian Church (1957–59), and the Northminster Presbyterian Church (Troy, Mich., 1957–60) (figures 2.23, 2.24). In the sixties Yamasaki used the covered walk less frequently, but he retained a fondness for shielded outdoor spaces and arcades throughout his career. More significant than the canopies, however, and more important to the core of his architecture was another element that emerged from the school designs—the skylight. They would appear in numerous early houses and almost all of his most famous buildings thereafter. He carried this interest into other building types as he began to appreciate natural light’s perceptual and psychological benefits for building occupants, as well as for its dramatic effect. “We like the skylights in the middle of the building because then you work from outside toward daylight, which is fun,” he once told a convention audience. Such a glib remark masked the real regard that Yamasaki held for toplighting at the time, as it evolved from his original desire to brighten school classrooms into a key expression of “surprise,” a foundational belief of his mature

2.21. Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth, Abner Larned School (Detroit, 1951–54). 2.22. Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth, Chelsea High School (Chelsea, Michigan, 1955–56). > 2.23. Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth, Northwest Detroit YWCA (Redford, Michigan, 1956–59). Balthazar Korab, photographer.

44

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 44

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:29 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 45

29/7/2017 3:29 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 46

29/7/2017 3:29 PM

architectural philosophy (as explained in the next chapter). A string of highly regarded buildings in the late fifties, including the McGregor Memorial Conference Center, the Reynolds Metals Regional Sales Office, the American Concrete Institute, and the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts Building all relied on skylights as prominent aesthetic features.36 Houses The single-family home became a showpiece for adventurous architects after World War II, offering them design freedoms usually unavailable in institutional and commercial commissions. Yamasaki, too, succumbed to the lure of the private house. The firm’s project list shows eleven such commissions in 1950 alone. Like school buildings, however, Yamasaki worked in this area of design only briefly. After 1955 he discontinued residential projects, turning down several potential clients, including Sargent Shriver, brother-in-law of John F. Kennedy and Peace Corps founder, who approached Yamasaki on the recommendation of Paul Rudolph.37 In the early fifties, Yamasaki found his mature domestic style in a group of three houses—the Louis C. Baker house (Greenwich, Conn., 1949–51), the Ben Goldstein house (Birmingham, Mich., 1950–52), and the S. Brooks and Florence Barron house (Detroit, 1952–54). Notwithstanding his lack of experience in the genre, Yamasaki’s bold expression of openness, transparency, and simplicity was the work of a skilled designer. In these projects he allowed himself a freer hand and, unburdened by the many restrictions of public or institutional commissions, forged a comfortable modernist residential style that melded aspects of modern and Japanese domestic architecture with his own emerging sensibilities.

2.24. Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth, Northminster Presbyterian Church (Troy, Michigan, 1957–60). Balthazar Korab, photographer.

Louis C. Baker House For the Louis C. Baker house, Yamasaki took advantage of a heavily wooded site to fashion what one writer accurately described as “a great, rambling house that is virtually hidden among the trees . . . a house full of sun, flowers and plants.” On approach, the flat-roofed, one-story house revealed itself to be low in height and small in scale (figure 2.25). Its floor plan resembled a partially straightened Z, with four bedrooms and a playroom occupying one leg, the living-dining area and kitchen in the middle section, and a laundry room and maid’s quarters in the other leg (figure 2.26). A buffer zone, in the form of an extended foyer, cut through the house’s center, separating the living room from the bedrooms. Above it a sizable skylight extended for 20 feet, nearly the width of the house, acting as an illuminated spine for the building.38 The Baker house, despite its demure impression, contained almost 5,000 square feet of space. The approach to the front entrance was under a canopy alongside a small courtyard open to the sky, mimicking the situation found indoors with the skylighted foyer. Yamasaki tried to blur the barriers in the house between inside and outside. Many of the walls inside and out used the same type of wood, and the flagstone that paved the entry walk, outdoor terrace, and small courtyard was carried into the house’s circulation spaces. Substantial plate glass windows opened the living room to views of the wooded surroundings. Like Mies, Yamasaki extended the living room’s ceiling surface material out past the windows to the underside of the wide overhanging eaves for a sense of spatial continuity. And finally, the house sat only a few inches above the grass. The Architectural Forum celebrated Yamasaki’s ability to let “the patterns of nature flow unimpeded through his architecture.” The writer was particularly

47

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 47

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:29 PM

BEDROOM Bedroom

BEDROOM Bedroom

BEDROOM Bedroom PLAYROOM Playroom

Bedroom BEDROOM

LIVING Living GARAGE Garage

Laundry LAUNDRY Storage STOR.

WORKSHOP Workshop

MAID Maid

SITE SITE AND AND FLOOR FLOOR PLAN PLAN

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 48

KITCHEN Kitchen

0

Dining DINING

20 Feet FEET

R TH NNorOth

29/7/2017 3:29 PM

impressed by the way Yamasaki manipulated natural light to his advantage. “At the end of each large, interior space, your eye is met by streaks of sunlight. . . . The effect is not unlike that of looking through a grove of trees and seeing, beyond them, a sunlit clearing and a patch of the sky.”39 Landscaping of the Baker property was done by architect Dan Kiley, whom Yamasaki may have met through Saarinen. Kiley and Saarinen served together in the Office of Strategic Services (a precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency) during World War II and collaborated on a number of projects afterward. Kiley became known for synthesizing French seventeenth-century garden principles with ideas gleaned from modern architecture’s rectilinearity and minimalism, resulting in geometrically ordered landscapes such as that for Saarinen’s Irwin Miller house (1953–57). The Baker house, however, was an earlier work that represented Kiley’s explorations of multiple shifting axes and free forms. He described his design as an attempt to extend Yamasaki’s architectural concepts of “steel-structured Japanese modularity, irregular form and indoor/outdoor transparency” into the surrounding landscape, using evergreens, hedges, and screens to “encompass distinct areas and filter views.”40 Ben Goldstein House The Ben Goldstein house, located in a more heavily developed area, offered Yamasaki a less appealing site (figure 2.27). Here an open lot sloped down on its east side to a thickly treed ravine and small creek. To maximize ground space, Yamasaki backed up the house to the slope break, aligning it almost directly along a north-south axis. The structure was shaped like a U, with the open end toward the ravine; two squares anchored the ends, and a narrower connection occupied the center. The northernmost square held the private spaces—three bedrooms and two bathrooms. The connecting section contained an ample guest room (which doubled as a study or playroom) and, on the backside, a raised outdoor terrace. A continuous corridor through the house’s center line united these two areas. In the larger square on the southern end, which was slightly off-axis with the corridor, Yamasaki placed the entry foyer, living-dining room, kitchen, and laundry room (figure 2.28). A fully glazed east wall provided a view of the ravine, and a covered porch extended the living room outdoors. With its raised midsection terrace, living room porch, and a second, ground-level

< 2.25. Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth, Louis Baker house (Greenwich, Connecticut, 1949–51; demolished). < 2.26. Plan, Baker house. 2.27. Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth, Ben Goldstein house (Birmingham, Michigan, 1950–52).

49

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 49

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:29 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 50

31/7/2017 10:23 AM

terrace on the south side opening off the dining space, the Goldstein house attempted to engage nature in a different manner than the Baker house while similarly incorporating natural materials like vertical cypress siding and flagstone flooring, and to puncture the roof with numerous skylights. The Goldstein house also revealed an early experiment with Japanese elements, a trait that would grow stronger by the midfifties. Along with the house’s small scale and openness to nature, sections of the Goldstein house’s exterior walls, alternating with the vertical siding, resembled fusuma (Japanese paper and framed sliding doors); the same is true of the free-standing fireplace in the living room. Interestingly, such muted Japanese references emerged around the same time in Alexander Girard’s house designs as well as those by Girard and Yamasaki during their brief association.

2.28. Foyer, Goldstein house.

S. Brooks and Florence Barron House The third house in this trio was the most publicized—and presented the greatest challenge. Yamasaki was commissioned by S. Brooks and Florence Barron for a house in Detroit’s prestigious Palmer Woods neighborhood, home to two of the Fisher Brothers of automobile fame, the archbishop of the Diocese of Detroit, and the founder of the United Artists theaters. The clients were knowledgeable about and fascinated by architecture: Brooks was an attorney by training who ran a home construction company, and Florence was an interior decorator. Subdivision restrictions mandated a two-story height and a pitched roof on all new construction, but the Barrons wanted their dwelling to have the character of a one-story house. And they wanted bedrooms on the second floor and a basement. Also, their lot, approximately an acre in size, was uninspiring, located on a flat suburban street flanked by revival-style houses and bordering a cemetery. Yamasaki responded to these constraints by conceiving the house as a T-shaped structure withdrawn from the street as if shirking from public contact (figure 2.29). The long leg of the T perpendicular to the street, was two stories tall, with a shallow-pitched roof to meet neighborhood requirements. This leg was the residential section, containing three bedrooms and a study. Passersby would view its brick end wall—almost entirely blank but for a sliver of windows along one corner—hidden behind trees, a latticed brick fence that swelled slightly toward the street, and the garage’s side wall (figure 2.30). From an angle one might glimpse the house’s sides, which, in contrast to its ends, were mostly glass, framed by cypress trim and occasional white fusumalike plywood panels. Yamasaki chose not to open the short arm of the T-plan directly to the outdoors because of the cemetery behind the backyard. Instead of looking to the rear like many suburban houses, Yamasaki oriented the sunken living room so that its main prospect looked back toward the street, out to a courtyard with a Japanese rock garden. This segment of the house included the dining area, the kitchen, and an extra bedroom. In letters describing the house Yamasaki referred to his search for “an introverted aspect” and the attempt “to keep the street façade as quiet and as relatively modest as possible,” and in this quest he was successful. The house’s focus was clearly on the interior and its sequence of spaces. Yamasaki explained how the concept of “surprise” drove the design. The house’s “modest impression” from the street veiled a series of deliberate architectural surprises intended to make the visitor’s experience more enjoyable. After passing through the brick screen wall one would encounter the first surprise—“the

51

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 51

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:29 PM

Bedroom BEDROOM LIVING ROOM Living Room

Kitchen

KITCHEN

GUEST Guest Room ROOM

Study STUDY Garage GARAGE

25

Feet FEET

TH

Feet FEET

NOR

25

North

0

FIRST FIRST FLOOR FLOOR

Bedroom BEDROOM

Bedroom BEDROOM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 52

TH

NOR

0

North

SECOND FLOOR SECOND FLOOR

29/7/2017 3:29 PM

shadows and openness of the covered walk and pool area” (figure 2.31). Within the entrance court, the house’s true scale and its reflecting pool were revealed. Visitors continued under a covered walk, turning left past the pool to the front door. Entering the house, one stepped into a vestibule and faced the second surprise—“finding oneself indoors with sky overhead.” Yamasaki replaced the foyer ceiling with a vast skylight, allowing scenes of trees, sky, and clouds in a place one expected to be covered. The living room, which was 3 feet lower than the entrance and dining areas, opened to the right of the foyer. In the distance, a slice of window exposed a view to the backyard, beckoning the visitor to approach. Once in the living room the third surprise became apparent—a glass wall, hidden from the entry, looking out over the Japanese rock garden.41 Another surprise, which Yamasaki failed to mention, might be the luxurious materials used throughout the house. The modest brick and wood trim exterior was offset by the travertine floor of the foyer

< 2.29. Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth, first- and second-floor plans, S. Brooks and Florence Barron house (Detroit, 1952–54). 2.30. Barron house. 2.31. Entry court, Barron house.

53

38788C-Yamasaki v04.indd 53

EARLY WORK

16/8/2017 6:23 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 54

29/7/2017 3:29 PM

and dining area, carried around half of the living room as a sitting ledge; vertical teak paneling covering the living room’s end wall; Mexican onyx for a section of the wall over the living room fireplace and as covering for storage units; and a bird’s-eye maple wall in the master bedroom (figure 2.32). These were placed in an environment of simplicity and openness that made them stand out, with the furnishings, carpets, and draperies selected by Florence Barron. The combination of space, surprise, and materials delighted the Barrons, who were extremely satisfied with their house, and like many of Yamasaki’s clients became lifelong friends of the architect. Their statement, published in 1961, is worth quoting at length: “We believe that the architect achieved much more than we anticipated in the way of esthetic quality, by producing an infinite variety of esthetic responses. While the house is not large as houses go, it is spacious, and the design not only provides the serenity we hoped for, but a poetic and lyrical quality is achieved. . . . The greatest quality of the house is the feeling of serenity through the use of exquisite proportion. The timeless quality we wanted was achieved, since we would build the house today exactly as we did then.”42 In a Detroit Free Press article published when these houses were being developed, Yamasaki introduced readers to the main ideas behind Japanese residential design. His description was notable for its emphasis on psychological qualities. “A Japanese interior is intended to be a background for people,’ he told the reporter. “It becomes elegant and beautiful in its simplicity.” He also mentioned how the lack of clutter inside Japanese homes established a sense of peacefulness, that low ceilings and low furniture imbued occupants with feelings of security, warmth, and friendliness, and that small gardens outside a window promoted delight. These characteristics described Yamasaki’s trio of houses perfectly. And there were more commonalities among them. In each, visitors approached houses that seemed almost reticent to reveal their essence (figure 2.33). Except for the Barron house, which was mandated to be two stories, all had low, flat or nearly flat roofs and broad overhanging eaves. These characteristics—combined with surrounding trees, plants, courtyards, transparent wall sections, and screen walls or fences—made it difficult to ascertain the buildings’ true form or size. Entry sequences at all three houses involved a promenade that began with the parked car in a freestanding garage (or a carport at the Goldstein house) placed to the right of the main entry axis and led the visitor out of the parking structure under a wide canopy supported on thin steel legs and past a

< 2.32. Living room, Barron house. 2.33. Baker house.

55

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 55

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:29 PM

courtyard or planting bed open to the sky before arriving at a prominent main entrance. The journey continued inside, where Yamasaki imbued all three houses with relatively large foyer areas; in the Baker and Goldstein houses, they extended straight to the back of the house along the entry axis, leading to a sunken living room that stretched out to the right. In the Goldstein and Barron houses, this change in floor level was the only thing that separated the living room from the dining space. Skylights above the foyers provided excellent illumination and various-sized scenes of nature. They further afforded a visual demarcation between the house’s public and private zones. And in all three houses the foyer walls were of the same material as the exterior walls (vertical cypress siding in the Baker and Goldstein houses, brick at the Barron house) while the adjoining living room walls were plastered.43 Yamasaki’s inspiration for the strategy he used in these houses is open to speculation. The openness of the Baker house in particular, combined with its flat roof and the manner in which the living room flows past a freestanding fireplace, is reminiscent of Mies’s domestic work, but the Farnsworth house (Plano, Ill., 1950–51) was being designed and constructed at virtually the same time that Yamasaki created the Baker house. It also shares features with Richard Neutra’s California houses and the famous Case Study Houses, of which almost two dozen were published before 1950. The John Entenza house (Case Study #9), designed by Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen in 1945 and constructed a few years later, has particular resonances in Yamasaki’s trio: its sunken living area, skylight, and glass wall opening to a private yard are echoed in all of them, while its freestanding fireplace and single, unexpected support column in the living room appear in the Baker house. Similarly, Alexander Girard’s house designs from 1945 to 1950, both with Yamasaki and on his own, contain several features that are repeated in this trio, including the overhanging flat roof, vertical siding, square or rectangular wall panels evoking fusuma, skylights, single structural column in the living room, and view out to a Japanese garden. Despite the success of these and other domestic projects, after 1955 Yamasaki stopped designing houses. The only notable deviation from this policy came in the early seventies when he built a house for himself in a manner that differed from these earlier efforts (see chapter 7). He had demonstrated true agility in his house designs, so his abrupt cessation is surprising—and mysterious. He never offered a compelling explanation. Based on evidence from published interviews, however, one can speculate that Yamasaki merely felt that he did not have enough time in an ever-escalating practice to devote to residences. When asked about his policy on houses in 1959, for example, he indicated that he had shifted his attitude toward architecture and cryptically implied that the new direction did not include room for domestic designs. “But as I grow older in life I find that it is really better to concentrate on a smaller area,” he said. “Everything is, in a sense, intertwined and integrated in life. But supposing I had a wheel that was made up of spokes of things that had to be done in our world. Some people would take half the wheel, others would attempt to deal with the whole wheel. I’d rather concentrate on a few spokes.” Decades later, again responding to the same question, he was more forthright, stating that designing houses had been too much of a burden because he was not comfortable handing over the design process to underlings in his office: “When I do an office building, other people follow through on the details.” Further, the desire to be free from client “meddling” was important to him; he would

56

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 56

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:29 PM

describe how clients and owners of nonresidential projects had their own work to do and therefore “less time for unnecessary meetings.”44 The built evidence suggests that Yamasaki could have made a very successful living out of designing schools and houses. In particular, he was highly regarded as an educational designer, with an emerging national profile; in the early fifties, he was considered a member of the peer group that included such prominent school designers as Caudill, Rowlett & Scott, Ernest Kump, John Lyon Reid, and Mario Ciampi. But he pushed himself toward new challenges. Whatever inner motivations drove him, however, also cost him. The strain of constant air and rail travel between his home and office in Detroit and hyl’s St. Louis branch, combined with a continual stream of new projects, took its toll. Ongoing stomach ailments reached a crisis, requiring emergency surgery in December 1953. Yamasaki described it as a procedure warranted by bleeding ulcers, for which surgeons removed two-thirds of his stomach. An enforced period of bedrest ensued, but by early spring he was back to work with Hellmuth and Leinweber. Minoru Yamasaki was becoming known in the architectural profession on a national scale. The Lambert–St. Louis Airport and Pruitt-Igoe apartments were under construction and had been publicized and praised in the Architectural Forum—their coverage influenced, no doubt, by Yamasaki’s friendship with Douglas Haskell. For the past few years Yamasaki corresponded regularly with Haskell and the Forum’s junior editors as they sought to publish his work and asked his opinions on other architectural matters. The housing units at Cochran Gardens were occupied and judged to be successful. He was finding more opportunities for presenting his ideas in speeches, and writing took on a more substantial role in his practice. He even began work on an autobiography—perhaps while recuperating from surgery—but only a few pages remain; twenty-five years later Yamasaki would resume the project and see it to completion. And the two offices continued to receive interesting opportunities while expanding to keep up. Refreshed and rejuvenated, Yamasaki resumed his practice in 1954, not anticipating the events that would soon jolt his architectural consciousness and steer his work in a new direction.45

57

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 57

EARLY WORK

29/7/2017 3:29 PM

CHAPTER 3

A NEW DIRECTION

The two-year period of 1954–55 marked a decisive change in Minoru Yamasaki’s architectural theory and designs. His buildings evolved from a minimalist aesthetic emphasizing structure to a richer, more decorative and energetic approach to design infused with ideas gleaned from his travels. The process began when the Architectural Advisory Committee of the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Buildings Operations contacted hyl/lyh and offered the firm the chance to design a consulate complex in Kobe, Japan. The partners eagerly accepted this opportunity, and in preparation Yamasaki returned to Japan for the first time in two decades, but with a different perspective; during his previous stay as an undergraduate student, he admittedly had little interest in the architectural heritage of his ancestors. Now, however, he found traditional Japanese design exhilarating and began to think about how he might integrate its lessons into his work. This trip marked Yamasaki as one of the first midcentury modernists to see Japanese architecture firsthand. Almost concurrently, Walter Gropius—a longtime admirer of the Japanese—embarked on an extended tour of the country. Pietro Belluschi visited two years later, and other preeminent figures such as Saarinen, Rudolph, and Louis Kahn would undertake the journey in the next few years. Gropius in particular was impressed by the minimalism, flexibility of movable walls, modular construction, and prefabrication of traditional Japanese houses. While he and other architects appreciated the uniqueness of the structures, textures, and materials of this work, they also tended to view Japanese architecture through the lens of Western modernism. To them, its rigorous simplicity and practical modularity were precursors to similar twentieth-century modern ideals and a confirmation that the principles promoted by Gropius and others for nearly half a century were not arbitrarily selected but naturally emerging from all persons willing to approach the design of architectural rationally, no matter the culture in which they were immersed. Yamasaki did not see Japanese architecture this way, nor did he receive the same message from it as his peers; his encounter with this exotic world led him down a different path. Instead of Gropius’s philosophical engagement, Yamasaki experienced the architecture emotionally, as one might expect, given that this was the land of his parents and ancestors. Unlike other Western architects who celebrated the concepts behind Japanese architecture, he marveled at its

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 58

29/7/2017 3:29 PM

sights, sounds, smells, and textures. He was captivated by how the totality of effects in these buildings made him feel. “I got blinded by sunlight in Japanese courtyards after coming out of dark passages, stunned by their complete control of environment,” he explained to an interviewer. “This was the kind of experience you don’t recover from—particularly when you feel a part of it.” He developed a kinship with Japanese culture that had not existed previously.1 One architectural incident was so powerful that it stayed with Yamasaki for the remainder of his life, and he spoke and wrote of it repeatedly. On one of his initial Japanese sojourns, he came upon a restaurant that encapsulated everything magical about their exceptional architecture. As he described it in 1955: I remember vividly a visit to a traditional restaurant in Ginza, the principal shopping area of Tokyo. In the typically Japanese restaurant, each party is given a separate room. . . . I spent my first moments breathtaken in admiration at the overall beauty of the room and the exquisite detail. After a time, my friend turned to open the shoji since it was a warm evening in late May and I had a momentary wish that he wouldn’t since I thought that the usual city scheme of roofs, poles and crowded streets might spoil the quiet beauty of the room in which we sat. To my surprise and pleasure, we looked down on a lovely garden about four feet wide with stones, moss and branches beautifully arranged. The ability to achieve such visual pleasure in limited space was an entirely new and wonderful experience.2

Subsequently he would stress the significance of the restaurant’s detailed wooden fence, which presented a blank face to the public, obscuring the wonders behind it, and he would become more specific about the episode, characterizing the restaurant as relatively new instead of traditional, and designed by Sutemi Horiguchi. Despite the story’s contradictory versions, however, the building’s impression on Yamasaki was clear and profound, and this restaurant—whether real or ideal—would become the conceptual basis for his designs of the next decade.3 Japanese Cultural Fascination Although Yamasaki’s embrace of global architecture in the midfifties was exceptional, his attraction to Japanese design in particular was less so—he was actually at the forefront of a cresting wave of popular curiosity about Japanese buildings. A handful of architectural journal articles had appeared in the early fifties, but the number of books and articles on Japanese architecture published in the West between the midfifties and late sixties equaled the total number published before that time. A major stimulus to this increased attention came from MoMA. Its curator of architecture, Arthur Drexler, had visited Japan even before Gropius and Yamasaki to gather material for an exhibition. In 1954 the museum displayed a traditional house built by Japanese craftsmen as a re-creation of sixteenth-century prototypes; the following year Drexler published the book The Architecture of Japan. The exhibition attracted much attention in the architectural world and generated a succession of articles that spread conventional Japanese design principles to a broader audience.4 MoMA’s authentic display house was only one of many Japanesethemed exhibitions the museum ran in the pivotal year of 1954. Other shows focused on the pottery, calligraphy, and household objects of Japan. Their popularity revealed America’s postwar love affair with Japanese culture. From theater (Teahouse of the August Moon, 1953, and Flower Drum Song, 1958—both Tony Award winners) to cinema

59

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 59

A NEW DIRECTION

29/7/2017 3:29 PM

(Marlon Brando’s Teahouse of the August Moon, 1956, and Sayonara, 1957, and Jerry Lewis’s Geisha Boy, 1958) to best-selling books (The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, 1946), Americans exhibited a boundless fascination with all things Japanese, and architects were no exception. They tried out Japanese design principles—as expounded by commentators like Drexler and Gropius—in houses across the country, particularly in warmer weather climates like California where Asian influences had existed since the late nineteenth century.5 Serenity, Surprise, and Delight Yamasaki’s formative encounter with global architecture extended beyond Japan. At some point in 1954, he decided to see other parts of the world before returning to Kobe (figure 3.1). It was his personal version of the Grand Tour, a journey designed to expose him to the historical legacy of world architecture. In places such as Paris, Milan, Venice, Rome, New Delhi, Chandigarh, Agra, Bangkok, and Hong Kong he explored ancient Roman temples, Gothic cathedrals, Italian Renaissance piazzas, Islamic mosques, Mughal Indian palaces, and vernacular Asian architecture. He was astounded by the variety of designs and their emotional impact on him. Venice’s Piazza San Marco, with its Doge’s Palace, and the Taj Mahal in Agra, India, made the greatest impressions. “I realized that architecture as we were practicing it—not necessarily the way I was practicing it—but the way that society was practicing it—was inadequate in a sense, and that it did not bring us the kind of experience as people that we ought to make available to ourselves,” he said. “It was a trip of personal revelation. It changed my whole attitude toward life and architecture.”6 Recognizing the new architectural possibilities embodied in old buildings forced Yamasaki to reassess his theoretical foundations. Up to this point he had revealed little of his personal design philosophy. In a few instances he professed his admiration for Mies and Wright, but detailed explanations of his own thinking were rare. A hint of his earlier attitude can be found in a speech Yamasaki presented just a few months before his first journey to Japan. In it he introduced a quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson that he would revive in similar speeches and writings for decades. Emerson’s essay “Beauty”

3.1. Yamasaki as tourist.

60

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 60

A NEW DIRECTION

29/7/2017 3:29 PM

contained the following passage: “Beauty rests on necessities. The line of beauty is the result of perfect economy. The cell of the bee is built at that angle which gives the most strength with the least wax; the bone or the quill of the bird gives the most alar strength, with the least weight.” This philosophy was echoed in statements made by early twentieth-century modernists. Architectural beauty in this conception arises from the designer’s ability to pare away extraneous elements—it is wholly linked to functional and structural concerns.7 Emerson’s language resonated with Yamasaki, indicating the enduring legacy of an architectural design that derived beauty from necessity and reflected it in form—in other words, he firmly accepted the modern emphasis on proper planning and the honest revelation of structure. Accordingly, he admired Mies’s buildings as the personification of modern design but critiqued Le Corbusier’s work, particularly Notre Dame du Haut at Ronchamp (1950–55), as sculpture rather than architecture. Yamasaki’s early fifties architecture, however, is inconsistent on this point: although the Lambert–St. Louis Airport revealed its structure as a central motif and some of the school buildings indicated their construction, other buildings such as the Military Personnel Records Center obscured their internal framing. Yamasaki never wavered in his regard for structure as the foundation of modern design. And like many of his contemporaries, he was committed to using up-to-date materials and techniques. Although the airport and Records Center exhibited different approaches to structural honesty, both revealed an architect fully engaged with technological developments. As with other contemporary architects, the mantra of “true to technology” for Yamasaki meant using such modern materials and techniques as steel or concrete framing for structures and large plate glass windows and highlighting the possibilities that such a system allowed, including openness to the outdoors and the minimization of internal load-bearing partitions—in other words, creating buildings “which are the natural and inevitable product of the machine.” It also included experimenting with new construction materials (aluminum, precast concrete panels, and so on) and methods when available or plausible. Technology was crucial for Yamasaki and many like-minded colleagues.8 While never straying from this modern grounding in structural honesty and the centrality of technology, Yamasaki’s encounter with global architecture opened new possibilities for the emotional impact of his designs. He began to articulate a theory that merged technological acumen and psychological considerations with traditional architectural forms and concepts, guided by a humanist perspective. In particular, from his travels he distilled three principles that would guide his mature design method, which he called “serenity,” “surprise,” and “delight.” All concentrated on viewers’ or users’ emotional responses to buildings. Modern life, in Yamasaki’s view, had become frenzied and stressful due to political turmoil, automobile traffic, population growth, and the widespread (but necessary) use of machines. Architecture could provide an antidote to these ills. “Our technology today has brought chaos,” he stated. “We have speed, traffic, fear, congestion and restlessness. We need a place to put our lives in balance. Architecture is a good place for this. When people go into good buildings, there should be serenity and delight.” He found justification for a new global direction in the architecture of previous generations, particularly Japanese gardens, vernacular buildings, and the Taj Mahal, and claimed that serenity was a vital aspect of Greek classical architecture that had since been lost. Unfortunately, beyond vague allusions to the effort to evoke calmness and peacefulness Yamasaki never explained

61

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 61

A NEW DIRECTION

29/7/2017 3:29 PM

how serenity might be achieved. He may have realized the difficulty of rendering such an ineffable notion in words. We can assume that he intended this characteristic to counteract buildings that stimulated people unfavorably, invoking negative emotions like fear, confusion, or irritation through overly busy or inappropriate decorative patterns, irrational floor plans, or unnecessary structural exhibitionism. In his subsequent work he tried to avoid imbuing his buildings with any of these qualities. Despite his ineloquence on the subject, those designs for which he would become most famous would always project the serene calm, visual balance, and smooth, monochrome materials associated with ancient Greek temples.9 “Surprise” would become the second pillar of Yamasaki’s mature philosophy. He realized its import after ascertaining it in a variety of architectural features during his world trip. Surprise materialized in the open piazzas embedded among the narrow, winding streets of Italian Renaissance cities; in the journey from bright courtyard to dark interior illuminated by a single shaft of light in Islamic mosques; and in verdant gardens hidden behind enclosing walls in Japanese temples. The power of unexpected overhead lighting especially impressed him. He had already been experimenting with skylights, particularly in the school designs, so this was less a revelation than an affirmation of a course already taken. Skylights would become a cherished element of his repertoire, and most of his best and most notable buildings used skylights or large atria. “The excitement of coming from a room with a low ceiling into a room with no ceiling— which is what the skylight does, you see—is really quite wonderful,” he once said. “In our buildings we try to think of what happens to a human being as he goes from space to space and provide the delight of change and surprise for him. If we can have these totally different kinds of experiences within one framework, then, each time you’re in the building it’s fun to be there.”10 The third and final principle derived from his architectural tourism was “delight.” It was the foremost consideration for Yamasaki, and his concern with delight gave him an avenue to reconnect modern architecture with the traditional emphasis on beauty that dominated architecture for millennia. Yet delight deriving from architecture, like serenity, is difficult to imagine without reverting to subjectivity. Delight for Yamasaki was mostly a response to a visual stimulus. He titled one of the earliest articles “Visual Delight in Architecture” and described briefly his fascination with form, ornament, and the effects of sunlight and shadow. These interests became more refined in subsequent years as he came to believe that delight could be effectuated through the correct manipulation of the textural richness of ornament, the play of water and its contrast with the building, effects of light and shade, variety in indoor and outdoor spaces, elegant details and materials, and proper scale. And he was fond of a striking silhouette against the sky. Though present in all great pieces of architecture, Yamasaki thought, it was epitomized by the Taj Mahal. The impression made by that structure, gleaming white against a blue sky and infinite background, stayed with him and influenced his work as much as the simple Japanese buildings he would speak about in more detail. No other prominent architect spoke of the built environment’s impact on the senses and emotions as often—or as passionately—as Yamasaki. And the language that he used to express the aims of his humanist theory was unique. He talked about beauty consistently. On numerous occasions he questioned the obsession with “strength” in architecture, which could lead to brutality, and offered instead an alternative vision of a society where “kindness and gentility” were

62

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 62

A NEW DIRECTION

29/7/2017 3:29 PM

integral concepts and “strong” architecture was not a “true expression” of social ideals. Consider this statement from his speech to the Royal Institute of British Architects: “In America and in the rest of the world there are a few very influential architects who sincerely believe that all buildings must be ‘strong.’ In explaining the word ‘strong’ in this context, the definition seems to connote ‘powerful’— that each building should be a monument to the virility of our society. These architects look with some derision upon attempts to build a friendly, more gentle kind of building.” This is exactly what he was trying to do through serenity, surprise, and delight. It is difficult to imagine any other major architect of the midcentury era emphasizing gentleness, kindness, or “love . . . beauty, and hope,” as Yamasaki did consistently over three decades, or using such emotion-based language to describe their aims. The distinctiveness of his work, his words, and even his physical presence and foreign name drew significant attention to him in the fifties. He would respond to the exposure with the most creatively fertile period of his life.11 Kobe Consulate Yamasaki’s design for the U.S. Consulate in Kobe, Japan, was the first step in a new architectural direction inspired by traditional Japanese buildings. It was also part of an ambitious program to erect embassy and consulate buildings around the world to embody America’s international stature. To direct the campaign, the State Department’s Foreign Buildings Operations arm selected an architectural advisory committee of three architects: Pietro Belluschi, Ralph Walker, and Henry Shepley. Belluschi was the only unabashed modernist in the group and seems to have had considerable leverage over the process of choosing architects for the various projects. Whether Belluschi and Yamasaki knew each other before this time is unclear; what is certain, however, is that the two men developed a friendship. After the Kobe Consulate, Belluschi would admire and promote Yamasaki and furnish him with opportunities for advancement.12 The Kobe Consulate’s program called for administrative offices, staff apartments, and servants’ quarters on a crowded site, roughly rectangular in shape. Yamasaki chose to separate these requirements into three stand-alone buildings positioned within a walled compound and organized around a garden with a pond, scattered rocks, and trees (figures 3.2, 3.3). Simultaneous with this commission, Yamasaki was experimenting with a less traditional inclusion of Japanese landscaping ideas in a multibuilding design for Thompson Products, Inc. (which would merge with Ramo-Woolridge Corporation to become

3.2. Yamasaki, Leinweber & Associates, U.S. Consulate model, early version (Kobe, Japan, 1954–56; demolished). Clockwise from top left: consulate, staff apartments, and servants’ quarters.

63

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 63

A NEW DIRECTION

29/7/2017 3:29 PM

Servant’s Quarters

SERVANT’S QUARTERS

Staff Apartments

STAFF APARTMENTS

CARPORT Carport

USIA USIA

Consular Section

CONSULAR SECTION

SITE PLAN SITE PLAN

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 64

0

20

FEET Feet

North

NO RT H

29/7/2017 3:29 PM

< 3.3. Plan, U.S. Consulate. 3.4. Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth, Thompson Products (Euclid, Ohio, 1953–58; partially built).

TRW, Inc.), outside Cleveland (figure 3.4). His original proposal there envisioned a mixture of the formal (visible in the square or rectangular shapes of the various Thompson buildings, their rectilinear grouping in the landscape, and the square courtyard between the parking lot and presumptive main building) and informal (in the abundant trees and the small pond that wove through the complex). Yamasaki suggested Japanese precedents with carefully placed trees, plants, and water along with long covered walkways connecting individual buildings. Thompson Products’ suburban setting, however, meant an absence of space restrictions, so no surrounding wall was included.13 At Kobe, Yamasaki introduced references to Japanese architectural traditions—not just adopted principles—into his design without direct imitation. He believed that the consulate should embody “dignity, friendliness and courtesy,” and display “deference to [Japanese] customs.” The property’s boundary wall was made of Oya tuff, a soft indigenous rock formed from lava and ash and famously used by Frank Lloyd Wright to build the Imperial Hotel (1912–23) in Tokyo. Enclosing walls reached far back into Japanese history. Yamasaki placed the office building along the east wall, facing the principal street, and the other two buildings perpendicular to the offices with a garden in the center of the ensemble. The offices were contained in a two-story, rectangular building with a flat roof and reinforced concrete structure (figure 3.5). On its facade, large windows alternated rhythmically with plain wall panels, except for the slightly off-axis main entry section, which was almost transparent. The floor slabs extended past the walls on all four sides, creating ambulatories and a second-floor overhang intended to reduce direct sunlight and lessen the need for air conditioning. Yamasaki further counteracted heat and glare by wrapping a light, delicate screen of slender white bronze columns and fiberglass panels around the building. Like the garden and the enclosing wall, this element alluded to traditional practices, subtly evoking the paper and wood shojis of Japan’s past that filtered sunlight into interior spaces.14

65

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 65

A NEW DIRECTION

29/7/2017 3:29 PM

Instead of resting the consulate office building on the ground, Yamasaki raised it above grade, for two important reasons (figure 3.6). The first was out of necessity: the area had a history of flooding (and earthquakes), and the complex was only two blocks from the ocean. In addition, however, he felt that the supporting platform gave the compound “a Japanese look.” Japanese tradition, he knew, held that gardens were best seen from above, since the most beautiful parts of plants are the blossoms reaching toward the sun. Lifting the office building allowed it to act as an elevated stand for viewing the central garden. The two secondary buildings also were simple rectangles and less detailed than the office structure. Perhaps most intriguing was the servants’ quarters, where Yamasaki installed authentic shojis as well as tatamis on the floors in the six apartments. In both the servants’ building and the three-story staff quarters, glazed sides contrasted with solid end walls faced with araidashi, a Japanese plaster style featuring small stones on the surface.15 These instances of adapting indigenous architectural customs were small gestures in a broad design scheme, but they produced a design that was Japanese in spirit, form, and materials. In fact, the Kobe Consulate might be understood as Yamasaki’s attempt to re-create the salient components of a profound architectural episode in his life—his visit to the authentic Japanese restaurant. There are too many points of similarity between Yamasaki’s repeated descriptions of that restaurant and the consulate complex to be coincidental. The restaurant and consulate both were surrounded by a wall. They both contained elaborate gardens of “sky, trees and stones in a gravel sea”; moreover, the “most perfect arrangement of roof and building, walks and trees,” as Yamasaki described the restaurant courtyard, might also refer to certain garden views at the consulate. Each building was raised off the ground on a platform, and their interior colorings were comparable: gray-green plaster and wood framing for the restaurant, gray-beige marble and bronze columns for the

66

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 66

3.5. U.S. Consulate. > 3.6. Courtyard, U.S. Consulate.

A NEW DIRECTION

29/7/2017 3:29 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 67

29/7/2017 3:30 PM

office building (figure 3.7). Likewise, the consulate’s visible structure corresponded to the restaurant’s “skillful arrangement of posts and beams” that Yamasaki admired. Finally, the “light, luminous quality” expressed by the consulate’s plastic screens, as described by the Architectural Forum, echoed the “luminous shoji” that Yamasaki saw at the restaurant. It is not difficult to imagine that Yamasaki’s final appraisal of his restaurant experience—that he felt “transported to a fairyland, a delightful, peaceful dream, far away from the tumult of workaday Tokyo, Detroit or New York”—could equally apply to the consulate complex, so different was it from its surroundings and so exceptional in appearance.16 Architectural journals praised the Kobe Consulate complex as a sensitive interpretation of Japanese architectural principles and a successful melding of traditional and modern. There was a noteworthy distinction between its reception in the United States and Japan. The Americans were impressed by the project’s historical authenticity, while their counterparts prized Yamasaki’s ability to incorporate the latest technology (and his willingness to learn about their heritage). In terms of his development, the buildings were significant in showing not only his evolving design mentality but also his first true embrace of his ancestry. The consulate added historical consciousness to his

3.7. Interior view, U.S. Consulate.

68

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 68

A NEW DIRECTION

29/7/2017 3:30 PM

repertoire, which would have ramifications for other commissions that came into the office in the midfifties.17 London Embassy Competition As the Kobe Consulate progressed, the architectural advisory committee invited hyl/lyh to submit a proposal for a U.S. embassy in London. The firm had been selected to participate in a limited competition along with seven other architects and firms—all but one already involved with State Department projects around the world: Anderson, Beckwith & Haible; Ernest J. Kump; Eero Saarinen & Associates; Josep Lluís Sert with Hugh Jackson and John Zalewski; Edward Durell Stone & Associates; Hugh Stubbins Associates; and Wurster, Bernardi, & Emmons. This was a singular opportunity because the London embassy was the most prestigious commission of the Foreign Buildings Operations’ construction initiative; the building design was the only one to be competitively selected. Yamasaki accepted the challenge and began working on a structure that would apply his expanded palette to a building in a Western setting.18 The competition entries were widely publicized on submission, prompting spirited debates about whether the embassy should be respectfully traditional or boldly modern. A ten-page brief for the competing firms detailed spatial and organizational requirements and emphasized the need to contextualize the building with its distinguished Grosvenor Square location, which had been the historical home of the nation’s diplomatic presence in England since 1785 and more recently had served as General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s headquarters during World War II. According to the program, the embassy’s “relationship to the other three sides” of the square was “of the utmost importance.” Given the building’s stately setting and momentous purpose, there was pressure from some corners to give the embassy a conservative image. Surprisingly, more of this pressure appeared to come from the Americans than from the British. Representatives from the Royal Commission on Fine Arts, for example, expressed hope that the competitors’ designs “would not be stodgy English but purely American . . . expressive of the best that is being designed in America today.”19 Seeking to satisfy both constituencies, Yamasaki was determined to harmonize the embassy with its surroundings while expressing his commitment to both modern architecture and English history. Around this time he began to address the role of history more frequently in his writings and speeches, arguing for a rapprochement of the modern and the historical. At the Michigan aia convention, Yamasaki warned of a “historical fallacy” plaguing architectural consciousness. Contemporary architects, he believed, too often refused to “look through the past to the future” and instead unnecessarily perpetuated the first generation of modernists’ overreaction to nineteenth-century revivalism, denouncing “everything old”; in doing so they overlooked useful lessons from the past, such as valuing nature, appreciating elegant details, and understanding materials. Only by incorporating the richness of historical traditions could modern architecture evolve and redeem itself as a cultural practice. Specifically, this meant reconsidering historical elements. “If we avoid the use of the Roman and Gothic arches,” Yamasaki later wrote, “we are denying ourselves of two of the most logical and beautiful means of construction available. Actually, these forms are better done in concrete than stone.” In the London Embassy, Yamasaki would explicitly reference Western architectural history as he strove to synthesize England’s Gothic heritage with the requirements of a modern office building.20

69

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 69

A NEW DIRECTION

29/7/2017 3:30 PM

The project’s parti was similar to that of the Kobe Consulate. Like its Japanese counterpart, the London complex would be surrounded by an enclosing wall (figure 3.8). Yamasaki split the embassy’s necessary functions into two parallel buildings, separated by a garden but connected via an enclosed sky-bridge. The main building, facing east toward Grosvenor Square, would house the ambassador and staff offices and secure rooms in a rectangular four-story structure, daringly raised on slender pilotis above an open loggia. This motif of an open arcade beneath a solid block was most likely borrowed from the Doge’s Palace in the Piazza San Marco—one of Yamasaki’s favorite buildings. This would not be the last time he referenced the Doge’s Palace, whose arched middle section would inspire numerous arcades in Yamasaki’s work up through the World Trade Center. At ground level, a bronze grille surrounded the lobby, adjacent to a garden and pool. Correspondence in Yamasaki’s archives indicate that he approached Henry Moore about crafting a sculpture for the embassy; this garden would have been the logical choice for such an artwork. The secondary building housed lesser officials’ offices, public access areas, and an employee cafeteria. Yamasaki imagined a steel frame with stone cladding for the main building, which allowed him to experiment with a new aesthetic that he felt was appropriate for the job. “As for architectural treatment, we had seen and admired the refinement and vertical character of most English architecture both Gothic and Renaissance,” he wrote in a description of the project. Yamasaki realized that this verticality was multivalent: it alluded to England’s Gothic past while also expressing the building’s structure in a manner suitable for contemporary architecture. Despite his expanding interest in history, he remained a firm believer in the deeply engrained modernist maxim of structural rationalism. Instead of grafting Gothic decoration onto a modern structure, with the London Embassy he tried to harmonize traditional and modern, with the historical elements following naturally from the structural choices. This rendered the embassy closer in spirit to the domes of the Lambert–St. Louis Airport than to the Kobe Consulate’s decorative historicism. “By spacing columns closely together,” said Yamasaki, “we felt that we achieved a verticality in the façade and a

70

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 70

3.8. Yamasaki, Leinweber & Associates, U.S. Embassy project, London (1955–56; unbuilt). Drawing by Morris Jackson.

A NEW DIRECTION

29/7/2017 3:30 PM

rich ‘Gothic’ look without compromise with our beliefs in architectural structure or character.” The columns were indeed narrowly spaced— a mere 3 feet, 9 inches and 7 feet, 6 inches apart—establishing a preference for slender window openings that he would develop further in future commissions.21 The embassy’s Gothic resonances were not, however, all structural. Extending the supporting columns above the roof to create “finials” in the manner of the Palace of Westminster enhanced the building’s silhouette. The irregular rhythm of these alternating single and double columns on the office building’s long sides, the slight elongation of windows on its second floor—dictated by the program’s requirements that the ambassador’s offices not be on the ground level and that they have two floors above them—and the off-center placement of the entry lobby made the facade subtly asymmetrical. To emphasize the Gothic connections, the triangular stone spandrels Yamasaki used between columns formed window openings that mimicked lancet arches. The triangular arch would become a recurring trope in Yamasaki’s mature architecture.22 Yamasaki’s conception received accolades when the competition entries were published. The Architectural Forum regarded his effort as “one of the most original and evocative schemes in the group.” England’s Architectural Review applauded Yamasaki for taking into account “the architectural genius loci” of the site with his Early Victorian Gothic concept, which the author perceived was no mere affectation but a logical choice dictated by the structural system. Numerous architects and commentators, including Philip Johnson, wrote laudatory letters to Yamasaki. The competition jury—composed of the architectural advisory committee plus aia president George B. Cummings and three government officials—must have been similarly impressed; they selected his proposal to be one of three finalists along with those of Saarinen and Stone. The winner, however, was Saarinen. Shortly after the February 1956 announcement, Yamasaki expressed his disappointment in a letter to a former employee, asserting that his entry was the only “outright modern scheme” of the group and that Belluschi and others had backed him but that criticisms by outside architects and a lack of “stone joints and explanations” had damaged his chances.23 Although Yamasaki lost the embassy competition, professional curiosity about the contest and publication of the entries boosted his career. America’s leading architectural journals’ articles on the London Embassy competition coincided with the first extensive coverage of the Lambert–St. Louis Airport in the spring of 1956 (the Kobe Consulate would not appear in-depth until its completion in 1958). Later that year the aia would present him with an Honor Award for the airport and a Merit Award for the Weisberg, Feld, and Weisberg Medical Clinic in Detroit (1952–55). A New Firm Close observers may have noticed that those aia awards, though given the same year, had different recipients. The airport award went to hyl, but the clinic was attributed to a new entity, Yamasaki, Leinweber & Associates (yla), formed in the summer of 1955. Trying to run offices simultaneously in two distant cities had overwhelmed Yamasaki and impaired his health. In addition, he and Hellmuth seem to have held different ambitions. When Yamasaki described their dissolution in his autobiography, he attributed it to the strain of the dual partnership, explaining that he and Hellmuth had split amicably. In the next sentence, though, he hinted at conflicting desires: “The Saint Louis firm, headed by George Hellmuth, has become a very

71

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 71

A NEW DIRECTION

29/7/2017 3:30 PM

large office with branches in various parts of the country, and I am pleased that George has been able to fulfill his ambitions,” he wrote. “Even at that early time I knew that I would not want to have an office of more than about fifty people.”24 The two distinct offices had been running for years, which eased the breakup. Hellmuth, with his extensive St. Louis connections, would have been foolish to practice anywhere else, and he quickly established a new office with hyl associates and fellow Washington University alumni Gyo Obata and George Kassabaum. Losing Obata, his former chief assistant on the Lambert–St. Louis Airport and probably the firm’s most gifted junior designer, was obviously a blow to Yamasaki. Their new office, known as Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum (now hok), became the largest architectural firm in the United States with nearly two thousand employees and a global network of offices. Yamasaki’s office was further shaken by the departure of two other talented young architects. Philip Meathe and William Kessler left in 1955 to begin their own firm, which would become very successful in the Detroit area. Their exodus occurred with Yamasaki’s blessing but left a void in yla’s design group. Kessler, whom Yamasaki had recruited from Harvard when the former was studying and teaching with Walter Gropius, had been “chief designer of the team that worked on the buildings that had enabled us to obtain better and larger commissions.” His impact on the Grosse Pointe University School was particularly important. Meathe, Kessler & Associates subsequently received several design awards before splitting in the late sixties, after which Kessler continued on his own while Meathe joined Smith, Hinchman, where he would eventually become president. Kessler’s early house designs were sympathetic to Yamasaki’s and can be considered offspring, permitting a glimpse into how Yamasaki’s domestic architecture might have evolved if he had not stopped designing houses around this time—and perhaps indicating Kessler’s influence on those homes Yamasaki did design.25 McGregor Memorial Conference Center All of the influences gathered and ideas formed during his world tour coalesced in Yamasaki’s design for the McGregor Memorial Conference Center on the campus of Wayne (now Wayne State) University in Detroit, where his deft synthesis of modernism and history heralded a promising alternative to his earlier work. Despite the hyl/lyh breakup and loss of key personnel, his new firm moved forward, producing a building that would prove to be even more crucial to Yamasaki’s development than the Kobe Consulate or London Embassy. The McGregor Center revealed the fruitful possibilities of his new eclectic approach (figure 3.9). The building originated as a gift from Detroit’s McGregor Fund in memory of its founders, philanthropists Tracy and Katherine Whitney McGregor. Tracy had been active in numerous charitable causes throughout his life and operated a homeless shelter in the city for forty-five years. Katherine regularly volunteered for and donated to local and national charitable organizations. The McGregors inaugurated a foundation in 1925 dedicated to supporting education, youth services, health care, and science, in an effort “to relieve the misfortunes and promote the well-being of mankind.”26 Tracy McGregor died in 1936. In early 1954, following Katherine’s death, members of the McGregor Fund Program Committee began discussing the possibility of memorializing Tracy in some way. After initially considering a public fountain in downtown Detroit, the committee concentrated on a building, in either the downtown civic center or the cultural center around the Detroit Institute of Arts and

72

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 72

A NEW DIRECTION

29/7/2017 3:30 PM

3.9. Yamasaki, Leinweber & Associates, McGregor Memorial Conference Center, Wayne State University (Detroit, 1955– 58). Balthazar Korab, photographer.

the Detroit Public Library two miles away. The committee specifically sought a structure to “represent Mr. McGregor’s reflective nature and appreciation of the value of beauty and repose.” By late that year McGregor Fund representatives were in contact with Wayne University to discuss a community conference center on campus. The two parties reached a deal, and the following spring the McGregor Fund suggested lyh as designers for the endeavor.27 The university retained Suren Pilafian, author of several master plans for Wayne since the early forties and the de facto campus architect, to serve as a consultant. Yamasaki prepared initial sketches for the school’s board of trustees by December 1954. The board responded favorably, and a full set of drawings was completed in the spring. In May 1956 the university officially approved the project. Groundbreaking was scheduled for late December. At the time Yamasaki embarked on the conference center, Wayne had a relatively small campus with a rapidly increasing enrollment of more than twenty thousand students. Construction was under way on Pilafian’s L-shaped arts complex, and the site chosen for the conference center was on the corner of Ferry Street and Second Avenue—the campus’s main artery—in the pocket left by Pilafian’s almost-completed structure. The campus had erected four of Pilafian’s buildings in the previous seven years, all of them brick International Style structures with flat roofs, ribbon windows, and an absence of

73

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 73

A NEW DIRECTION

29/7/2017 3:30 PM

ornamentation or historical connotations. Yamasaki’s conference center would be deliberately different from its neighbors. The conference center’s multivalent nature affected the decision to make the building distinctive. Yamasaki and the university administrators anticipated the McGregor Center fulfilling various roles. It was to be, first, a physical and symbolic gateway to the campus; second, the prime location where the community and the university would interact; and third, as required by the McGregor Fund, a memorial. Such a complex program demanded an exceptional solution. Yamasaki responded with a two-story templelike building raised on a podium. The structure was surrounded on one and a half sides by a sunken court with an L-shaped reflecting pool containing three platforms for sculpture. The building’s interior spaces were simple, consisting of eleven conference rooms on two levels, an office, and a basement dining room and kitchen. By consensus with the McGregor Fund and the university, no classrooms were included (figure 3.10). To house these functional spaces, Yamasaki proposed a building square in shape but not a solid whole—instead, he sliced open the center with a transparent atrium and made the side walls nearly continuous sheets of glass. The overall effect—of a box split open—owes much to Yamasaki’s reoriented architectural sensibility, dually inspired by the airiness of Japanese architecture and Gothic verticality. The glass atrium was clearly the building’s highlight. Visitors stepped inside to encounter a striking two-story space reminiscent of a Gothic cathedral in its vertical emphasis; their eyes were instinctively drawn up through the open space to the faceted skylight above (figure 3.11). An administrator touring the building in its early days recorded doing just that, to which Yamasaki replied: “I meant . . . when you walk into this building for you to do what you have done.

> 3.11. Atrium, McGregor Center. Balthazar Korab, photographer.

Coats COATS

Conference CONFER.

CONFER. Conference

3.10. First-floor plan, McGregor Center.

Lobby LOBBY

0

40

Feet FEET

NO

SITE PLAN SITE PLAN

NRoTr tHh

Conference CONFER.

74

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 74

A NEW DIRECTION

29/7/2017 3:30 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 75

31/7/2017 10:23 AM

What is inside of you is supposed to reach up. Inside of this building you are meant to reach for the sky.” Wayne’s president Clarence Hilberry agreed, stating, “It’s the only college building I’ve ever seen that makes people stop and look up. It makes you want to stretch taller.” Yamasaki not only split the block at the McGregor Center but made the opening the building’s focal point. By extending the atrium out beyond the end walls, he declared its difference—the result was not a building that had been pulled apart so that a lobby could arise in the gap, but a building into which a crystalline sliver had been inserted. This bolder and more sophisticated handling of form was something new in Yamasaki’s repertoire; in many ways, the McGregor Center was his most experimental design since the Lambert–St. Louis Airport.28 This was not the first time that Yamasaki divided a structure down its center—in the concurrent Franklin Jr. High School and Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts buildings he also tested the central opening, but in those examples the gap was smaller, appearing as a corridor beneath a skylight. At the McGregor Center, Yamasaki expanded the atrium into a wider space. In either iteration, the central void-skylight combination would reemerge for much of the rest of his career. Yamasaki alluded to the atrium’s light-filled openness on McGregor’s exterior but coyly obscured its full effect (particularly when approaching the building from its main entry on the north side), withholding its surprising contrast until visitors stepped inside and the space rose unobstructed through two stories, through the diamond-patterned ceiling and pyramidal skylights, and into the sky beyond. Access to the atrium was through two sets of identical doors designed by artist D. Lee DuSell. Their plentiful triangles established a recurring motif used elsewhere in the building (figure 3.12). DuSell collaborated with Yamasaki on many of the architect’s most important projects, including the McGregor Center doors, reception desks at the Michigan Consolidated Gas Company Headquarters and Reynolds Sales Office, the Ark at the North Shore Congregation Synagogue, and elevator doors, desks, and hardware for the World Trade Center. He was a wide-ranging artist from Aurora, Illinois, with particular talents in furniture and metalwork. Although DuSell was a professor at Syracuse University, the two may have met through the Detroit art community; DuSell had briefly attended Cranbrook in the late forties and spent a year as an instructor at the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts a few years later. Yamasaki was familiar enough with the artist’s work to offer him the McGregor commission despite a lack of experience with architectural projects. For the next two decades the architect would rely on DuSell for the key ornamental touches in his buildings.29 DuSell’s doors did more than establish a geometric pattern for the rest of the building. The doors also partially blocked the view into the atrium, adding to the surprise that Yamasaki so cherished. Because of the doors, “You don’t see into the building right away,” he told a reporter. “There’s a moment of mystery. Then you open them and you see everything.” This represented a twist on the traditional Japanese technique—which Yamasaki came to admire—of constructing walls with movable lower panels, so that they could be opened and an enticing sliver of the outside world allowed to peek below the obstruction. At the McGregor Center, he reversed the technique, blocking the lower part of the atrium’s end walls with DuSell’s decorative doors and letting visitors to see over them to the ceiling while denying them the full experience of its spaciousness until entering the building.30

76

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 76

A NEW DIRECTION

29/7/2017 3:30 PM

High above the atrium, pyramidal skylights flooded the space below with abundant light while also visually terminating the building. Yamasaki’s foreign travels had impressed on him the beauty of a dramatic silhouette, and from the midfifties on he attempted to make buildings that boldly stood out against the backdrop of the sky. He believed this was a particularly important architectural aspect that had been discarded in the era of the ubiquitous flat roof. Deeply modeled facades capable of producing striking effects of light and shadow were another casualty of modernism resurrected by Yamasaki, following the lead of such notables as Le Corbusier and Marcel Breuer. Planar steel and glass walls, criticized by historian Vincent Scully as “the thin, icily gleaming screen wall”—alluding to its cold, machined precision and lack of visual excitement—became ubiquitous in American architecture of the fifties. Yamasaki wanted buildings that were somehow more visually interesting and capable of stimulating emotional responses, which flat or almost flat surfaces alone could not provide. So he began to eliminate steel and glass curtain walls wherever possible, making facades with textured surfaces that could capture light, cast interesting shadows, and invite viewers to reach out and touch them. At the McGregor Center he did employ full glass curtain walls with thin aluminum mullions, but they were recessed behind a colonnade of structural supports and partly obscured by aluminum screens with hexagonal patterns to “achieve a pattern of sun and shadow,” creating depth and combining layers of different materials; this all contrasted with the end walls, which were almost entirely plain except for windows flanking the atrium, an

3.12. Lee DuSell, McGregor Center entry doors.

77

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 77

A NEW DIRECTION

29/7/2017 3:30 PM

overhanging eave, and a matching skirt marking the second-floor level (figure 3.13). The contrast also occurred in the colors used. Early models show that Yamasaki experimented with black marble end walls before settling on travertine, which provided a whiteness to balance the dark appearance of the windows.31 The McGregor Center’s atrium and side walls also demonstrated one of Yamasaki’s most prominent mature tendencies—the union of structure and decoration, inspired by the Japanese architecture and Gothic cathedrals seen in his travels. For McGregor he used steel columns sheathed in fireproofing concrete and wrapped with marble panels both inside and out. Their rhythm and capitals accentuated the triangular motif that dominated the design (figure 3.14). These columns also created a slight ambiguity in the perception of the building’s structural system. They could be read alternately as columns with inverted-pyramid capitals (in daylight) or as arched openings separated by thin mullions (at night with the interior lights on). The marble column facings displayed Yamasaki’s affinity for luxurious materials, which he used throughout the building to impart serenity and enhance delight. Besides the aluminum screens, mullions,

3.13. McGregor Center.

78

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 78

A NEW DIRECTION

29/7/2017 3:30 PM

and doors and white marble, the center included a green marble bridge on the second-floor bridge spanning the atrium; travertine exterior end walls and interior walls; Mankato stone in the outdoor plaza; and teakwood doors and handrails. The ample light inside the conference center illuminated the unique colors and textures of these assorted surfaces. The McGregor Center sang the same aesthetic song both inside and out. It is perhaps the best example of his belief in the unity of design. Inspired in this sense by both the Arts and Crafts movement and Mies, Yamasaki explained his philosophy of integration in a letter to friends written while working on the McGregor Center. “I dislike the thought of separating the interior design of a building from the exterior,” he said. “I believe that a building is like any piece of creative design, it has to be a whole thing. Consequently, the exterior will reflect the interior and the interior the exterior, and I don’t know how two groups of people can interpret this complete idea without working very closely together or being one.”32 As worked out in the final design, unity was achieved through the consistent use of materials inside and out and in the triangular motif visible in the column capitals, the ornamental screen, the door, and even the diamond-patterned atrium ceiling. Even before Yamasaki became involved with the university, a sculpture court had been planned for Pilafian’s arts center. After the conference center usurped this area, Yamasaki and frequent landscape contributor Edward A. Eichstedt redesigned the remaining space as a serene sunken garden embodying traditional Japanese components of water, earth, and sky like the Kobe Consulate but abstracted to an almost Zen-like simplicity. Eichstedt was a successful

3.14. McGregor Center. Daniel Bartush, photographer.

79

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 79

A NEW DIRECTION

29/7/2017 3:30 PM

local landscape architect who had trained with legendary landscape designer Jens Jensen in Chicago. He worked with Jensen at the Edsel Ford Estate in Grosse Pointe and the Rockefeller estate on Maine’s Mount Desert Island before moving to Detroit, where George Gough Booth selected him to create the landscape for Eliel Saarinen’s Kingswood School at Cranbrook in 1934. The Saarinen connection led to his appointment as supervising local architect in tandem with Thomas Church for Eero Saarinen’s General Motors Technical Center. Eichstedt also worked with Victor Gruen on the Northland and Eastland Shopping Centers in the Detroit area and on various Albert Kahn Associates projects around the state. Eichstedt and Yamasaki devised three concrete platforms topped with white marble chips for the pool as surfaces to hold various pieces of sculpture and for their aesthetic effect. In keeping with Japanese precedents, rocks and plants rose from the water, and water lilies floated on its surface. In its original state the sculpture garden contained eight types of trees around its borders. The pools, islands, floating bridges, gravel, rock groupings, and elevated platform of the McGregor Center garden all contributed to its serene atmosphere (figure 3.15). It became a quiet place for relaxation, removed from the hustle of the busy urban campus. Yamasaki clearly had the garden in mind when he said, “We must escape the hubbub and chaos of our daily lives and provide a place where humanity can think.” Originally the building and sunken garden were separated from the busy traffic intersection by a low, pierced-concrete wall, comparable to walls surrounding ancient Greek temples or Buddhist temple complexes. Yamasaki believed that the slight psychological separation offered by the wall created a “politely controlled environment,” in keeping with his plan for the larger university campus. It also marked off a private space of “beauty and repose” in the manner contemplated by the McGregor Fund as a tribute to its namesake.33 Where the Kobe Consulate and London Embassy were more straightforward in revealing their traditional motivations, the McGregor Center synthesized historical consciousness with modern concerns for function, materials, and structural expression in a mixture not seen before in Yamasaki’s architecture. The building was deeply informed by his travels. It assimilated the balance and symmetry in plan and elevation of Italian Renaissance palazzos; the verticality, lighting, and navelike space of French Gothic cathedrals; the podium base and surrounding temenos wall of Greek religious temples; the calming water features of Japanese gardens; the striking silhouette and white brightness of the Taj Mahal; and Mies’s rich materials and fine detailing. He would continue to mine these sources in his projects over the next decade. Wayne State University Campus Yamasaki in many ways is responsible for the physical layout of the Wayne State campus as it exists today. In the early fifties, while the McGregor Center project was under way, the university asked him to draft a campus plan, even though Pilafian had designed two previous plans in the previous decade. Yamasaki jumped at the opportunity and presented his ideas to the university’s board of governors the following spring. He developed his proposal in reaction to the urban site’s unique considerations: expensive real estate, a drastic enrollment increase, and heavy pedestrian and automobile traffic, all of which mitigated against a pastoral campus plan. Yamasaki envisioned a pedestrian mall in the middle of campus replacing Second Avenue and a densely packed ensemble of buildings—none taller than four stories—surrounding small open courts of differing sizes in

80

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 80

3.15. Sunken Garden, McGregor Center. Daniel Bartush, photographer. 3.16. Yamasaki, Leinweber & Associates, Wayne State University campus plan (1958). Balthazar Korab, photographer.

A NEW DIRECTION

29/7/2017 3:30 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 81

29/7/2017 3:30 PM

what he called a “superblock” (figure 3.16). The scheme followed the logic of “the Renaissance city, with open squares and narrow streets” and buildings and foliage shielding the inner campus from the surrounding streets. Buildings would include first-floor arcades for shelter in inclement weather and to frame attractive scenes.34 He described his Wayne proposal as “an island of urban delight,” and explained to the governors how “a walk from one building to another will be a series of delightful surprises. Each court will be different— one paved, another grassy; one with a fountain and statues, another with trees.” Although Wayne did not follow his master plan to the letter, many of his ideas, including the tree-lined pedestrian mall and the locations of buildings and parking areas, exist in today’s campus. Only the McGregor Center with its sunken sculpture garden and the adjacent College of Education Building, however, truly evoke Yamasaki’s original intentions.35

3.17. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Pahlavi University project (1960–62; unbuilt). 3.18. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Medical College of Ohio (Toledo, 1967–73).

82

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 82

A NEW DIRECTION

29/7/2017 3:30 PM

The Wayne State project would not be Yamasaki’s last campus plan. Along with his extensive public school designs, it helped establish him as an educational specialist. He would go on to produce master plans for Carleton College (1958–59), Pahlavi University in Iran (unbuilt, 1960), the University of Saskatchewan (now University of Regina, 1962–65), and the Medical College of Ohio (1967), as well as individual buildings at Carleton, Regina, Oberlin College, Butler University, Harvard, Princeton, and Franklin and Marshall College (figures 3.17, 3.18). All of his campus plans repeated the Wayne strategy of breaking down the environment into small courtyards and excluding vehicular traffic as much as possible. The Wayne administrators encouraged Yamasaki to design more buildings for them after the McGregor Center, but he felt that the variety offered by using multiple architects would benefit the campus aesthetically and symbolize the role of the university as “a place of many ideas.” He did add three structures in subsequent years (discussed below): the College of Education (1956–61), the Helen L. DeRoy Auditorium, and the Meyer and Anna Prentis Building (both 1961–64).36 Critical Responses The McGregor Memorial Conference Center brought Yamasaki— now practicing on his own as Minoru Yamasaki and Associates (mya)— his second aia Honor Award in 1959 and an Honorable Mention from the Architectural League of New York in 1960. Published responses to the McGregor Center, though predominantly positive, exposed the theoretical conflicts stewing in the midcentury architectural world. Local press coverage, as might be expected, was adulatory. But some leading architects and critics were more measured, revealing both the building’s idiosyncratic nature and mounting apprehension about the future of modern architecture.37 Initial reviews of the McGregor Center praised the building while raising concerns that would be elaborated on in ensuing years. The most extensive professional article to cover the conference center, in Architectural Forum, commended Yamasaki and described the building as “a conference center of extraordinary beauty” and “as graceful and sun-filled as a dream palace.” Douglas Haskell, Yamasaki’s friend and the Forum’s editor, attended the building’s dedication and professed his admiration for Wayne’s ambitious architectural program. In his published comments on the McGregor Center, however, Haskell captioned a photo of the building with the warning: “Minoru Yamasaki’s romantic college hall: as dangerous as Venetian Gothic; more rewarding than gingerbread.” Similarly, a Time article that autumn described the structure in glowing terms but began its analysis with the damning praise that the McGregor Center was “almost too pretty to be great.” Such wariness about the building’s sizable aesthetic impact disclosed a generation of modern architects and critics uncomfortably attempting to come to terms with a growing curiosity for decoration and historical allusions. Raised on prewar modernist principles that stressed utility and castigated ornament as the epitome of retardataire thinking, these analysts were unsure how to evaluate the revived decorative impulse.38 The specter of a tension between ornament and structure in the conference center’s design gradually began to arise in the critical literature. Most of these comments pertained to the McGregor Center’s totality rather than to specific details, although Thomas Creighton, editor of Progressive Architecture and a champion of Yamasaki’s earlier works, argued that the folded concrete surfaces so conspicuous on the building’s exterior attempted to “defeat the

83

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 83

A NEW DIRECTION

29/7/2017 3:30 PM

façade” when carried into the interior space, implying an inconsistency that Yamasaki would have found disturbing. More common were remarks like those from historian William Jordy, who published a cogent analysis of the building in its early years. Jordy grouped the McGregor Center with such other recent designs as Paul Rudolph’s Jewett Arts Center at Wellesley College (1955–58) and Edward Durell Stone’s American Embassy at New Delhi as all exhibiting a tendency toward “mannerist formalism.” Describing the building as “so jewel-like it appears a little unreal,” Jordy criticized the courtyard (“precious in its sunken isolation and somewhat artificial in the context of a mid-western university campus”); the building’s unstable appearance, caused by the visual impression of closed window walls and open end walls; the way the building could be read as both a single structure or two structures connected by a lobby; and the excessive accumulation of attenuated elements (doors, railings, structural members). In the end, Jordy raised a question that would doggedly pursue Yamasaki for the rest of his career: whether “the structure was not forced to its ornament rather than the reverse.” Vincent Scully was characteristically more evocative and colorful. Writing a few years after the building’s opening, he also detected a tension between structure and ornament, finding the McGregor Center to be another example of Yamasaki’s unfortunate tendency to fragment the mass of his buildings, to the extent that the McGregor was “split . . . up the middle into a kind of twittering aviary.”39 Other writers would repeat Jordy’s mannerist accusation in their assessments of Yamasaki’s buildings. “Mannerism” became an often-used but rarely defined critical term of art; its popularity revealed the ambiguity many architects and commentators felt at midcentury over a seemingly exhausted modern architecture that was beginning to spawn some decoratively unorthodox offspring, as demonstrated by Yamasaki’s work. In England before and just after World War II, eminent scholars such as Rudolf Wittkower and Nikolaus Pevsner had turned their attentions toward analyzing sixteenth-century Mannerist tendencies in architecture, with the implication that these Renaissance forms might be linked to developments in twentieth-century modernism. Colin Rowe, borrowing from these men as well as Anthony Blunt, advanced the notion that Mannerism was not a long-past period style but rather a design approach that could reoccur at any time. Rowe believed that Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus building, for example, exemplified the same ambiguities, disturbances, complexities, and exaggerations as sixteenth-century Mannerism; in fact, he considered much of modern architecture before 1950 to be Mannerist. This view of modernism’s relationship to Mannerism, however, was complicated by subsequent critics who used the term differently, as a stand-in for “ornamented” or “self-conscious,” or relating to decorative structural concerns rather than cinquecento ideals. When John Jacobus disparaged Yamasaki’s “opulent yet brittle mannerisms,” he referred to the architect’s use of “facades protected by metal grilles and thinly disguised historical motifs” instead of any formal manipulations or conceptual tendencies. In this sense Mannerism signified apostasy for abandoning modernist dogma to focus on aesthetics and emotions rather than function and structure. Jordy’s assessment of the McGregor Center as “mannerist formalism” trod a similar path. On the other hand, Rudolph found Yamasaki’s “meaningless elaboration of structure” to be Mannerist. And Jürgen Joedicke, writing in the late sixties, looked back on Yamasaki’s progress since the Lambert–St. Louis Airport and found an architect “losing his way in mannerisms”

84

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 84

A NEW DIRECTION

29/7/2017 3:30 PM

in the sense of a deteriorating relation between structure and form, reflecting a critical stance closer to that of Rowe.40 The few adverse comments about the McGregor Center and Yamasaki’s architecture in general were his first negative criticisms. Yet he was not alone in drawing the ire of commentators because of his perceived decorative inclinations. Edward Durell Stone, Paul Rudolph, and Philip Johnson were other high-profile architects subjected to virulent attacks at the time because of their penchant for incorporating historical or purely decorative elements in their buildings. That their so-called Ballet School architecture (discussed below) bred such trepidation revealed an uneasiness over the direction and future of modern architecture. The mounting eclecticism of midcentury architects amplified this anxiety. William Jordy expressed such apprehension while fretting over buildings like the McGregor Center, worried that they “augur an increasing abstractness and historicism in much of modern architecture, such that it may quite literally cease to be modern in the sense that its imagery grows from the urgency of modern life.” His “slippery slope” argument belied a fear that “with acceptance, the modern movement will academically pursue the cult of beautiful buildings. . . . Making modern architecture beautiful will predominate over making beautiful modern architecture.” Jordy was not alone in his apprehension—a continuous narrative of danger or threat would underlie much of the criticism of architects like Yamasaki.41 Midcentury “Chaoticism” The McGregor Center opened to an architectural world in existential crisis. A decade of introspection and myth-making after World War II not only failed to establish a consensus on modern architecture’s essence and appropriate direction but augmented the confusion. Although merely a half century old, modern architecture centered on functionalism and technological advances and a rejection of history threatened to dissolve into undisciplined chaos as decorative and historicist concerns became more prevalent. Some blamed boredom or populism for this state of affairs, whereas others found defects inherent in the modern attitude to be the cause. Whatever the reason, many architects and critics viewed the rising popularity of eclecticism with suspicion. In 1959, Progressive Architecture held a “symposium by correspondence” on the contemporary “Period of Chaoticism.” Editor Thomas Creighton introduced the premise: “But it is when one begins pressing for that denominator—common aims and basic discipline—that the total, characteristic confusion of Chaoticism becomes most evident,” he wrote. “If one searches, not for a unity of approach, but some sort of framework—a container, so to speak, in which to include the chaotic output—none emerges in this discussion. It is interesting that there is almost no denial that there should be such a common denominator; in fact, there is an almost culpable agreement that in the chaos there should be what Geddes terms an ‘organized complexity.’” Creighton’s symposium participants, including Mies, Louis Kahn, Stone, Johnson, Belluschi, and Yamasaki, agreed that the state of architecture seemed chaotic but were divided over the potential ramifications of this situation.42 Creighton’s exercise had its roots in the 1948 MoMA symposium “What Is Happening to Modern Architecture?,” an event orchestrated in response to a Lewis Mumford article in the New Yorker. Mumford used his piece to question the continued obsession with International Style functionalism and machine analogies while surmising that “new winds” were blowing an alternative into the mainstream; he identified

85

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 85

A NEW DIRECTION

29/7/2017 3:30 PM

Frank Lloyd Wright, of course, but also named Bernard Maybeck, William Wurster, and the “Bay Region style” in California as manifesting a “native and humane form of modernism” that expertly synthesized region, climate, and lifestyle considerations with modernist principles. MoMA’s curators believed the article raised important questions about the relation between prewar and postwar modernism that needed to be addressed, so they organized a program to debate architecture’s present and future. As the museum later reported, “The evening failed. No conclusion was reached; the question remained unresolved.” Instead the participants veered into discussions of style, -isms, and ideologies. But the symposium’s basic premise—that something was happening to modern architecture and that it was significant enough to discuss under MoMA’s auspices— laid a foundation for questioning architecture’s future. Numerous commentators would take up the topic.43 Although vigorous disputes over the intersections of modern and historical vernacular architecture had been waged in Italian and British architectural circles since the end of the war, with their requisite attempts to define orthodoxy, American journals did not begin to regularly publish noteworthy articles about the splintering of modern architecture’s alleged cohesion until the late fifties. So, for example, Creighton identified an intriguing “New Sensualism” in modern architecture, recognizable in such characteristics as extensive plasticity of form and facade and more acceptance of delightful sensory effects. Borrowing the dictionary definition of “sensualism” as “using imagery addressing the senses as the chief element of beauty,” he outlined five expressions of the trend: Sensuous Plasticity, Sensual Delight (as practiced by Yamasaki), Structural Concept, Stereo-structural Sensualism, and Romantic Expressionism. Creighton believed that these developments, while enlivening modern architecture, also threatened to lead to undesirable consequences. “The greatest danger inherent in ‘New Sensualism’ lies, obviously, in its departure from any imposed disciplines,” he wrote. “When we mix intuition in structures with sculptural freedom in form, the result can be totally undisciplined in the individual structure and chaotic in groups of buildings.”44 Similarly, in a captivating series of articles Australian critic Robin Boyd inveighed against the “worldwide architectural mess which is the disgrace of the 20th century,” caused by foundationless excursions that sought nothing more than excitement or titillation. In “Engineering of Excitement” (1958), Boyd reviewed a burgeoning structural expressionism in measured terms, admitting that these “poetic buildings” had a place in the environment, but only if used properly. The problem, Boyd believed, was “how to control the irresponsible gymnastics and to restrict the galloping new movement to genuine poetry.” Here he introduced a concept that would color much of his subsequent writing: that “excitement” in architecture must be relevant. In “Has Success Spoiled Modern Architecture?” (1959), Boyd argued that contemporary architecture’s only true precepts seemed to consist in rejecting functionalism and striving for a “pleasing effect”—a byproduct of the engineering of excitement. As a contrast to this rootless striving he emphasized that the designs of the first generation of modern architects, however simplistic, at least had emerged from “clear, focused, definable principles,” such as the honest expression of structure, truth in construction, and integrity of the whole. This discipline was missing (and sorely needed) in contemporary work. “The Counter-Revolution in Architecture” (1959)—in many ways Boyd’s best article—outlined a second generation of moderns searching for noteworthy and unique effects either

86

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 86

A NEW DIRECTION

29/7/2017 3:30 PM

on the building’s surface (Yamasaki, Stone) or in its shape (Saarinen). He traced the genesis of this “counter-revolution” back to a short period between 1953 and 1955, when “notable assaults on the traditional rectangular form of modern building” initially were made by Le Corbusier, Candela, and Saarinen. Their popularity, unfortunately, led to an unrestrained rush to sensationalism. As earlier, Boyd worried about the “new sorts of enrichment and excitement” threatening architecture, repeating his refrain that excitement must be pertinent and again offering the original modern architects as a guide. Boyd closed with a statement worth quoting in full: “The principles of early Modern Architecture were no more than a restatement, in the tightest, almost legalistic terms, of timeless architectural virtues. They are still as valid this year as they ever were,” he wrote. “They do not necessarily lead always to glass or to a box. They need not be applied in a mood of revolt against tradition. They do not by any means debar excitement or genuine poetry. They exert serious restriction only on those who would use architecture as a kind of monumental advertisement.”45 By 1961 Boyd seemed a bit weary of banging the same drum. His article “The New Vision in Architecture” is more of a chronicle of formalist tendencies than a diatribe, but Boyd could not resist reminding readers again that these spectacular shapes needed to have a basis in logic—both structural and functional—and that successful buildings, no matter what their shape or decorative scheme, must still be “emotionally satisfying in ways that seem appropriate to the occupants and their duties and their sense of delight.” This last phrase may have been directed at Yamasaki, whose motto “serenity and delight” was appearing more frequently in the critical literature.46 Even more sinister than unfettered expressionism to some was the threat of populism. In a cultural milieu fascinated by distinctions between high- and low-brow tastes and the rise of kitsch—inspired no doubt by attacks on conventional standards in seemingly all areas of life and art—some elitist critics identified what they deemed an alarming populism as the main danger to modernism’s survival. Mary Mix Foley captured the feelings of many in her article “The Debacle of Popular Taste” when she railed against the “ugliness” overtaking America’s built environment. Deriding the chaos resulting from “the combination of unlimited technical freedom and greatly broadened stylistic influence,” she blamed less-talented designers for allowing the common man to “create popular architecture in his own image. He is a person without skill, without tradition, without talent, lost among the complexities of a modern machine society and entirely cut off by that society from the traditional wellspring of his aesthetic nature. . . . Like the relentless march of the steamroller, he imposes his taste across the land.” The situation was dire: “There is no question of it,” wrote Foley. “In its worst forms our popular architecture has become obscene.” 47 Architectural Forum editor Peter Blake reinforced the positions of both Boyd and Foley in his book God’s Own Junkyard, in which he bemoaned the “uglification” of America, castigating its architects for abandoning their responsibility as tastemakers in favor of “outdoing one another in acrobatics, in hot pursuit of novelty.”48 Others used slightly less lurid language than Foley to reveal their dissatisfaction but nonetheless worried as much about the potential for an architecture dictated by or even responsive to public tastes. The democratization of culture, however, already was a powerful force, propelled ever forward by growing mass consumption. In a competitive commercial environment sellers had to court buyers and cater to their tastes—while also, in a way, shaping those tastes; this proved a

87

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 87

A NEW DIRECTION

29/7/2017 3:30 PM

successful strategy whether in business or in architecture. Boyd’s “engineering of excitement” was having an effect on public opinion, which some critics viewed suspiciously. New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable, writing just a few years after Foley, surrendered to the realization that public opinion was overwhelming modern architecture, but she was unwilling to surrender without a fight. “The timeless determinants of comparative knowledge and trained evaluation have been supplanted by the typical parvenu love of the novel, the flashy and the bizarre,” she lamented. Architects fulfilled this desire with “the gaudy misuse of structural effects,” “the garish misapplication of color and material,” and the reliance on “glittering grilles and appendages that conceal nothing but bad plans,” among other traits, all appearing as “dazzling glamour to the optically naïve.” Arguably some of these attributes might describe Yamasaki’s experiments with structure and screens; Huxtable refused to name names in her article, or even buildings, so identities are open to speculation. But what is clear is that Huxtable believed “Pop Architecture” to be “atrocious” but permanent.49 Douglas Haskell was more objective in his evaluation of public opinion. In his article “Architecture and Popular Taste,” an explication of “the new sweetness, the prettier, more popular style” practiced by Yamasaki, Rudolph, and others, Haskell claimed to identify a major shift in modern architecture’s focus, away from the adaptation of design for machine production and toward the creation of a design ethic aimed at mass consumption and driven by popular taste. This unprecedented catering to the common person was manifested in the emergence of “three popular desires”: “a popular demand for more decorativeness and romance,” a need “for more drama,” and “a growing popular desire for an architectural counterpart to jazz.” The increasing prevalence of decorativeness, symbolism, and improvisation, according to Haskell, would gradually change modern architecture. Although the general tone of his article remained largely objective, he did foresee negative aspects of these tendencies, evident in his description of Yamasaki’s Wayne University College of Education Building as “schmaltz,” with a “prettiness [that] may conceal hidden architectural dangers.” But Haskell did not specify what those dangers might be.50 At the other end of the spectrum from Foley and Blake, a growing faction of designers defended architecture’s engagement with popular taste. For example, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and other like-minded architects praised “Googie” buildings and the “seemingly chaotic juxtapositions of honky-tonk elements” on America’s “Main Streets.” Appearing at midcentury in strangely shaped, brightly colored diners, restaurants, and hotels (and associated with Southern California), Googie designs were popular with the public both then and now. Elitist critics rebuked Googie’s exhibitionism for catering to the undisciplined tastes of the masses. But Venturi and Scott Brown perceived the same built environment that incensed Blake and Foley as a healthy and inevitable development of late twentieth-century culture that exuded a “vitality and validity” of its own.51 Yamasaki became entangled in this debate because his success prompted some unimpressed critics to accuse him of pandering to the masses. “Yamasaki has appealed to that segment of popular taste which, at the moment, desires richly ornamental modernist designs— if only to manifest its dissatisfaction with a half century of simplicity,” declared John Jacobus. This characterization would harm the architect in the long run, falsely aligning him with others who actually were designing for popular acceptance; although he wanted people to enjoy

88

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 88

A NEW DIRECTION

29/7/2017 3:30 PM

his buildings and be inspired or moved by them, Yamasaki never began a design by attempting to discern popular tastes and catering to them.52 Aside from these few critiques, responses to the McGregor Memorial Conference Center were flattering. Its success helped the architect transcend to a higher status within the profession. In lectures and publications he outlined a new direction for his work based on his encounters with historical architecture and his desire to create more humane and democratic environments. Notwithstanding these pronouncements, however, and the promise of such designs as the Kobe Consulate and McGregor Center, the tenor of his work would not change overnight. Yamasaki continued to produce buildings in a Miesian mode with few or no historical or foreign qualities for the next few years, including some of his most acclaimed designs of the decade.

89

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 89

A NEW DIRECTION

29/7/2017 3:30 PM

CHAPTER 4

STAYING THE COURSE

Despite the indelible impact of his world tour and the new direction promised by the Kobe Consulate, the London Embassy project, and the McGregor Center, Yamasaki’s work did not take an immediate and irreversible turn toward the synthesis of global architectural ideas. At the same time that he created those works, he advanced along parallel and divergent paths: one that was far more conservative and continued his earlier design manner, and another that emphasized distinctive structural solutions in the manner of the Lambert– St. Louis Airport. Conservative Modernism Many of Yamasaki’s midfifties designs reflected his ongoing admiration of Mies van der Rohe’s rigorous mode of structural determinism. Mies was a hero to Yamasaki: he often spoke of his encounters with the famous German architect in speeches and interviews. He considered Mies’s iit campus (1939–58) and Lake Shore Drive apartments to be two of the finest modern designs ever, and after the Seagram Building was constructed, Yamasaki felt that it was a masterpiece and the best building in the country. He admired Mies for his “great and unswerving dedication toward the discovery and understanding of an architecture compatible with technology.” “I thank him for showing us that buildings which are built by machine can be as beautiful and sensitive as the handmade buildings of the past,” he said. His admiration was qualified, however, as he decried the lack of delight in Mies’s work. “The monumentality, the dignity, the elegance, [of Mies’s buildings] are superbly conceived,” he explained. “Yet here is missing a joyful quality which in my belief is a basic requirement of a universal architecture today.” This led Yamasaki to seek an architecture that enhanced Mies’s dignified, minimal elegance by adding touches of serenity, surprise, or delight.1 Weisberg, Feld, and Weisberg Clinic Many of Yamasaki’s early fifties designs, which he would later call “shallow imitations” of Mies, show clear affinities for the Miesian style of architecture—dominant and discernible rectangular steel frames, infilled with large planes of glass and brick walls (figures 4.1– 4.3). More important, however, was his adoption of Mies’s tenets: that the forms and spirit of architecture must be generated from the materials and technologies of the time and that beauty arises from

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 90

4.1. Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth, U.S. Army, Detroit Arsenal Tank Plant (Warren, Michigan, ff. 1950). 4.2. Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth, Birmingham Unitarian Church (Birmingham, Michigan, 1957–59). 4.3. Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth, Christian Education Building, Christ Church Grosse Pointe (Grosse Pointe, Michigan, 1953–55; demolished).

29/7/2017 3:30 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 91

29/7/2017 3:30 PM

their rational use. A prime example of Yamasaki’s Miesian manner was the small medical clinic designed for three obstetrical-gynecological physicians in a residential section of Detroit. The Weisberg, Feld, and Weisberg Clinic was a tiny 2,800-square-foot structure on a corner lot (figure 4.4). Faced with programmatic and size restrictions, Yamasaki focused on creating a straightforwardly functional building. To alleviate the tight conditions while maintaining privacy, Yamasaki opened most of three of the building’s four sides with glass; behind these windows were the waiting and reception areas in the front, consultation offices along one side, and a hallway in the rear. The fourth wall, facing another building, was left blank. For privacy, examination rooms were moved to the interior, away from the windows, and a wooden shadowbox fence screened the glazed sections. In this situation Yamasaki was unable to replicate the openness of Mies’s interiors, but he did borrow Mies’s iit vocabulary for the building’s shell. The clinic’s white-painted steel frame was visible on

4.4. Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth, Weisberg, Feld, and Weisberg Medical Clinic (Detroit, 1952-55). 4.5. Side wall, Weisberg, Feld, and Weisberg Medical Clinic.

92

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 92

STAYING THE COURSE

29/7/2017 3:30 PM

all sides, infilled with brick in some places and topped with a dark steel coping (figure 4.5). The Architectural Forum gushed over the “beautifully detailed wall,” where the “steel members thus serve simultaneously as mullions, sash and columns, a remarkable simplification of a bearing wall.” The aia was similarly impressed, awarding the building a Merit Award in 1956 in the health care category.2 Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts Building The Weisberg, Feld, and Weisberg Clinic was a small, unassuming building that barely registered Yamasaki’s efforts to wed architecture and technology, but two other midfifties commissions enabled him to exploit this interest more visibly. The Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts Building and the Reynolds Metals Regional Sales Office avoided obvious historical influences in favor of a forthright expression of structure, materials, and transparency (figure 4.6). In 1906, George Gough Booth, newspaper mogul and future founder of the Cranbrook educational community, organized the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts, one of the first such societies in the country. After occupying rented properties for a decade, the society moved into a purpose-built structure in midtown Detroit— a stuccoed cottage reminiscent of houses designed by English architect C. F. A. Voysey. Despite its domestic appearance, the building contained studios, an auditorium, and a large central courtyard. Early society accounts emphasize that outdoor exhibitions were an important part of the organization’s activities. In 1926 the society opened a school (now the College for Creative Studies) and expanded its offerings to Detroit’s artistic community. By midcentury these accommodations were outdated and overcrowded. yla was contacted in 1955 about designing a facility in a new location a block away from the Detroit Institute of Arts in the city’s cultural center district. Although the site was near the museum, the aging neighborhood surrounding it was considered unattractive and blighted, and both the society and the architects agreed to isolate the new structure. Although Yamasaki sought to create an “oasis,” and the building, as designed and constructed, projected a defensive, fortresslike aura (figure 4.7). Its plan placed a nearly square structure within a forbidding, two-story-high perforated brick enclosing wall with a single entrance. The building also was two stories, although slightly taller than the wall. An aluminum and glass wall with thin porcelain enamel spandrels marking the floor levels was attached to a concrete frame. This enclosing skin allowed visitors to see into the building on all four

4.6. Yamasaki, Leinweber & Associates, Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts Building proposal (now Yamasaki Building, College of Creative Studies, Detroit, 1955–59).

93

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 93

STAYING THE COURSE

29/7/2017 3:30 PM

sides. This was a new development for Yamasaki, whose previous work had flirted with transparency but always retained a dominant sense of enclosure and solidity. Here he managed to achieve both by juxtaposing the clear building with a mostly opaque surrounding wall. The Society of Arts and Crafts Building’s parti, like that of the McGregor Center, was a box bisected by a central atrium; it differed in the degree of transparency found in the outer walls and in the atrium’s integration within the overall form. Yamasaki’s Neo-Palladian floor plan was balanced and orderly with no surprises or noteworthy spatial manipulations. The most prominent feature was an atriumgallery bisecting the structure from front to back, rising to a tented skylight above; the space served as an art gallery an addition to its normal function as a circulation area (figure 4.8). Two stories of studios with offices occupied the four corners of the building, while the basement contained extra exhibition areas, an auditorium, and a library. Reynolds Metals Regional Sales Office Yamasaki explored the Society of Arts and Crafts’ theme of a simple curtain-walled structure surrounded by a substantial screening wall in a simultaneous design for Reynolds Metals—but with notable modifications. The Reynolds Metals Regional Sales Office project proved a double-edged sword for Yamasaki; on one hand, it initiated a series of experiments with the relation between wall and ornament that would achieve its apotheosis in his skyscraper designs. But the building’s subsequent popularity reinforced a growing perception among some critics that he was merely a decorator and not a serious architect. When the Reynolds Metals Company of Richmond, Virginia, contacted yla in 1955 about designing a midwestern regional sales office in Detroit, it was the nation’s second largest aluminum manufacturer and ranked number 97 on the Fortune 500 list of profitable companies. Although its success had been founded on the manufacture of aluminum foil, the company had moved into other domains, including the automobile industry. By the late fifties, Reynolds Metals would become the nation’s leading supplier of aluminum for automobiles. Reynolds wanted Yamasaki to design an office to serve as the headquarters for its local sales offices in its Great Lakes region, encompassing Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, and parts of Pennsylvania and

4.7. Detroit Society of Arts & Crafts.

94

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 94

STAYING THE COURSE

29/7/2017 3:30 PM

New York. The Detroit suburb of Southfield was selected because of its proximity to auto giants General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler and because the chosen site was almost the exact geographic center of the Detroit metropolitan area. The company also was aware that the site stood across a highway from the newly opened Northland Shopping Center (Victor Gruen, 1952–54), which at the time was the world’s largest. Reynolds intended the building to be a showpiece, demonstrating architectural aluminum’s beauty, versatility, and economy. Civilian aluminum shortages due to the Korean War and Department of Defense restrictions had hindered the industry’s venture into the field, but with the war over and production increasing, the time was right for this material to seek a place on the modernist architectural palette. At the building’s dedication in 1959, David P. Reynolds, the company’s executive vice-president, would describe it as “more than an office building. It is a headquarters of aluminum knowledge.” Consequently, Yamasaki’s task was to include as much aluminum as possible to attract the automobile makers and pique their interest in this exciting and useful material. In this sense the Reynolds Sales Office was among the first generation of product buildings—highly visible structures, usually corporate headquarters, built to demonstrate the attractiveness and efficacy of a company’s product. Harrison & Abramovitz’s Alcoa Building in Pittsburgh (1950–52) had initiated the trend, soon followed by Yamasaki’s American Concrete Institute Headquarters (see below) and som’s Inland Steel Building in Chicago (1955–58) and Union Carbide Building in New York (1957–60), among others. The Reynolds Sales Office differed slightly from this group since the company previously had commissioned som, with Gordon Bunshaft in charge, to design their national headquarters in Richmond a year earlier, giving that firm a similar charge to display aluminum in the final design.3

4.8. Atrium, Detroit Society of Arts & Crafts.

95

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 95

STAYING THE COURSE

29/7/2017 3:30 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 96

29/7/2017 3:30 PM

< 4.9. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Reynolds Metals Regional Sales Office (Southfield, Michigan, 1955–59). Balthazar Korab, photographer. 4.10. Reynolds Sales Office. Balthazar Korab, photographer.

The Reynolds building site was a trapezoidal lot, approximately three and a half acres in size. It was bounded on one side by a busy highway, and no other structures were within a hundred yards of its borders (figure 4.9). The spacious setting allowed Yamasaki to realize a more ambitious landscaping campaign than in previous assignments. As constructed, the building occupied much of the eastern half of the lot, with the western half covered almost entirely with paved parking spaces. The remainder of the property contained open lawn with scattered trees. Eichstedt-Johnson Associates, a landscape architecture firm based in Detroit that Yamasaki worked with on numerous projects including the McGregor Center, conceived the landscape design for the site. They crafted it as a natural contrast to the building’s modernist materials. Persian lilacs and London plane trees were strewn around the parking area. A grid of crabapple trees flanked on both sides by London plane trees separated the largest parking lot from a row of twelve parking spaces and an island on axis with the main entrance; the island contained a flagpole and Korean boxwoods. Visitors then mounted a slight stairway leading to the terrazzo-covered podium— raised 3 feet above grade—and the building’s entry. A water-filled moat, on which lotus blossoms and water lilies floated, originally ringed the podium. Around the building Eichstedt-Johnson Associates made an open landscape with random groupings of Niobe willows, Scotch pines, red maples, and flowering crabapples. The Reynolds Sales Office was a three-story, 45,000-square-foot rectangle building, 135 feet long, 105 feet wide, and 50 feet tall. A frame of twenty-eight steel columns, spaced 15 feet apart, formed the structural grid along with concrete waffle slab floors. The columns were arranged in a rectangular pattern eight columns long on the east and

97

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 97

STAYING THE COURSE

29/7/2017 3:31 PM

west sides and six along the north and south. The exterior and first-floor supports were sheathed with black anodized aluminum with a 1½-inch silver center stripe. At the roofline, the structural columns extended above the building’s flat roof like Gothic finials—or Yamasaki’s contemporaneous London Embassy competition entry. Yamasaki achieved transparency in the Reynolds Sales Office to a greater extent than at the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts (figure 4.10). The ground floor, enclosed with floor-to-ceiling plate glass, was completely clear—visitors could see through the entire building except for two small solid blocks containing stairs, elevators, and restrooms. To emphasize this openness, no offices were placed on that level. A large purple carpet balanced the open skylight above, punctuated by three marble plant platforms at one end, a few pieces of furniture at the other, and an off-center reception desk (figure 4.11). In plan, or from office levels above, the arrangement of furniture and planters in the carpeted area resembled a Zen garden. The shining aluminum desk initiated a trend in Yamasaki’s designs; created by Lee DuSell, its sensuous circular shape counteracted the building’s sharp rectilinearity, while its Carrara marble top and bottom and gold-anodized aluminum screen matched the fine materials used throughout the building. Standing in the lobby, one

4.11. Atrium, Reynolds Sales Office. Balthazar Korab, photographer.

98

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 98

STAYING THE COURSE

29/7/2017 3:31 PM

could see out in all directions, up into the top floors, and through the skylight. The building barely seemed to exist. On the outside, Yamasaki wrapped the second and third floors with a distinctive veil of gold anodized aluminum rings in two overlapping and unaligned layers, extruded 5 feet from the glass walls (figure 4.12). Each ring was 10 inches in diameter, and most were a mere 2 inches deep; however, the top two rows of rings on each floor were 14 inches thick for enhanced shading. These rings blocked direct sunlight and provided a richly textured surface in contrast to the smooth glass. Like the structural columns, the ornamental screen extended above the roofline (as well as below the second-floor level). The screen was gridded, divided into two horizontal sections by a narrow gap between the second and third floors, and segmented vertically by thin aluminum strips marking the building’s 5-foot module. This screen represented a continuing evolution for Yamasaki. It began with small obscuring walls or fences around portions of early structures: brick at the Barron house and Grace Robinson house (Grosse Pointe Woods, Mich., 1950) and wood at the Baker house and Weisberg, Feld, and Weisberg Clinic (figure 4.13). For security reasons, the wall needed to be larger around the Kobe Consulate complex, while its screening function was partly transferred to the main office

4.12. Screen, Reynolds Sales Office.

99

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 99

STAYING THE COURSE

29/7/2017 3:31 PM

building in the shoji-like fiberglass panels obscuring the top portion of each bank of windows. At the McGregor Center it continued to exist in both manifestations, but the shoji screen became an aluminum mesh and the low enclosing wall only psychologically separated the building and its courtyard from the surrounding campus. Then in 1955 Yamasaki developed a series of variations on these uses. The Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts saw the surrounding wall enlarged to such massive proportions that it blocked the entire building. The walls enclosing the American Concrete Institute (see below) and First Methodist Church (Warren, Mich., 1955–60) resumed the more conventional role of obscuring the building’s ground-level lower windows. Alternatively, with the Reynolds Sales Office, Yamasaki did away with the separate enclosing wall and instead attached the screen directly to the building, covering over two-thirds of the facade. What began as a physical or psychological barrier had evolved into surface decoration and the building’s main aesthetic feature. The Reynolds building would not mark the end of these investigations. By the end of the decade Yamasaki embarked on another path, executing concrete screens attached to mundane buildings. At the King Humanities Building at Oberlin College (1958–66) and the Olin Sciences Building at Carleton College (1958–61), the attachments awkwardly jutted out from the wall surface by about a foot, blocking windows (King) or an entire wall (Olin) with arched forms (figures 4.14, 4.15). These screens were understandable only as part of this evolution—they were clearly decorative and not brise-soleil, and their overly busy appearance, particularly at Olin, spoiled any chance at visually induced serenity. Interestingly, his manipulations sometimes created patterns that resembled Westernized, modernized versions of traditional mashrabiya (Islamic window screens). On his travels through India and Pakistan, Yamasaki surely encountered these ubiquitous Muslim window elements—wooden panels with carved latticework to shield against intense sunlight. Although he never explicitly made such a connection, it seems likely that the mashrabiya consciously or subconsciously influenced his Reynolds veil and its progeny. The Reynolds Sales Office’s floor plan, like that of the McGregor Center, had an open atrium at its center rising to a spectacular skylight. The two upper floors encircled this atrium, with executive offices arranged around the exterior walls (figure 4.16). The interiors were planned around a 5-f00t module, and the partitions and furniture were crisply detailed. Waffle slab floors and ceilings enabled evenly spaced lighting fixtures, providing softly glowing light. High above the atrium

4.13. Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth, Grace Robinson house (Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan, 1951). > 4.14. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, King Building, Oberlin College (Oberlin, Ohio, 1958–66). > 4.15. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Olin Hall, Carleton College (Northfield, Minnesota, 1958–61). > 4.16. Section, Reynolds Sales Office.

100

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 100

STAYING THE COURSE

29/7/2017 3:31 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 101

29/7/2017 3:31 PM

the vast skylight, raised on a small rectangular podium similar to the building itself, consisted of a space frame of aluminum bars holding ninety-one white wire glass pyramids in a thirteen-by-seven grid pattern. In addition to flooding the interior with natural light, the skylight system—along with the roofline finials—gave the building the striking silhouette that Yamasaki found so desirable. On completion, the Reynolds Sales Office was prominently featured in architectural journals as well as such popularly oriented publications as the New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, and Time. Writers and critics were almost unanimous in lauding Yamasaki’s “Jewel on Stilts” and “Ode to Aluminum.” In 1961, the American Institute of Architects awarded the building its highest prize, the aia Honor Award. The jury announced: “Here is a suburban answer, in poetic terms, which embraces both architecture and landscape design to the administrative requirements of American industry.” Most important, the client was pleased with the results. Immediately after its opening the building became a center for parties and product displays.4 In addition to the critical praise, the Reynolds Sales Office helped launch a nationwide architectural fad for decorative screens in general and ring-shaped ornament in particular. Other prominent practitioners like Edward Durell Stone, Curtis & Davis, and William Pereira generated numerous variations of the screened facade. By the early sixties, manufacturers even advertised Reynolds-type rings in the pages of architectural journals. However, some found this decorative trend to be overdone. The Reynolds building permanently established a connection in the minds of some critics and members of the public between Yamasaki and decorative grilles, even though he never came close to designing anything like them again. After the Reynold Sales Office’s success, he would be increasingly lumped with Stone as one of the two major purveyors of decorative grilles, and as such screens became popular, this criticism often became caustic. Stone’s U.S. Embassy in New Delhi and U.S. Pavilion at the Brussels World’s Fair (1958) captured commentators’ attentions in a similar way to Yamasaki’s building—first applauded and then rebuked. “The urge toward the screen has produced not only Johnson’s shriekingly heroic, ‘taffy-pull’ colonnades for Lincoln Center but also Stone’s interminable grilles, which anything can be hidden behind,” complained Scully. Washington Post critic Wolf von Eckardt was even harsher: “From New Delhi and the Wayne University campus, architectural kitsch has spread like a virus all over America . . . [with] Stone grilles and Yamasaki folds, laces, and Venetian Gothic.”5 Structural and Material Experiments Although Yamasaki continued to explore screens and steel boxes, he remained attracted to more dynamic structural solutions. His search for alternatives to the laconic steel frame eventually led him, like other architects in the fifties, to concrete, with its myriad possibilities for expressing structure in an aesthetically absorbing fashion. New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad In 1954, a new client intent on revitalizing his business hired Yamasaki, offering him a chance to extend his work in a different direction. Patrick B. McGinnis had taken control of the beleaguered New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad after a bitter proxy fight. As the largest transportation company in New England, the New Haven served all of Connecticut and Rhode Island, most of Massachusetts, and part of southern New York. McGinnis promised to modernize the railway’s operations and upgrade its equipment, and to that end he

102

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 102

STAYING THE COURSE

29/7/2017 3:31 PM

hired Florence Knoll to remodel the executive offices. Knoll had been recommended by her friend Lucille McGinnis, wife of the new president and an interior decorator herself. The success of this venture inspired McGinnis to overhaul the New Haven’s public image. Knoll Associates assumed the task of creating and implementing this campaign, which included a new color scheme and a corporate logo by graphic designer Herbert Matter. In the flurry of ideas and changes generated by McGinnis, plans for new trains, platforms, and stations appeared, and an all-star cast was imported to realize them. Through the Knoll connections, the New Haven hired Marcel Breuer to design a passenger station and three new trains, and Eero Saarinen was given a station to redesign. But the bulk of the work went to Yamasaki, a friend of both Knoll and Saarinen. The New Haven invited yla to design a range of projects at various scales. Over a year the firm generated a standard platform shelter of plastic vaults carried on thin metal supports, a standardized pedestrian bridge, and a prototype for a small waiting area for use at stops without stations. Yamasaki also designed individualized projects for New Haven and New London, Connecticut, and Westwood, Massachusetts—all including some type of structural experimentation. One of the simplest was the proposed Westwood station, where the usual ticketing, waiting, storage, and restroom facilities were contained within a single rectangular form emphasizing openness, as Yamasaki strove for “the feeling of an indoor platform” (figure 4.17). Placed alongside the tracks, the building was topped by a folded plate concrete roof, a rare element at the time and one that Yamasaki would explore further in his design for the American Concrete Institute Headquarters the following year. In this case the roof allowed for easy expandability in the event of increased ridership.6 The folded plate roof was adventurous but relatively crude compared to Yamasaki’s proposal for a new station in New London, also intended as a prototype for stations in cities lacking terminals. Here the concept was to resurrect the old-fashioned station, where loading and unloading occurred inside a building. Yamasaki envisioned a low, square structure straddling the train tracks (figure 4.18). Centered atop this plain building would be a smaller structure, also square in plan but rotated ninety degrees. Although only photographs of the presentation model remain, it appears that this upper level

4.17. Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth, Proposed Station for Westwood, Connecticut; New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad (1954–55; unbuilt).

103

38788C-Yamasaki v04.indd 103

STAYING THE COURSE

16/8/2017 6:23 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 104

29/7/2017 3:31 PM

< 4.18. Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth, Proposed Station for New London, Connecticut; New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad (1954–55; unbuilt). < 4.19. Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth, Proposed Station Complex for New Haven, Connecticut; New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad (1954–55; unbuilt). 4.20. Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth, Proposed Railroad Station for New Haven, Connecticut; New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad (1954–55; unbuilt).

was a waiting lounge of some kind, or perhaps even a restaurant. What made it unique was the hyperbolic paraboloid roof, flared in the corners to allow large panes of glass and open views. This was an adventurous structural gesture: architects (and engineers) were just beginning to investigate hyperbolic paraboloids. Felix Candela was producing some small-scale versions in Mexico, and I. M. Pei’s firm designed a roof similar to Yamasaki’s for the May D&F Department Store (1954–58) in Denver. But for most architects, extraordinary structural gestures like these were in the realm of fantasy. Yamasaki’s choice of such complex, unusual compositions for these commuter stations was undoubtedly motivated by McGinnis’s desire to modernize the New Haven’s image, and the same can be said for two related commissions. Among McGinnis’s many grand ideas was a plan to relocate the old station in New Haven to a multiuse development on the other side of the existing tracks (figure 4.19). yla’s proposal called for a new passenger station connected to a multistory hotel building. On a rectangular plot of land, divided roughly into thirds, Yamasaki placed four buildings. The section furthest from the train tracks contained an L-shaped office building wrapping around a grass lawn. This unassuming block resembled the Military Personnel Records Center, except that the building’s shorter leg was partly capped by a folded plate roof. In the property’s middle third a square, steel-and-glass hotel tower, twenty stories tall, stood atop an island in a reflecting pool. The hotel rooftop mechanical equipment was hidden behind walls emblazoned with Matter’s distinctive logo corporate logo. Another island in the pool held a one-story restaurant, connected to the hotel. As represented in the model, the restaurant was a light, airy, almost delicate building dominated by a black steel frame and hovering slightly over the water; it was very Japanese in spirit. Adding to the Asian flavor were long covered walkways reaching out from the hotel island in two directions. Finally, in the portion of the site closest to the railroad tracks stood the new station, the most striking feature of the ensemble. Yamasaki wanted it to be a completely transparent building consisting of thirteen parabolic arches sheathed with heat-absorbing glass (figure 4.20). Beneath would be smaller, freestanding structures—minibuildings—for ticket operations,

105

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 105

STAYING THE COURSE

29/7/2017 3:31 PM

restrooms, and a coffee shop. Although the idea of smaller rectilinear structures beneath a vast curving roof repeated the Lambert–St. Louis Airport parti, nothing in Yamasaki’s previous work hinted at this kind of expressive form. In a letter he told Architectural Forum editor Walter McQuade that he selected the parabolic arches “because though it was desirable not to have large spaces which had to be air-conditioned and heated, we felt that it was important to build a symbol here. This, after all, is the center of the New Haven operations.”7 Simultaneous with moving the New Haven station, McGinnis planned to demolish the existing station in Hartford and erect a combined railroad station and sports arena for the city on property owned by the railroad. The result was Yamasaki’s boldest structural move since the St. Louis airport. He proposed an oval-shaped, partly subterranean arena for the site capable of holding eight thousand spectators (figure 4.21). Photographs of the model depict a spectacular saddle-shaped roof, not supported by traditional means but suspended from cables threaded through sixteen outward-leaning masts and anchored to the ground in a surrounding plaza. Suspending a roof from cables under tension was a relatively new phenomenon, catalyzed by Nowicki’s Dorton Arena. Yamasaki’s version was one of the earliest concepts for a cable-stayed suspended roof structure of the postwar era. But his boldness went unrewarded. When he and McGinnis presented the scheme to Hartford city officials in June 1955 it was praised, but subsequent events that ousted the controversial McGinnis from leadership brought an end to these projects. The New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad was an important corporate client, and Yamasaki obviously sought to impress McGinnis with these designs. However, another way to interpret these New Haven experiments—of which only a few small shelters were ever constructed—are as continuations of Yamasaki’s great attraction to engineering challenges. He always loved structural engineering and excelled in it in college to the point where he had considered changing his career path from architecture. These early

106

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 106

4.21, Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth, Proposed Sports Arena for Hartford, Connecticut; New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad (1954–55; unbuilt).

STAYING THE COURSE

29/7/2017 3:31 PM

fifties designs, with their thin-shelled concrete arches, folded plates, parabolas, and hyperbolic paraboloids, put him at the forefront of structural exploration. As surprising as it may seem today, Yamasaki’s credentials as a bona fide innovator, along with the likes of Candela and Saarinen, were well established at the time.

4.22. Yamasaki, Leinweber & Associates, American Concrete Institute (Detroit, 1955–58).

American Concrete Institute Headquarters When the Reynolds Metals Company hired yla to develop a signature building exploiting its product, the firm received a nearly identical commission from the Detroit-based American Concrete Institute (aci). The organization had acquired a small corner plot along a busy suburban street facing a golf course in Detroit, and it turned to Yamasaki for an office structure that could be used as a demonstrative model and teaching tool. He immediately set about thinking how poured-in-place and precast concrete and concrete block could be combined to create a distinctive building. Yamasaki and his associates settled on a design that would highlight concrete’s plasticity and strength rather than exploiting the material through a peculiar shape. A folded plate roof was cantilevered from the internal corridor walls, extending out past the glass curtain wall by 5 feet (figure 4.22). The roof’s flared ends gave it a vaguely Asian quality. Glass curtain walls enclosed the interior on the building’s long sides, their thin aluminum mullions complementing the roof’s angular form; the walls’ lower sections were infilled with precast concrete panels. Below that, a sequence of concrete grilles punctured by a diamond-shaped grid pattern screened the basement windows. End walls of hollow concrete blocks stacked vertically allowed corner office occupants intriguing fragmented views and reinforced the building’s repetitive theme. Inside the small structure, just 90 feet long by 35 feet wide, a central corridor opened onto a series of individual and group offices dedicated to the aci’s membership and publishing activities (figure 4.23). Poured-concrete corridor walls were striated for texture, and their door openings were topped with triangular arches. Triangles,

107

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 107

STAYING THE COURSE

29/7/2017 3:31 PM

Yamasaki held, were the “natural” way to construct openings in concrete walls, and they matched the triangular motif generated by the sawtooth roof (figure 4.24). The solidity of the load-bearing corridor walls on the main floor gave way to thinner aluminum and asbestos-cement panel partitions between offices. yla glazed the partitions’ top portions so that occupants could see the ceiling’s chevron pattern; this also made the diamond-shaped mullions in the curtain wall’s uppermost mullions more visible, highlighting the building’s triangular motif. The basement, containing storage and mechanical areas, mail rooms, a library-cum-conference room, and a small kitchen, featured poured-in-place concrete walls throughout.8 The aci’s folded plate roof demonstrated Yamasaki’s continuing curiosity regarding in the structural capabilities of modern materials. Architecture fans today tend to associate this zigzag form with midcentury Googie architecture, but in 1955, at the genesis of the aci project, folded plate roofs were hailed by some as practical, appropriate structural solutions rather than marketing gimmicks, and advocates emphasized their ability to furnish maximum strength with a minimum of material. The origins of the folded plate roof can be traced back to utilitarian German coal bunkers of the 1920s. European engineers began to explore its possibilities shortly thereafter. American architects seemed to have used such roofs intermittently in the period following World War II. Only two articles on folded plates appeared in the major architectural journals before the aci Headquarters was built; the technique was so novel that each article included an explanation of its physical characteristics and architectural advantages, such as ease of construction (simple and inexpensive formwork and less steel reinforcement) and easier calculations. The American Concrete Institute had published a paper on folded plate roofs in 1947 and may have provided the stimulus for Yamasaki’s decision to use the distinctive shape. Another likely source was the structural engineering firm enlisted by yla: Amman & Whitney, which had consulted with Saarinen on the pioneering Kresge Auditorium and were actively involved in the thin-shell roof world. For the aci, Amman & Whitney worked with Yamasaki to fabricate a roof that fulfilled the client’s request to demonstrate the different qualities and abilities of concrete. Unlike other folded plate experiments, the aci roof did not simply rest on a series of vertical supports—it was far more dynamic and daring. The forty-six zigzag plates were actually extensions of the interior corridor walls, made possible by cantilevering. The two poured-in-place concrete walls that ran lengthwise along the central hallway were load bearing, rising up from the basement and then flaring out into precast concrete plates cantilevered 19 feet from their origins. At their edges, these plates were a mere 3½ inches thick. The basement, in the form of a rectangular box, acted to stabilize these central walls. The complex roof system was further complicated by skylights above the central corridor, in keeping with Yamasaki’s attention to overhead lighting.9 Because the roof was cantilevered, the glass exterior walls and aluminum mullions carried no weight. Making this relationship visible became the foremost challenge of the design process (figure 4.25). Yamasaki related that Ammann & Whitney wanted to make the window wall partly load bearing, but he refused, feeling that such a move would compromise his desire for a building that looked as light and delicate as possible. So the mullions were thinned and the roof was extended beyond the wall plane to help viewers understand its structure.10

108

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 108

4.23. First-floor plan, American Concrete Institute. 4.24. Interior corridor, American Concrete Institute. 4.25. Construction photo showing cantilevered roof, American Concrete Institute.

STAYING THE COURSE

29/7/2017 3:32 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 109

29/7/2017 3:32 PM

The editors of Progressive Architecture were so captivated by the aci Headquarters that they presented it with a Design Award in 1957—before construction commenced—and made it the focus of one of their Case Study Seminars, in which a team of prominent architect jurors gathered with the designer to discuss a project in detail. The article arising from that encounter is intriguing for a number of reasons. Yamasaki’s building was almost universally praised by the group: Victor Gruen admired its “great inventiveness, great originality, and excellent taste,” Harry Weese called it “a very sophisticated use of a material which is not yet in our technology,” and Gordon Bunshaft joked that the only bad thing about it was the near-certain flood of poorly designed imitations that would surely follow. These comments all testified to the building’s uniqueness. Most of the commentators, however, focused on the aci’s aesthetic aspects, querying Yamasaki about the interplay of vertical and horizontal lines, its sculptural quality, or the decorative pattern in the basement grill; structural questions were few. By privileging the aci’s appearance, these jurors either overlooked or disregarded its structural and material experimentation.11 Although it was as visually dissimilar from the work of Mies as one could get, the aci Headquarters shows how Yamasaki was able to extend his idol’s principles into the world of concrete construction. Mies’s steel-structured buildings were boxlike and skeletal because he believed that was the rational form for a steel-framed building to take, given the material’s inherent qualities. Steel has great compressive strength to withstand pushing forces and excellent strength in tension, meaning that it tolerates pulling or bending forces very well. Concrete is a wholly different material, with even better compressive strength but lesser tensile strength; however, it has added the quality of plasticity, allowing itself to be shaped into almost any form, exceeding steel’s post-and-beam limitations. Moreover, whereas steel-structured buildings require cladding to enclose their interior spaces, concrete can accomplish both tasks simultaneously. If, then, a building like Mies’s Crown Hall at iit (1950–56), epitomized the use of steel in architecture, what was its equivalent in concrete? In the midfifties, that question had no definitive answer—and this was one of the issues Yamasaki grappled with in the aci building’s design. One can see in the comments of Weese and Gruen that they appreciated Yamasaki’s advance into a wide-open territory, guided only by a Miesian search for beauty through the appropriate use of modern materials and techniques. Like the work of Italian engineer Pier Luigi Nervi, whose buildings Yamasaki admired as “the most exciting concrete work, without question, since World War II, or perhaps of all time”—and unlike the sculptural concrete of Corbusier’s Ronchamp Chapel—the aci Headquarters sought beauty conservatively, through structure evocatively displayed, rather than through fantastic silhouettes. This was in keeping with his belief that “legitimate forms should necessarily arise from a valid structural reason, rather than from an impulsive emotional reason, such as sculpture might have.”12 “No other building has ever exhibited as clearly the physical qualities and the architectural possibilities of concrete,” claimed Progressive Architecture when the building was finished. Historian Edgar Kaufmann Jr. likewise deemed the aci Headquarters “a beautiful demonstration of structure expressively employed.” But not all agreed with these salutations. A Time cover story, for instance, revealed Yamasaki’s self-deprecating personality by quoting his dissatisfaction with it and disparaged the roof as “a parade of jitterbugging triangles that induce not serenity but instant fatigue.” But the architect was even tougher on himself, critiquing the mullions as too thick, giving

110

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 110

STAYING THE COURSE

29/7/2017 3:32 PM

the illusion that they were somehow structural, and feeling that the boundary wall was not delicate enough; more than a decade after the aci Headquarters’ completion he admitted that looking back on the building gave him “a bad case of the jitters.”13 Precast Concrete Although the aci Headquarters was clearly not Yamasaki’s favorite building, the experience heightened his attraction to precast concrete and arches. He would quickly begin to explore these features in tandem. His interest in arches waned within a few years—although critics seem to have latched onto the arch and the decorative screen as his stylistic trademarks and complained about them long after he ceased to use either—but his fascination with precast concrete would be lasting. The Parke-Davis Office and Warehouse (1956–58) and the College of Education Building at Wayne State University (1956–60) were the next steps in combining concrete and arches. Like many of his contemporaries, Yamasaki was caught in a dilemma that struck to the core of modern architecture. As an ideology founded on the acceptance (if not glorification) of machines, prefabrication, and newly developed materials, modernism was fueled by technological change and continual innovation. Architects like Yamasaki were enthralled by the seemingly boundless opportunities afforded by the fertile marriage of machine production with architecture. He gushed that “the number of shapes—spheres, cylinders, pyramids, and the multitude of non-geometric forms that we see daily in machinemade household and business equipment, made of (many) materials, are vivid testimony that machinemade architecture need not have . . . restrictive limitations of a rectangular module.” Sounding much like Frank Lloyd Wright from half a century earlier, he explained that “technology, rather than being restrictive, gives us the ability to create an infinity of forms. We have this great advantage without the penalty of the tedious and laborious process of carving adornment through hand labor.”14 And yet, this obsession with materials and technologies subjugated architects to the whims of the marketplace, because their reliance on steel columns and beams, aluminum mullions, plate glass, and concrete panels meant that the manufacturers who made those products essentially circumscribed architects’ opportunities to express themselves. In this way, the system that provided so much also stifled individuality. “The manufacturer has complete control of the façade,” Yamasaki told an interviewer. “The manufacturer produces so many yards of porcelain, enamel, or aluminum extrusions, or glass of a particular shape and, since it’s less costly to buy in stock, then the tendency is to build buildings of this kind. So what happens is that our total environment then becomes a slave to the machine.”15 One consequence of these circumstances was the ubiquitous steeland-glass curtain wall. By 1957, Architectural Review and Progressive Architecture had devoted entire monthly issues to describing this “new vernacular” in an attempt to both explain a growing phenomenon and offer suggestions for transcending the obvious limitations of the curtain wall system via creative compositions of its constituent sashes, mullions, and spandrels. The Architectural Review briefly hinted that although the technology of curtain walls had advanced rapidly, their aesthetic evolution lagged behind, but this was excused because of the swiftness of their acceptance. The article’s positive nature implied that the visual challenges were being overcome. Curtain wall elements were indeed inexpensive to manufacture and quick and easy to assemble, but as Yamasaki and others realized, their stultifying effects threatened to concretize modern architecture

111

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 111

STAYING THE COURSE

29/7/2017 3:32 PM

into a formula.16 A solution was at hand, however. The great strength, superior plasticity, and mass producibility of precast concrete gave architects an alternative that would soon contest the curtain wall’s dominance in America and would surpass it in most parts of the world. Precast concrete was rare in the United States until after World War II and failed to achieve favored status until the early 1960s, when new manufacturing techniques were imported from Europe. Manufacturers like Mo-Sai Associates helped speed the availability and eventual acceptance of the material, but in the late fifties precast concrete was just beginning to prove itself in the United States, which made Yamasaki’s extensive use of it in the aci Headquarters distinctive. Precast concrete represented a compromise that might solve the modern architect’s dilemma: it gave designers a vastly enhanced palette of textures, colors, and forms, promising to restore creative individuality. “I think in this material the architect again takes charge,” Yamasaki told an audience at an aia convention. “In other words, he can place his artistic ability in the building again. He doesn’t have to buy pieces out of stock, so-to-speak.”17 Parke-Davis Office and Warehouse Based on the success of his first true excursion into concrete construction at the Lambert–St. Louis Airport and with the aci Headquarters still in the design stages, Yamasaki decided to use the material in simultaneous projects that investigated precast concrete’s qualities. The first was for the Parke-Davis Company, a pharmaceutical giant based in Detroit, which hired yla to design a combination office-warehouse in an industrial park in Menlo Park, California (figure 4.26). Yamasaki had strong ties to the company: Cleveland Thurber, a Detroit lawyer and officer of the McGregor Fund, was a Parke-Davis director, and George Rieveschl Jr., for whom Yamasaki and Alexander Girard had designed a house in Grosse Pointe, was a Parke-Davis executive and close friend.

112

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 112

4.26. Yamasaki, Leinweber & Associates, Parke-Davis Office and Warehouse (Menlo Park, California, 1956–58; demolished).

STAYING THE COURSE

29/7/2017 3:32 PM

Parke-Davis asked yla for a structure with advertising value, but the focus was mostly on its function as a warehouse and distribution center. They requested Yamasaki incorporate 40-foot bays in the warehouse section. He used their requirement as his starting point. The site was roughly square, tucked into a corner of the park adjacent to a busy highway. Yamasaki conceived the idea of wrapping the warehouse around the office building rather than appending a smaller box to a bigger box, which was the most common solution (figure 4.27). The building approximated a large square with a section detached from the main body. The warehouse section would be U-shaped and around 24,000 square feet in size. Yamasaki channeled his obsession with strong silhouettes to devise a unique structural system to conform to the 40-foot module. Working with Ammann & Whitney engineer Stefan J. Medwadowski, he created an undulating roof from L-shaped, precast concrete structural bents and curved triangular roof shells. Over each square bay, four of these inverted bents, rising from each corner, locked together diagonally over the center point into a ribbed vault; the triangular shells (40 feet by 20 feet in size and 3½ inches thick) then enclosed the space between every two bents (figure 4.28). It was a modernized version of the rib vault construction of high Gothic cathedrals. Combined with precast concrete wall panels, this

7

5 6

8 1

10

3 4

3

9

2 3

7. Men 7. MEN 8. WOMEN 9. HEATING 8. Women 10. STORAGE

4. SECRETARIES 4. Secretaries 5. CONERENCE AND DINING 5. Conference and Dining 6. KITCHEN

1. 1. RECEPTION Reception 2. GENERAL OFFICES General Offices 3. 2. OFFICE

9. Heating

6. Kitchen

3. Office

10. Storage 0

50

4.27. Plan, Parke-Davis Office and Warehouse.

H

113

38788C-Yamasaki v04.indd 113

Feet FEET

T orRth NNO

FIRSTFLOOR FLOOR FIRST

STAYING THE COURSE

16/8/2017 6:23 PM

system was simple, efficient, and inexpensive. The completed warehouse’s repetitive arches evoked the Lambert–St. Louis Airport’s shell construction but on a more intimate scale. The undulating roof also gave the warehouse visual energy when seen from the nearby elevated highway. On the interior, the combination of material and structure gave the building the clean, airy, antiseptic look that Yamasaki felt was appropriate for a pharmaceutical company. And in addition to enlivening what could have been a plain box, the arch-vault technique would allow easy expansion if necessary. The office section, separated from the surrounding structure, prominently displayed the company’s name on a projecting fascia and replicated the vertical windows that split the face of each individual bay in the larger warehouse. Between the office and warehouse, opening out from a small conference-dining room, was a tiny internal courtyard (figure 4.29). Landscape architect Lawrence Halprin assisted on the project, but given the site’s restrictions, his participation must have been limited to selecting plants. The office section’s most intriguing feature was the entry, which Yamasaki tucked into a corner and formed by removing the walls from one bay, generating an attractive canopy that made the building’s structure visible and comprehensible to visitors.

4.28. Arched warehouse section under construction, Parke-Davis Office and Warehouse. 4.29. Courtyard, Parke-Davis Office and Warehouse.

114

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 114

STAYING THE COURSE

29/7/2017 3:32 PM

The Parke-Davis Office and Warehouse was successful in many ways—the client was satisfied and the building functioned as required. But aesthetically the results were mixed. Although the structural system was engaging and innovative, the discord between the office and warehouse blocks was never resolved. Yamasaki did not take advantage of the opportunities afforded by the subtracted box motif; the office and warehouse sections differed too much, establishing in an awkward clash where the two conjoined. Covering the office building mostly in brick, in contrast to the smooth concrete finishes of the warehouse, added to the cacophonous impression. And the interior court seemed too constricted in photographs, appearing almost as an afterthought. Yamasaki overemphasized the warehouse and its construction to the detriment of the relation between the two buildings. The structural system of arches formed by concrete bents, however, became part of his design repertoire, leading to further experiments in the future.

4.30. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Education Building, Wayne State University (Detroit, 1956–61).

Wayne State University Education Building A comparable imbalance between aesthetic image and material exploration also characterized Yamasaki’s precast concrete experiment at Wayne State University. As he was designing Parke-Davis, yla began making studies for the school’s education departments for a location across the street from the McGregor Center, then ready to begin construction. The College of Education Building would be Yamasaki’s first true critical setback: its overzealous use of arches and strong historical impression would give his detractors ammunition for the next decade (figure 4.30). Impressed with the McGregor Center, university administrators asked Yamasaki to design a building for the College of Education as part of his proposed master plan. The structure was sorely needed. The college was scattered around sixteen sites throughout midtown

115

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 115

STAYING THE COURSE

31/7/2017 10:23 AM

Detroit. It was Wayne’s second largest division, enrolling more than four thousand undergraduate and graduate students and employing more than a hundred faculty members. Yamasaki sited the new Education Building across Second Avenue from the McGregor Center, thus concentrating the university’s newest structures in one place and anointing the north end as the unofficial entry point to the campus. The commission was simpler in terms of symbolism than McGregor—a straightforward academic building was all that was needed. But the program was more complex because of the college’s diverse needs. Yamasaki designed the building as a rectangular, four-story structure, shaped roughly like an H in plan with the uppermost floor stepped back. A small penthouse atop the fourth floor crowned the building and hid the elevator machinery and cooling towers. The building’s form recalled the ziggurats of ancient Mesopotamia; more practically, the effect was like that of a wedding cake, and Yamasaki played on that association when he jokingly pulled a small bride and groom from his pocket and placed them on top of a model of the building when presenting it to Wayne State’s board of governors. The building’s artistic and structural effects merged in the 120 concrete “trees” encircling the perimeter, creating a continuous loggia at ground level of thin, repeated supports. Each tree was a 45-foot tall, 5-foot wide piece of prefabricated concrete with a white quartz aggregate finish (figure 4.31). The trees were bracketed to the building’s concrete frame to constitute the exterior wall. These trees were independent of the structure, serving only as the barrier between inside and outside. Yamasaki chose this system for a number of reasons. First of all, prefabricating building parts offsite helped keep down the cost, which was important for a financially strapped institution. Also, it made for easier construction in Detroit’s sometimes harsh winter climate. And he believed that the concrete trees and their repeated arches could provide delight both through their appearance and their function as loggias. He subsequently claimed that for the Education Building “we wanted a kind of facade which would give us a quality of enrichment and excitement that would somehow balance the McGregor building which is across the street.” In other words, he wanted a building with an active, energetic appearance to offset the McGregor’s calm serenity. And he particularly liked the idea of covered walks, not only for protection from the weather, but also for their potential to frame different views of the campus in keeping with his “Renaissance city” theme. In an interview, speaking about the Wayne State master plan, he once said, “We do plan that the new buildings will have arcaded first floors as much as possible. So you can use the arcades to walk through the campus. The framed scene that you get as you walk along an arcade is very pleasant, especially when the outdoor spaces are small.”18 Although the arcades were the project’s most memorable components, Yamasaki was just as concerned with the interior layout. He placed the classrooms and laboratories, along with elevators, restrooms, and mechanical services, in the windowless inner core. He then arranged offices along the exterior walls. Yamasaki felt this was the best way both to counteract the perennial student temptation to look out the window and to create “an island of order and scholarly calm” inside a building that originally faced a busy, heavily trafficked street. All of the classrooms were to be state of the art, air conditioned and equipped for closed-circuit television and radio reception. The H-shaped fourth floor contained clerical and administrative offices and a faculty lounge. And four small roof gardens—none visible from each other—added a natural touch to the structure.19

116

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 116

STAYING THE COURSE

29/7/2017 3:32 PM

Groundbreaking for the College of Education Building took place in February 1959, and it was occupied well before the dedication ceremony over two years later. Unlike the much-lauded McGregor Center, critical appraisals from outside the university were mixed. Although Detroit News architecture writer Harry Salsinger described the building as “handsome indeed,” and the offices “luxurious,” Yamasaki’s friend Douglas Haskell worried that the “Venetian Gothic” building “may all be schmaltz, and its prettiness may conceal hidden architectural dangers.” A few years after it opened, John Burchard and Albert Bush-Brown, in a survey of American architecture, harshly declared that Yamasaki “diminished his own McGregor Memorial by his adjacent School for Education which recalled the Ca d’Oro in Venice in everything except its appropriateness and its excellence.” And perhaps more tellingly, Yamasaki himself seemed unsure of the artistic effect the building’s arcade would have. In an interview conducted during construction, Yamasaki expressed unease: “I have been asked whether the repetition of the elements bothers me. And I am not sure. . . . I’ll be sure when the building is finished. But I hope that it will come off.”20 His wariness about the building’s impression was well-founded. The Education Building tended to overwhelm with its exuberant repetition. Unlike the London Embassy facade, there was no variation in the vertical supports. Some manipulation to differentiate the ends from the sides might have helped, or a change in the window shape, or anything to relieve the constant beat that unceasingly wrapped around the building with only minor variations in the bottom and top

4.31. Loggia, Education Building.

117

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 117

STAYING THE COURSE

29/7/2017 3:32 PM

floors (and those are visible only to those with a careful eye). Yamasaki was no doubt expressing, consciously or not, his love of Venice’s architecture, and it exemplified the danger of unbridled historicism to many critics. Although he obliquely implied his disappointment with the building, describing it as “pretty gaudy,” he must have been satisfied with the precasting system because he began to use it more frequently.21 The technique had attractive qualities despite its repetitive arches. Its concrete walls were infused with a white quartz aggregate facing that sparkled in the sunlight, giving the building a richly textured surface. Yamasaki would adopt this type of precast concrete as his staple material. The aggregate treatment humanized the concrete, creating walls and columns that shimmered in the light and enticed visitors to touch them. The effect was compounded by the repetitive nature of the supports along the loggia. At just 5 feet apart, the columns promoted a feeling of closeness and intimacy. Windows only a foot wide on the ground floor and steps just over 4 inches high also brought a human scale to what could have been a monumentally overbearing structure. Office Operations As yla’s commissions increased, more employees were needed to maintain the work rate. Yamasaki took pride in finishing jobs on time, but conflicting with that goal was an equally strong desire to control the office size. Throughout the fifties, as the staff grew, he maintained a consistent aversion to large offices as a result of his experiences in New York and with Smith, Hinchman. Augmenting the pressure was his taking on of more responsibilities as the decade wore on, moving from two named partners to eventually none. In February 1959, Joseph Leinweber left yla after fourteen years of association with Yamasaki, including ten as his partner. The firm was rechristened Minoru Yamasaki and Associates. At that point there were roughly fifty people on the payroll, including thirty-plus architects, electrical engineers, and mechanical engineers. Like many firms, this group was constantly evolving, but Yamasaki inspired quite a few individuals to stay with him for decades. A number of talented people helped him translate his ideas into material form over the years. William Kessler and Philip Meathe guided many early designs, particularly the schools, before leaving to start their own office. Astra Zarina, perhaps the most talented artist ever to work for Yamasaki, was a fellow University of Washington alumnus who joined the firm with her husband, Douglas Haner, shortly after receiving a master’s degree from mit. After her tenure with Yamasaki she won a Fulbright Scholarship and became the first woman to receive a fellowship to the American Academy in Rome. Eventually she moved into academia, becoming a longtime teacher in the University of Washington’s architecture program. Gyo Obata was Yamasaki’s chief assistant and a key figure in the Lambert–St. Louis Airport design but chose to stay with Hellmuth in St. Louis when lyh/hyl split. Hans Busso von Busse and Manfredi Nicoletti spent valuable time in the office before returning home to Germany and Italy, respectively, to become celebrated architects and urbanists. William Ku, born in Shanghai and holding degrees from both Washington University in St. Louis and mit, was mya’s longtime chief designer and became its president after Yamasaki’s death. Don Hisaka, interned in a relocation camp during World War II with his family because of their Japanese ancestry, graduated from Harvard before joining the firm in the midfifties. He would become an acclaimed

118

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 118

STAYING THE COURSE

29/7/2017 3:32 PM

designer in Cleveland, receiving numerous accolades and awards during a long career. The most prominent alumnus besides Obata was Gunnar Birkerts, a chief designer from 1956 to 1959, who contributed most notably to the Reynolds Sales Office and Dhahran Air Terminal before leaving to start a partnership with officemate Frank Straub. Birkerts would become an admired late-second-generation modernist, best known for bold, simple forms like the University of Michigan Law Library addition (1974–81), the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis (1967–73), and the Latvian National Library (1989–2014). And not all of the key contributors were architects. Cass Wadowski began working for Yamasaki as a moonlighter and subsequently became the head of mechanical engineering while still in his early twenties. He later became a project director and partner and served as the firm’s business manager. In his autobiography, Yamasaki recalled Wadowski as “the best employee we had.” Similarly, Henry Guthard first met Yamasaki as an electrical engineering intern at Smith, Hinchman. He followed Yamasaki through all of his offices and became the architect’s confidant and close adviser, working with him for more than forty years.22 The efforts of these and other talented people kept the office running as its reputation grew. Yamasaki’s firms never advertised— partly because, as mentioned above, he wanted to avoid dealing with clients whose small remodeling or domestic jobs were less important to him than commercial and public structures. His offices had their share of turnover, but also many loyal workers who stayed on for long tenures. It is possible that the nature of Yamasaki’s practice allowed employees to achieve a greater sense of satisfaction in a lesser role than at other firms. By all accounts he was a “benevolent dictator,” a pleasant man who created a congenial work environment while immersing himself in the process, constantly buzzing around the office with seemingly inexhaustible energy and keeping tabs on the projects, leaving no doubt that he was in control. Although he often gave the designers responsibility for initial concept sketches, he always kept close watch on a commission’s progress. “Someone actually had to put it on paper, but you had Yama looking over your shoulder all the time,” said former mya architect Kip Serota. “There wasn’t anything that got past him.” However, despite the pressure, associates in this atmosphere were given much leeway to contribute to the design process. Yamasaki favored a team approach, involving engineers from the project’s origins, in contrast to the method used at Smith, Hinchman, which bifurcated architecture and engineering into individual departments. Guthard recalled no distinction between the two fields: “We were all designers.”23 In keeping with that philosophy, Guthard served as project manager for many of the firm’s most significant projects over the years, including Robertson Hall at Princeton and the Temple Beth El in the Detroit suburbs. In this office of designers, the various projects were unified in their emphasis on two overarching concerns embedded in every undertaking: details and refinement. Former employees attest to Yamasaki’s fascination with minutiae and his insistence that they refine their ideas unceasingly. The elegance and quality of detailing in Japanese architecture inspired him, and he found thinness in building parts to be aesthetically pleasing. And like Saarinen, Yamasaki believed that a building’s thematic concept had to be carried down into the smallest parts, so that the whole and its components would resonate at the same frequency. He considered detailing and refinement to be crucial to the essence of an appropriate architecture: “Each building is an experience to man; one dull, one wonderful. The more imaginative the

119

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 119

STAYING THE COURSE

29/7/2017 3:32 PM

concept, the more rewarding the experience. That experience can be further enhanced by the awareness of detail—of the thought and care given to it. The esthetic totality of any beautiful thing—such as a lovely plant—is in its concept, its structure or its tiniest details. Thus, visual enjoyment of a building is more fully realized when—within the context of a sound, imaginative concept—great love and care are lavished upon appropriate details.” The nature reference in the penultimate sentence would be familiar to Yamasaki’s assistants. His favorite architectural analogy was the rose, whose stem contained only enough material to support the beautiful flower and no more— a natural refinement. Its source was Emerson; as often as Yamasaki repeated the rose analogy in the office, he referenced the philosopher’s statement “Beauty rests on necessities. The line of beauty is the result of perfect economy” in speeches and publications.24 The firm’s application for the World Trade Center commission in 1962 shed light on the office’s structure and inner workings. There were sixty-one mya employees by then, including forty architects. Yamasaki admitted that was an unusually high percentage of architects for a firm of his size but justified it by referencing the large amount of “joint venture work in which we do the design and complete architectural details, and our collaborators handle the working drawings, specifications, and supervision.” Another reason related to mya’s dependence on models in the design process. Like other postwar offices, Yamasaki’s team worked “almost completely by model,” creating three-dimensional studies not only of the building as a whole but of its details as well. This labor-intensive process required the firm to retain four full-time model makers in a fully equipped shop. Yamasaki surmised that “at least fifteen or sixteen [architects] are making models almost constantly.” Seven mechanical engineers and four electrical engineers, including Guthard, also were present. Finally, mya retained a structural engineer from the Seattle engineering firm Worthington, Skilling, Helle & Jackson, with whom Yamasaki worked for most of his major projects beginning in the late fifties.25 Yamasaki can truly be said to have ascended to the highest level of his profession in 1959 after a decade of hard work. In that year he opened his first office as the sole name on the letterhead, and he was

4.32. Minoru Yamasaki at his Architectural League of New York Exhibition, 1959.

120

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 120

STAYING THE COURSE

29/7/2017 3:32 PM

showered with honors as the cumulative effect of his buildings made an impression on critics and architects alike. The aia bestowed Honor and Merit Awards on the McGregor Memorial Conference Center and Franklin Jr. High School, respectively. Progressive Architecture—whose editors were such great fans of the aci Headquarters—selected Yamasaki as the keynote speaker for its annual design awards banquet. And the Detroit Institute of Arts and the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis presented retrospective exhibits of his work. The Wayne State University master plan and a school from the Detroit suburbs were included in the politically charged American National Exhibition held in Moscow during the summer. Yamasaki continued to receive regular coverage in the architectural journals, not just in the United States but worldwide. The highest honor, however, came from the Architectural League of New York. In the spring the league invited him to hold a one-man exhibition of his work (figure 4.32). Architect Morris Ketchum Jr. imparted the significance of this honor in a letter confirming Yamasaki’s acceptance: “You may be interested to know that yours will be the first one-man show in architecture at The League since 1930, when Raymond Hood, as president, sponsored a one-man show of the work of Frank Lloyd Wright,” he wrote. Yamasaki selected the theme—“Delight and serenity are essential to our buildings today”— and the exhibition displayed a collection of his most significant designs. Yet as he was being honored for these buildings Yamasaki was already moving in different directions, experimenting with more historical ideas and developing a humanist approach rooted in his response to the continuing influences of worldwide architecture.26

121

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 121

STAYING THE COURSE

29/7/2017 3:32 PM

CHAPTER 5

MODERN HUMANISM

Yamasaki had received those accolades for buildings that had largely been created a few years before, and by the time of these celebrations his designs were moving in directions that in some cases extended previous investigations and in others forged an entirely new path. His mature designs of the late fifties to mid-sixties reflect a confidence and a willingness to experiment but also reveal a trend toward greater visual repetition—within individual buildings and between distinct commissions. Unfortunately, the screens, grilles, arcades, and colonnades featured in some of his designs stuck in critics’ minds, and these buildings came to define Yamasaki no matter how different his other work might have been. A Humanist Philosophy Humanism was at the heart of Yamasaki’s mature architectural philosophy. It was during this period, as he approached his zenith as a designer, that he began to self-identify as a humanist architect. He was not the only architect or critic engaged in the discourse of humanism at that time; the term was not quite commonplace but familiar. But what did it mean? “Humanism” was a multivalent term in midcentury modernism, widely used but rarely explained. Even among its adherents it was loosely applied and varyingly defined, which makes reviewing its permutations important if we wish to understand what Yamasaki was trying to do and how he differed from his contemporaries. For most twentieth-century architects before World War II, humanism in architecture evoked the relation between buildings and the human body, established by the ancient Greeks and reaching its greatest explication in the designs of the Italian Renaissance. At its heart lay the concept of “empathy” as theorized by nineteenth-century German art historians with their notion of Einfühlung—literally translated as “in-feeling” or “feeling-into.” Empathy theory imagined a correspondence between human bodies and buildings whereby certain forms or arrangements of lines were thought to initiate a complex process in our minds that stimulated feelings of sympathy between the viewer and the object viewed. The most cogent statement of this traditional idea for twentieth-century architects was Geoffrey Scott’s 1914 book The Architecture of Humanism: A Study in the History of Taste. Scott explained how empathy theory assumed that in certain situations we transcribe “ourselves into terms of architecture,”

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 122

29/7/2017 3:32 PM

while in others, we “transcribe architecture into terms of ourselves.” In both cases, the correlation between body and building, first recognized by the ancients, provided the foundation for successful architecture, which he described as “as an art of design based on the human body and its states.” Scott continued: “The humanist instinct looks in the world for physical conditions that are related to our own, for movements which are like those we enjoy, for resistances that resemble those that can support us, for a setting where we should be neither lost nor thwarted. It looks, therefore, for certain masses, lines, and spaces, tends to create them and recognize their fitness when created. And, by our instinctive imitation of what we see, their seeming fitness becomes our real delight.”1 Yamasaki may have encountered Scott’s book during his collegiate studies or gained an awareness of it early in his career (it was reprinted in 1947). There seems to be no question that he was familiar with Scott’s arguments. In his first published statement on the theory of architectural design, Yamasaki chided fellow modernists for being overly influenced by four common “fallacies,” which he labeled Functional, Economic, Originality, and Hero Worship. Not coincidentally, Scott had organized his own study around a critique of four fallacies: Romantic, Mechanical, Ethical, and Biological. Though the categories are not an exact correspondence, Yamasaki obviously modeled his ideas on The Architecture of Humanism.2 Rudolf Wittkower’s influential study Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism reinforced the body-building connection as the foundation of humanism for a postwar audience from a more historically grounded position. In his effort to recover the true principles of Renaissance architecture, and to champion the work of Leon Battista Alberti and Andrea Palladio, Wittkower analyzed the literal correspondences between body and building through proportional relations and fundamental notions like bilateral symmetry. Likewise, Le Corbusier’s Modulor system—a modernist attempt to create a proportional system for architecture derived from human bodies— had its origins at the same time and indicated a postwar yearning for a pragmatic synthesis of body and building. But when Wittkower’s book appeared in 1949 another theory of architectural humanism was emerging that shifted the terms of analysis from the perceptual to the emotional. This approach was best exemplified by the writings of cultural critic Lewis Mumford and the architecture of Alvar Aalto.3 Earlier commentators had introduced the idea of a modern humanism that sought to counteract the functionalist and rationalist impersonality of International Style design, but Mumford gave the movement its ideological foundation. He opined that “the main problem of architecture today is to reconcile the universal and the regional, the mechanical and the human, the cosmopolitan and the indigenous.” In doing so, he thought, architecture must serve human physical, psychological, social, and cultural needs. According to Mumford, mainstream modernism, exemplified by the International Style, failed on all accounts. He promoted what became known as the Bay Region Style as the antidote, and as a new form of architectural humanism. The phrase described contemporary architecture from the San Francisco area by designers like William Wurster and Bernard Maybeck that sought to merge the functional considerations and antistyle mentality of modernism with warm, natural materials and a more human scale. The work of individuals in the Pacific Northwest such as Pietro Belluschi and John Yeon would be gathered under this umbrella in ensuing years. While Mumford’s ideas were countercultural in the United States, they connected in some ways to the New Empiricism movement in England, championed by Nikolaus

123

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 123

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:32 PM

Pevsner and the Architectural Review, which promoted a picturesque and humane modernism borrowed from contemporary Swedish design (not to be confused with its antithesis, the British New Humanism movement, whose adherents were inspired by Wittkower’s research to infuse modernism with more rigorous classical principles). Among the Europeans, Aalto was the architect most associated with this type of humanism. He invoked the word frequently to describe how he prioritized human needs and emphasized the psychological and emotional responses of his clients.4 Vincent Scully was the individual most responsible for bringing humanism to the forefront of postwar concerns in American architectural circles. His notion of architectural humanism, however, differed from those cited above. Scully reinterpreted Scott for a modernist audience. At this time he was formulating a theory of the history of architecture that contrasted with that of Sigfried Giedion, whose 1941 book Space, Time and Architecture was viewed by many as the authoritative history of the modern movement. Where Giedion celebrated the Roman emphasis on interior space as the crucial step in the development of a modern consciousness, Scully countered by championing Greek architecture and its production of powerful sculptural forms that both enclosed space and existed as objects in the environment. For Scully, the relation between human bodies and object buildings was empathetic. People “empathetically experience upright bodies in terms of our own,” he wrote, and thus we relate to buildings as other individual entities, especially when they demonstrate human characteristics like “dynamism.” So, for example, he characterized Saarinen’s Auditorium at mit and Johnson’s Congregation Kneses Tifereth Israel Synagogue (Port Chester, N.Y., 1956) as “the result of a humanist search for clear, permanent, and man-centered forms.”5 Although this version of humanism recycled the nineteenth-century notion of empathy, Scully added a twist—a second layer of meaning derived directly from the Cold War context. He began to promote humanist architecture as “The Architecture of Democracy.” Scully believed that democracy—as the political system rooted in individual freedom—found its perfect complement in modern architecture and its correlative lack of restraints. And specifically, since America was the modern world’s first and foremost democratic society, American modernism best captured this quality. Scully was not alone in his patriotic promotions—other commentators portrayed contemporary artistic expressions like Abstract Expressionist painting and jazz music as uniquely American inventions that emerged from the artistic and political freedom inherent in its democratic society.6 Sprinkled among these assorted interpretations of architectural humanism were more immediate reminders of our shared humanity. The impact of World War II, with its high-tech slaughter and destruction, and subsequent Cold War annihilation anxieties spurred a resurgent interest in humanism as a way to recuperate humanity’s moral standing. Evidence of this trend can be seen in various cultural offerings. For example, MoMA’s most successful exhibition of the 1950s was “The Family of Man,” a display of more than five hundred photographs by international artists revealing the commonalities and connections among people around the world. Funding by the U.S. Information Agency allowed the exhibit to tour the world for seven years. In a similar vein, the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels—the first after World War II—advanced the theme, “A World View—A New Humanism,” in an effort to “sound a note of hope that man on the threshold of the atomic age may find a better means of achieving human understanding and peace.” Both events foregrounded an ethic

124

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 124

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:32 PM

based on a common humanity and may have helped popularize the notion to mass audiences.7 To summarize, the term “humanism” in the postwar architectural world tended to refer to one of four main ideas: a resurrection of empathy theory; a recognition of the body-building correspondence epitomized by Italian Renaissance exemplars and promoted by Wittkower; an expression of the freedom and individuality exemplified by democratic societies; and a more humane modern architecture whose functionalism and efficiency were tempered by design that attempted to fulfill psychological and emotional needs and desires. Some architects and critics like Scully tapped into more than one of these narratives. So did Yamasaki—or at least it appeared that way. On numerous occasions he invoked democracy when describing architecture, but his use of that term indicates that it was less about individual freedom to him than a particular approach to design which was actually related to the last connotation. This can be seen in statements such as the following, from a 1959 article: “We Americans who pride ourselves in our democracy, who hope to win the cold war by spreading our beliefs of co-operation and warmth in humanity, gentleness in mankind instead of brutality, must have a vocabulary of architecture which is consistent with our ideals.” Here Yamasaki couched a plea for a more humane architecture in the language of politics, appearing on the surface to support Scully while actually avoiding any engagement with the artistic expression of democratic individuality.8 Yamasaki’s most enlightening statement on humanism in architecture came in an invited speech to the Royal Institute of British Architects in London, published as “A Humanist Architecture.” Although he equated humanism with democracy early in the speech (“the philosophy of humanism in architecture—a philosophy dedicated to and consistent with the highest ideals of democracy”), he subsequently revealed his true understanding of these terms. “In the concept of democracy, man is the centrality—his dignity and individuality the core of the idea; so, too, in a humanist architecture the dignity and individuality of man must be the primary objective.” This humanist architecture should strive to achieve the following goals: 1. To enhance the enjoyment of life through beauty and delight. 2. To be uplifting so that we can reflect the nobility to which man aspires. 3. To give order, and through order, a background of serenity for the complex activity of modern life. 4. To be truthful. [A building] must have an intrinsic clarity of structure which is natural and inevitable for the purpose it fulfills. 5. To have full understanding of and fidelity to our technological processes . . . so that our architecture will be based on, and thus be symbolic of, the great advances in society made possible through industrialization. 6. To be in scale with man so that he is at all times secure and happy in his environment and intimately related to it.9

This list is composed of a mixture of vague aspirations and practical design advice. A clearer understanding comes from dovetailing these objectives with his professed desire to achieve “serenity,

125

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 125

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:32 PM

surprise, and delight” in his work. Thus order, truthful structure, technological fidelity, and human scale considerations combined with common Yamasaki characteristics—like the silhouette against the sky, the atrium-skylight pairing, unexpected views, the play of water and its contrast with the building, effects of light and shade, variety in indoor and outdoor spaces, elegant details and materials, and serene forms and peaceful courtyards—to yield an architecture that prized users’ experiences and emotional responses. And this, above all, is what Yamasaki intended when he proclaimed his architecture to be humanist. “Humanism in architecture has been a much misunderstood word. The opposition and derision of many leave a word picture of a ranch-type homespun architecture, which avoids recognition of technology and resorts to a sentimental handicraft philosophy,” he said. “Obviously this is not the issue. Humanism in architecture is the understanding that architecture centers on and arises from the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of man, that his prime purpose is to fulfill that need as ideally as is possible within the limits of a physical environment.”10 History Yamasaki’s evolving humanism relied on his belief in the continuing viability of architecture’s past. He was clearly not alone in charting a course for modern architecture that ran through history, as modernists began as early as the late forties to incorporate historically inspired features into their work in an effort to expand the limited functionalist orientation of the earlier generation. The best examples of this strain, in critic Ada Louise Huxtable’s words, were seen to “look toward the past knowledgably, although they never copy it, and can be mistaken for nothing but of the present.” Yamasaki followed this course, integrating colonnades, arches, pavilion forms, and classical symmetry into some of his designs in the early sixties as part of his campaign to inspire serenity, surprise, and delight.11 Modern Classicism In the midfifties a number of commentators began to identify a strain of resurgent classicism appearing in the work of several prominent American architects. Scully was among the first. Focusing on what he believed to be a trend toward greater order and clarity in design and a preference for large, simple volumes of space, he identified several shared characteristics in this work, including vaults and domes and “precise pavilions, defined by the metrical beat of high colonnades.” For Scully, this “new classicism” reflected a return to architectural archetypes after a lengthy period of absence; it was inspired by Mies’s Chicago-area buildings and 1929 Barcelona Pavilion. Scully was not alone in this pursuit; a renewed interest in classicism had been in the air at least since Wittkower’s Architectural Principles opened the door to a reconciliation between the Renaissance and twentieth-century modernism. British historian Colin Rowe, who studied under Wittkower, extended his mentor’s explorations in a series of writings at this time comparing Palladian villas with contemporary examples by Le Corbusier and Mies.12 These classical trends soon evolved into a full-fledged manner or style. The approach was prevalent enough by 1959 for art critic Jules Langsner to consider naming it. “This school of architecture, and it is beginning to assume the proportions of a ‘school,’” wrote Langsner, “possesses classicist attributes: symmetry, regularity, absence of clutter, calm spaciousness, reserve, adherence to an impec cably rational order.” In addition to these generalized concepts, Langsner identified more specific elements of the classical language,

126

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 126

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:32 PM

such as columns, porticoes, and imposing stairways. Although he avoided identifying specific buildings, Langsner named Stone and Yamasaki as prominent purveyors of the trend. Overall, he applauded their attempts to enrich the language of modern architecture by focusing on the ornamentation of classically influenced structures, but he balked at full acceptance of their work; although architecture needed to come to terms with embellishment, he said, retreating into historicism and references to distant times was too alienating to twentieth-century Americans. Because the issue of ornamentation lay at the heart of the work of these men, Langsner suggested the term “Ornamented Modern” as a more accurate label than Neo-Classicism.13 The name “New Formalism” became attached to this type of design after historian William Jordy coined it in a 1960 article entitled, “The Formal Image: USA.” This article provided the best explanation and evaluation of the classical impulses affecting modernism. Jordy’s piece was both a description of the trend and an analysis of its place in modern architecture. “A number of the most creative American architects have drifted toward classicistic formalism,” he wrote,” “whether casual or convinced, whether temporary or permanent.” Inspired by technological innovations, a revived interest in ornament, and a reawakened sense of history, prominent architects were experimenting with weighty, solid building masses reminiscent of palazzo and temple forms and investing contemporary buildings with Beaux-Arts composition principles like axial-symmetrical organization and “enframement” (emphasizing the base, roofline, and corners). Jordy even provided a chronology of the movement’s progression: he believed that it all began with the widespread adoption of “gridded simple rectangular containers” in the fifties, followed by advances to mechanical equipment that allowed bulk space to become functional. Once that happened, architects began to use axial and symmetrical plans (inspired by Renaissance palazzos). And the final step toward New Formalism occurred when architects like Johnson, Rudolph, Stone, and Yamasaki started to transform the prevailing “Miesian aesthetic” with decoration.14 Later commentators would be more specific in their description of the classicizing trend, focusing on freestanding pavilion buildings with symmetrical elevations, smooth wall surfaces, frequent arches or columns, and ornamentation—usually screens or grilles. They cited the works of Harrison & Abramovitz, Johnson’s New York State Theater in New York City (1958–64) and Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas (1958–61), multiple designs by Stone, and Gropius’s U.S. Embassy in Athens (1956–61) as leading examples. Many of the West Coast projects of Welton Becket & Associates and William L. Pereira & Associates were equally categorized as modern classicism. Practitioners favored the mode for cultural and civic buildings because it carried the built-in monumentality, gravitas, and past associations of classical architecture. Northwestern National Life Insurance Company Yamasaki had already demonstrated a propensity for classically inspired axiality and symmetry in works like the McGregor Center and Reynolds Sales Office, not to mention their freestanding, templelike nature and colonnades. His classical tendencies became more pronounced during a brief period in the early sixties. For the Northwestern National Life Insurance Company Building (nwnl, 1961–64), Yamasaki mined the Roman temple for inspiration (figure 5.1). The structure would become the architectural cornerstone of a major urban renewal project aimed at revitalizing Minneapolis’s

127

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 127

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:32 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 128

29/7/2017 3:32 PM

Gateway district. One third of the city’s downtown area was demolished, with plans to replace the old structures with modern apartments, offices, and retail stores. Yamasaki’s nwnl headquarters gained a prime location near the northern end of the district as the termination point of a pedestrian mall. This auspicious siting may have encouraged him to strive for a traditionally monumental structure. He considered alternatives such as a tall tower or a building lifted on pilotis before settling on a modernized Roman temple in a landscaped park. Yamasaki turned the building perpendicular to the mall so that the mall’s axis extended through a prominent portico and toward the Mississippi River. Curiously—but perhaps because of this orientation—the floor plan was abnormal for him, with the entry placed on the short side and no passage cutting through the building. The nwnl Building’s sixty-three precast concrete columns were structural; helping them to carry the load were a reinforced concrete service core and eleven interior supports. The slender, 80-foot-tall columns stretched the entire height of the building, flaring into graceful arches where they met the roof slab. More so than in the McGregor Center, the supports were ambiguous as to whether they were properly a colonnade or an extremely attenuated arcade; the answer depended on the height and distance from which one viewed the building. Between the supports, along the building’s sides, Yamasaki stacked thin Verde marble panels between vertical strips of dark gray tinted glass; the pairing made the office building’s six stories seemed to disappear behind the bold colonnade. Windows were intentionally minimized to protect against Minnesota’s harsh winter climate. In keeping with his desire for natural settings to offset manmade constructions, the ground along one long side became a reflecting pool, and a small pocket park containing three sculptures designed by Masayuki Nagare was added in front of the portico. The entrance, as in many of Yamasaki’s buildings, was curiously awkward. It projected past the line of the west end wall as a thin metal and glass box whose materials and appended nature clashed with the rest of the building. Beyond the entry, however, the lobby was smoothly minimalist and in tune with its surroundings. White marble walls and bronze window mullions were Yamasaki favorites. The oval receptionist’s desk, placed to the far side of the entry path, imitated comparable desks at the Reynolds Sales Office and Michigan Consolidated Gas Company buildings, although its sculpted white marble form, which seemed to emerge organically from the floor, was a new idea. Teak-covered walls led to the elevator bank, marking a route that compressed down to half height beneath Harry Bertoia’s Sunlit Straw sculpture of brass-coated steel rods (figure 5.2). Clients and architects of prominent business buildings at this time were incorporating more modern art into their public spaces, and Yamasaki was no exception, having begun in the early fifties with Bertoia’s screen for the Lambert–St. Louis Airport.15

5.1. Minoru Yamasaki & Associates, Northwestern National Life Insurance Company (now Voya Financial 20 Washington, Minneapolis, 1961–64). Balthazar Korab, photographer.

Robertson Hall, Princeton University While working on the nwnl Building, mya fashioned a Greek temple variation at Princeton (figure 5.3). The school had received a gift of thirty-five million dollars in A&P stock from an anonymous “Foundation X” (which turned out to be alumnus Charles Robertson, a partner in Smith Barney, and his wife, A&P heiress Marie Robertson) to fund the graduate program for training public servants in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. In keeping with their established process, Princeton’s supervising architect Douglas W. Orr worked with a faculty advisory committee to select Yamasaki for the job. He was surely known at Princeton;

129

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 129

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:32 PM

by tradition its graduating architecture students selected their own final studio jury, and in 1957 they chose him for one of the slots (he respectfully declined). And it did not hurt his chances that university president Robert F. Goheen had admired some of Yamasaki’s work on a recent trip to the Midwest.16 From the beginning, the building came with great expectations. Goheen later would describe his desire for “a building which would speak to all people, in dignity and beauty, of the unprecedented opportunities for national and international service which have been opened up,” as well as something that would “create a fit embodiment and expression of the high aspirations we hold for the Woodrow Wilson School.” President Lyndon B. Johnson’s attendance at the dedication ceremony in 1966—in full academic regalia—confirmed the school’s significance to the American political establishment. Such a high-profile commission would be a heady task for any architect, but at Princeton the situation was complicated by the school’s longstanding architectural commitment to Collegiate Gothic design. From the first unveiling of his Robertson Hall model, Yamasaki was criticized for ignoring this context. In addition to having concerns about its classical character, which conflicted with other university buildings, some critics were troubled by the structure’s location at the terminus of McCosh Walk—the campus’s central east-west pathway—and the fact that the old astronomy observatory was razed and the existing Wilson Hall moved 250 feet to accommodate it. Yamasaki and Orr determined that the siting, particularly after the decision to orient the building north-south and the college’s desire to extend McCosh Walk to the east, opened room for a court to serve as a gathering area and “transition point” befitting the monumental design.17

5.2. Lobby with Harry Bertoia’s Sunlit Straw, Northwestern National Life Insurance Company. Balthazar Korab, photographer. > 5.3. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Robertson Hall, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University (Princeton, New Jersey, 1961–65). Balthazar Korab, photographer.

130

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 130

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:32 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 131

29/7/2017 3:32 PM

ROOF Roof COURT

Court

LOUNGE Lounge CONF. Conf.

OPEN Open

ROOF Roof COURT

WAIT Wait

Court

LOUNGE Lounge

OFFICES Offices

H

RT

th

FEET Feet

NO

50

Nor

0

SECOND FLOOR SECOND FLOOR

Off. OFF. Dining DINING

50

th

Feet FEET

NO

0

H

Kit. KIT.

Bowl BOWL

Nor

FIRSTFIRST FLOORFLOOR

Lounge LOUNGE

RT

READING Reading

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 132

29/7/2017 3:32 PM

Robertson Hall’s extensive program required spaces for an auditorium, a library, a cafeteria, small lecture rooms, and faculty offices. Unlike the nwnl Building, Yamasaki repeated a previously used formula: a rectangular building bifurcated by a full-length atrium open to a skylight above, with the entire structure raised above the surrounding ground plane and adjacent to a rectangular reflecting pool (figure 5.4). In addition to the atrium, there was an abnormal verticality (for Yamasaki) in the interior, in part due to the programmatic requirements. The combination of exterior concrete columns, a waffle slab concrete floor, and load-bearing concrete walls enclosing the elevator and stair cores allowed the interior spaces to be open. The atrium split the building’s main floor into two distinct units (figure 5.5). One half held the auditorium and cafeteria, the other the library. Acoustical and capacity considerations led to an auditorium space 28 feet tall. This determined the height of the atrium, cafeteria, exterior columns, and library, although the library was divided vertically into three floors by inserting two levels of study carrels. Such a combination of varying floor levels within the same building is unique to Robertson Hall—one searches in vain for other examples in Yamasaki’s oeuvre. Equally surprising was his use of curves, appearing in both plan and elevation. From the artfully attenuated exterior columns to the slight tapering of the entablature floor above them with its pill-shaped windows, one encountered curves in the building from almost every angle. Inside, the walls that led occupants past the auditorium to the cafeteria with its suspended ceiling with a circular tracery pattern, continued the curvilinearity. And the screen surrounding the atrium on the upper floor replicated the exterior windows’ oblong forms. In the basement, four minilecture rooms or

< 5.4. Plans, Robertson Hall. 5.5. Lobby, Robertson Hall.

133

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 133

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:32 PM

“bowl rooms” with rounded back walls and semicircular tables anchored the four corners of the public space. These elements were truly minor, but it is worth noting that, like the vertical variation, Yamasaki rarely used curves. The momentous nature of the commission, as well as Princeton’s cachet as an Ivy League university, may have prompted him to stretch his design vocabulary. As a result, the ensuing building appeared more visually balanced than his other contemporary designs. Above these first-floor spaces were the upper-level offices, all with views outside through the peculiarly shaped floor-to-ceiling windows. Originally two small roof courtyards, opening from faculty and graduate student lounges, permitted users to access a bit of greenery and fresh air. They were smaller than their counterparts at the Wayne State Education Building but served the same function and reinforced the symmetry governing the building’s design. The true highlights of Robertson Hall were the columns. Made from monolithic precast concrete, 28 feet tall and five tons each, the supports tapered as they rose from a square base to a remarkably thin upper third before flaring out into umbrella capitals. These were the most attractive structural elements Yamasaki ever created. They appeared almost too frail to support their load, but the implication of support offered by the wider base and capital saved them. Fiftyeight columns surrounded the building: twenty-one on the long sides and eight on the short ends. Coincidentally or not, this is the same ratio of columns found at the Parthenon. Because the columns were

5.6. Robertson Hall.

134

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 134

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:33 PM

only about 5 feet from the curtain walls and the second story was too high for weather protection, they were not intended to form a covered walkway. Instead they provided the grandeur that, along with the outsized atrium, enhanced the building’s monumental character. Unfortunately, their stately march around the perimeter diverged from the quicker staccato rhythm of the upper-story windows, causing some visual discord (figure 5.6). But the contradiction was not enough to ruin the overall effect. Robertson Hall was one of Yamasaki’s best buildings of the period.18 When Yamasaki oriented Robertson Hall parallel to McCosh Walk, he opened an outdoor room alongside, bounded by streets and buildings. The space would become a sunken plaza. The plaza was necessary for Yamasaki’s building to be seen in the round: he had developed a fondness for singular structures standing free of neighbors in a parklike setting since the midfifties. All of his most important buildings from that era share this aloofness; in none of them, whether by chance or self-selection, did he have to deal with nearby or adjoining buildings or a streetscape of any kind. It also allowed him to continue his exploration of serene courtyards as pockets of serenity in a bustling world. After construction, the Princeton pool gained a 23-foot-tall, cast bronze sculptural fountain by Yamasaki’s Seattle friend James FitzGerald, titled Fountain of Freedom. This outdoor piece had a counterpart in the lobby—a Bertoia sculpture in the form of a globe of bronze rods entitled The World. As a whole, although Princeton’s architectural and student communities seem to have been disappointed by Robertson Hall, many others liked it. The Architectural Record applauded Yamasaki for infusing the design with “classic monumentality . . . with a spirit of freshness and simplicity,” and the New York Times’s Ada Louise Huxtable praised Robertson Hall during the design stage: “GrecoRoman and Far Eastern influences blend in a series of slender classic columns of Oriental lightness, in a top floor suggesting the cornice of a temple, and in a reflecting pool,” she said. In this work, “the undertones of the past emerge subtly in a quite advanced and experimental construction.”19 Prentis Building, Wayne State University If the nwnl Building was Robertson Hall’s close relative, the Meyer and Anna Prentis Building (1961–64) at Wayne State University, which predated Robertson Hall by a year, was another family member (figure 5.7). Like the early fifties trio of houses described in chapter 2, these three buildings designed almost simultaneously were explorations of a theme. Unlike the houses, however, the temple structures revealed an intentional movement toward a suppler, more attenuated, and more delicate aesthetic expression imbued with historical associations and created from precast concrete. But an unavoidable monumentality inherent in the size and forms of these works offset this delicacy; the outcome was a contradiction that not all viewers found satisfactory. Future criticism of the World Trade Center’s mixed visual messages, including Huxtable’s memorable description of “the world’s daintiest architecture for the world’s biggest buildings,” foregrounded this tendency.20 The Prentis Building actually was the first of Yamasaki’s temple series to be constructed. It was part of a tandem design with the small DeRoy Auditorium, with which it shared a spatial relation and an underground passage (figure 5.8). The Prentis Building (originally named University Hall) was erected as a home for Wayne State’s School of Business Administration. Like the Education Building, it relied on supports made from precast concrete with a white quartz

135

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 135

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:33 PM

aggregate, but the forty columns here were much farther apart. Also, at Prentis the concrete trees did not produce arches; instead they created the columns and horizontal spandrels that constituted the gridded facade, and the strong vertical columns were more articulated, gracefully curving up from the pavement through the upper two floors before terminating just above the roofline (figure 5.9). These lofty columns divided the facade into a series of bays on the building’s east and west sides. The active roofline revealed Yamasaki’s continuing quest to make structures with a distinct silhouette against the sky. Further, the wall surfaces of the upper floors were different than those of the Education Building; there, the concrete trees swelled

5.7. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Prentis Building, Wayne State University (Detroit, 1961–64). 5.8. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Helen L. DeRoy Auditorium, Wayne State University (Detroit, 1961–64), view from Prentis Building.

136

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 136

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:33 PM

slightly toward the viewer, whereas in the Prentis Building the horizontal spandrels receded from the wall plane. In both cases, Yamasaki sought subtle ways to add visual delight and avoid the dullness of a flat wall. The Prentis Building was the only one of Yamasaki’s temple structures that did not sit on a podium. This may be attributable to its pragmatic function and status as an important entry point for the campus’s east edge, with pedestrians intended to flow beneath and around the structure from Cass Avenue. And its form was different, with an off-centered open breezeway punctuating the building at ground level, flanked by a glass-enclosed lobby and student area on one side and a solid mass containing offices and stairs on the other. But the motif of a precast concrete colonnade supporting an overhanging block of offices and classrooms, above a recessed base faced with travertine, matched Robertson Hall. Slight adjustments were made—Robertson’s colonnade was peripteral instead of limited to the two long sides, and only one floor was supported—but Prentis was the obvious progenitor of the Princeton building. After this trio of buildings, Yamasaki expressed his fascination with temple forms only a few more times over his career, most notably in the Eastern Airlines Terminal (1965–69; demolished) at Logan International Airport in Boston (figure 5.10). In none of these instances did he use a traditional colonnade. Attempting to solve the perennial parking problem faced by all major airports, Yamasaki

5.9. Prentis Building.

137

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 137

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:33 PM

decided to locate space for a thousand cars on the roof of the Eastern terminal. To support this great weight, he borrowed the Parke-Davis structure of L-shaped bents (disguised as branching columns), this time arranged into 60-foot bays. Their crisscrossing pattern at the ceiling established a modern rib vault with Gothic connotations. The terminal’s branching columns were deemed “arches” by Yamasaki, and they approximated a colonnade only at the front entry, while the last bay was unenclosed, forming a covered drop-off area for departing travelers. Yet the building’s classical language embodied the modern temple nonetheless. Arches Structures like the nwnl Building or the Eastern Terminal indicated how willing Yamasaki was to consider historical ideas if they could be adapted to modern tastes and requirements. This receptiveness led him to a parallel sequence of works that incorporated arches in various ways. Yamasaki’s arch experiments generally moved in one of three directions. The first used structural arches as a way to create a building’s form, either singularly (Lambert) or in multiples (ParkeDavis). The second explored repetitive arched roofs on modest boxes (aci or Michigan State Medical Society). The third route, the use of arches on the facade, attracted the most attention, both positive and negative. Although Yamasaki’s arches were almost always structural, the more decoratively inspired uses came to define his work. Yamasaki employed arches to advance his experimentations with precast concrete construction, not to reorient architecture toward its past. That this material could give new life to time-honored elements like arches and domes was an added benefit, not a primary rationale, for he, like other architects of his generation, believed that his early

138

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 138

5.10. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Eastern Airlines Terminal, Logan Airport (Boston, 1965–69, demolished). Balthazar Korab, photographer.

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:33 PM

modernist predecessors had discarded history too easily. “I would argue against the frantic search for new forms, a search that avoids any form done in the past,” he once said. “If we avoid the use of Roman or Gothic arches, for instance, we are denying ourselves two of the most logical and beautiful means of construction available.” He became particularly fascinated by arches, and he used them in varying ways with different degrees of success. In Saudi Arabia’s Dhahran Air Terminal (1959–61) and suburban Chicago’s North Shore Congregation Synagogue (1959–64) he revisited the arch as form-giver, and these turned out to be two of the better buildings of his middle career.21 Yamasaki’s curiosity about arches may date back to one of his first experiences as a young architect. He claimed to have designed a chapel at the Sampson Naval Training Station in 1942 among various other buildings. Two chapels were constructed on the base, Royce Chapel (for Protestants, Jews, and Catholics) and the Chidwick Catholic Chapel (figure 5.11). Photographs of the interiors of these two structures reveal identical construction but divergent decoration. Architecturally, the standout features of both interiors are the structural arches, which tapered inward from vertical supports to create a series of pointed arches along the nave-sanctuary. The arches were made of laminated wood and manufactured off-site. Similar pieces were being employed in schools across the country to span large open areas in gymnasiums or cafeterias. Although no evidence has been found to verify (or contradict) Yamasaki’s story, if he was being honest in his attribution, this design laid the foundation for his future investment in arched forms, since they expressed everything he admired about arches: their capacity to be simultaneously structural and decorative, their adaptability to a variety of materials, and their ability to be prefabricated. Indeed, the system of precast concrete structural bents he introduced in the Parke-Davis warehouse are almost identical in form to those crucklike, prefabricated arches in the Sampson chapels (figure 5.12). They also are quite similar in appearance to some of the arched rooms in the Shah Mosque in Isfahan, Iran—a building Yamasaki identified as his “favorite” in a New York Times photo essay.22 Yamasaki’s earliest arches after Sampson had been either tentative or tedious, and all had appeared after his exposure to world architecture. For the London Embassy project, triangular-arched windows covered the entire building above the pilotis, marching across the facade without relief. Despite being divided into groups of twos and threes with vertical supports, ninety-one arches on four levels of the building’s front face made the repetition overbearing. The Wayne

5.11. Interior, Royce Chapel, U.S. Naval Training Station Sampson.

139

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 139

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:33 PM

State Education Building was much the same; although there were fewer here, the arches still overwhelmed the composition. In later years Yamasaki would express discontent with these projects. “The exterior facade of some of my buildings in the past were a little forced,” he said. “I used to think that a particular form was a device to make a building look beautiful. . . . In other words, I used to start with the desire to use the arches, but now I am inclined more toward forms which are derivative of technology and function.” From an architect supposedly absorbed by the minimalism of Japanese design, the visual complexity of these buildings was puzzling.23 The Michigan State Medical Society Building in Lansing, Michigan (1957–61), like the aci building, exemplified another avenue of investigation (figure 5.13). Both incorporated an arched roof of some kind, created from multiple small arches placed over a straightfoward rectangle with glass curtain walls. At the Medical Society the scalloped roof of rounded arches acted very much like the aci’s triangles in terms of establishing a decorative motif, but the structures of the two buildings differed radically; for the Medical Society, Yamasaki abandoned the cantilever in favor of a support system of visible two-story precast concrete columns and interior poured-in-place columns. It is worth noting that Amman & Whitney acted as structural engineers on both projects.24 And in a variation that combined Yamasaki’s flat-roofed temple with his repetitive-arched facades, the Irwin Library at Butler University (1959–63) arguably related to his screen explorations as well; in this case the screen dissolved into individual supports (figure 5.14). The result was not as visually busy as the Wayne State Education Building because of a more sympathetic ratio of columns to window opening, but it remained repetitive in its insistent one-note beat. Inside, the library’s vast atrium—with reflecting pool—added an air of dignity and repose lacking on the exterior (figure 5.15). Dhahran Air Terminal In the aci and Medical Soceity buildings, then, Yamasaki moved the arches from the exterior wall to the roof, but the shift minimally

140

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 140

5.12. Entry area, Parke-Davis Office and Warehouse. > 5.14. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Irwin Library, Butler University (Indianapolis, 1959–63). Balthazar Korab, photographer. > 5.13. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Michigan State Medical Society Building (Lansing, Michigan, 1957–61).

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:33 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 141

29/7/2017 3:33 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 142

31/7/2017 10:23 AM

5.15. Atrium, Irwin Library. Balthazar Korab, photographer.

affected their internal arrangements. The same cannot be said for the Dhahran Air Terminal (figure 5.16). In this, the first of many Yamasaki projects in Saudi Arabia, he returned to the Parke-Davis model, with precast L-shaped bents determining the basic structure and creating 40-foot-by-40-foot interior bays. But the Dhahran Terminal bents outlined a square bay rather than being connected on the diagonal, and they were shaped with splayed umbrella capitals atop columns that tapered down to the ground so that any two bents connected together made a flattened arch. The capitals extended out in four directions for more possible joining combinations. This permitted the architects to eliminate many interior walls, investing the building with an openness that better matched its public function. The commission originated in America’s burgeoning interest in Saudi oil. In 1933, King Ibn Saud granted the Standard Oil Company of California the right to explore his country for oil deposits. By the early fifties, the venture had evolved into the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco), had established a network of pipelines and railroad tracks throughout the country, and had moved its headquarters from New York to Dhahran. Aramco contributed greatly to the country’s infrastructure as the Saudis attempted to modernize in the face of this vast, rapidly developing industry. Because of Saudi Arabia’s strategic importance, the U.S. military was involved from the beginning, with a particular stake in establishing an airfield. The British blocked American efforts in this vein until 1945, when an agreement led to initial construction on a site outside Dhahran. The end of World War II meant that ownership of the airfield reverted to the Saudi government, but negotiations yielded a lease arrangement that gave the United States continuing access. The airfield received an extensive upgrade in the midfifties as it became more significant to America’s Cold War strategy and as the number of commercial flights to and from the country escalated. King Saud visited President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1957 to seek further aid for his country. In exchange for continued use of the airfield, the United States agreed to fund improvements to the commercial facilities at the Dhahran airport and to assist and train Saudi military forces. Eventually, after the kinds of bureaucratic problems expected when one country seeks to build in another (with the added layer of military involvement), the way was cleared for the construction of a new commercial air facility under the direction of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.25 The contract to design a new 70,000-square-foot terminal building with a reception pavilion for the king was awarded to the Ralph M. Parsons Company in April 1958. mya signed on as subcontractors shortly thereafter. It is unclear how Yamasaki became part of the project, but many possible connections might explain his participation. His Lambert–St. Louis Airport, opened three years earlier, was highly acclaimed and widely exhibited, and the airport consultants for St. Louis—Landrum & Brown—were involved in the Dhahran design. Also, Yamasaki had extensive experience working for the U.S. government and military, beginning with the Sampson Naval Training Station during World War II and including the Detroit Tank Arsenal (begun 1950), the Military Records Center, the Kobe Consulate, and the London Embassy proposal; within a year of the Dhahran Air Terminal commission, he would acquire jobs designing the U.S. national pavilion at the World Agricultural Fair in India and the U.S. Science Pavilion for the Century 21 Exposition in Seattle. Such a resume demonstrates Yamasaki’s success in navigating the nuances of government commissions.

143

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 143

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:33 PM

Observation

OBSERVATION

Lobby LOBBY

LOBBY

DomesticTERMINAL Terminal DOMESTIC

Customs

International Terminal INTERNATIONAL TERMINAL

MAIN FLOOR FLOOR PLAN PLAN MAIN

38788C-Yamasaki v04.indd 144

CUSTOMS

Lobby

0

80 FEET Feet

NNOor RtTh H

18/8/2017 10:55 AM

Despite Yamasaki’s experience and the participation of Landrum & Brown, the design for the Dhahran Air Terminal was regressive in its organization (figure 5.17). The plan presented a rectangular structure divided into unequal sides by a mostly open-air oasis of greenery—a layout reminiscent of many of Yamasaki’s buildings, similarly divided by a transverse axis placed slightly off center. The oasis separated domestic and international passengers and controlled automobile traffic (figure 5.18). Passengers reached the airplanes by walking from the terminal building out to the tarmac. Such arrangements had virtually disappeared from major American airports of the time, which instead grouped ticketing, waiting, and baggage operations in a central terminal that led out in some variation of the finger plan to the individual gates. It seems likely that the design team effected this older model because the volume of travelers was nowhere near that of the United States, where ever-increasing numbers necessitated plans that dispersed and diffused passengers as much as possible. The building’s image would be one of Yamasaki’s biggest challenges. He realized the importance of giving the new terminal an Arab flavor—but what that meant proved elusive. Traditional Saudi architecture offered few examples for emulation, and there was barely any large-scale concrete construction in the country. Yamasaki settled on the pointed arch and the lacy carvings of the mashrabiya as the salient characteristics of Arabic art that might form the basis for a modern expression (figure 5.19). “There was a deliberate attempt to set a Moorish character or Arabian character in the building because we felt that an Arabian building should look Arabic,” he recounted in an interview. “Curiously enough, 99% of the buildings in Arabia are patterned after European modern buildings—and very bad patterns. So that the Arabian-looking building that we are constructing will be all by itself in Arabia.” This character was to be achieved via the “Moorish” arches created by the terminal’s structural bents and the grille-like infill panels between them. These wall panels stiffened the structure while also acquiring a decorative aspect. mya devised a complex, interwoven pattern of arches for the wall panels—some open at the ground level, most just applied to the wall surface— “designed to create a visual effect of laciness in keeping with the traditional Arabian grillwork,” according to Yamasaki.26 Although no one at the time commented on the paternalistic implications of an American architect inventing an Arabic modern architecture, not everyone was pleased with Yamasaki’s results. Early in the project, General Emerson C. Itschner, head of the U.S. Army

< 5.16. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Dhahran International Airport (Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, 1959–61). < 5.17. Plan, Dhahran International Airport. 5.18. Courtyard, Dhahran International Airport.

145

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 145

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:33 PM

Corps of Engineers, castigated Yamasaki’s design as “too imaginative for Disneyland,” described the supports as “monolithic mushrooms 35 feet tall,” and voiced his opposition. But the design’s main proponent, who could not be denied, was King Saud, and he apparently felt strongly about its appropriateness. In the American architectural press, both Architectural Record and Art in America ran impartial articles on the terminal, neither fawning nor critical. Huxtable’s comment that “French Gothic tracery was married to suggestions of the Alhambra” in the building discreetly suggested, however, that something was not quite right with the union.27 In retrospect, the Dhahran Air Terminal became a prototype for a new “modern Arab” architecture that would resonate throughout the Middle East. Yamasaki was among those few high-profile architects in the first wave of Westerners to design for that region. Only the ambitious campaign by the Iraq Development Board to commit to modern architecture for Baghdad in the 1950s preceded him. Iraq at the time was reaping its own benefits from the initial influx of oil revenue, and its leaders were eager to upgrade the nation’s facilities, amenities, and reputation. The Development Board, organized by the Iraqi government to facilitate the country’s modernization, tapped into those funds to enlist a group of high-profile international architects for a campaign of new construction in the capital city: Le Corbusier for a sports complex, Walter Gropius and The Architects’ Collaborative (tac) for a new university, Alvar Aalto for an art museum, Gio Ponti for a government office building, and Frank Lloyd Wright for an opera house (which he eventually parlayed into an entire cultural center). Of these initiatives, only Ponti’s Ministry of Planning and a few buildings for tac’s University of Baghdad were constructed; Corbusier’s gymnasium, only recently discovered, was not realized

146

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 146

5.19. Dhahran International Airport.

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:33 PM

5.20. Dhahran International Airport on a Saudi Arabian banknote.

until the late seventies, long after his death. And none of them—Philip Johnson’s Nuclear Reactor in Rehovot, Israel (1960)—attempted the same degree of engagement with local artistic expressions as Yamasaki’s terminal. Most merely adapted their typical manner to adjust for the harsh climate, as if to emphasize the international character of their work. Wright’s designs avoided such aloofness, but by his own admission they were “fantasies” that synthesized Baghdad’s modern future with its medieval past—and it was a past arising from Wright’s romantic imagination and reminiscences of the Thousand and One Nights tales rather than historical fact. Only Gropius’s mosque for the university, which merged the bulbous dome forms characteristic of the region with the structural panache of Saarinen’s mit Chapel, attempted to channel the local artistic spirit through modern techniques and materials. As built, however, the dome was much less daring. By contrast, Yamasaki—as he had attempted to do with the Kobe Consulate and London Embassy—tried to reinterpret a traditional style via modernism. Rather than copying Arab or Islamic buildings, he took the architecture and decorative designs of the area as a starting point for his own modernist impulses. This was in keeping with the clients’ desire for an architectural image that was both recognizably Saudi but also contemporary. Such an approach would be behind the establishment of the Agha Khan Award for Architecture in the late 1970s, intended to stimulate architectural design in the Islamic world. According to its founder, “We are not looking for a façade of Islamic architecture, hiding the new behind a shallow imitation of the old. . . . I am hoping to stimulate in the architectural profession and among its teachers a new thought process which will develop a momentum of its own and become an almost instinctive manner of expression for any architect designing anywhere in the Islamic world.” In keeping with this attitude, the Dhahran Air Terminal was not a historical simulation—it used no historical elements from Arabic architecture. Instead, it appropriated Arab decorative ideas and used them to craft a modernized depiction of Saudi Arabia.28 The Dhahran Air Terminal would garner a fourth aia Honor Award for Yamasaki in an eight-year period—more than any other architect or firm during that time, including Johnson, Saarinen, and som, his closest competitors. But perhaps the highest praise came from the Saudi government, which put a drawing of the terminal on some of its banknotes (figure 5.20).29

147

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 147

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:33 PM

North Shore Congregation Synagogue As he often did, Yamasaki would design a close relative to the Dhahran Air Terminal, using the same basic parti while incorporating small changes. In this case, the terminal’s companion would be a synagogue for a Reform Jewish community in the Chicago suburbs. The North Shore Congregation had been established in 1920 in Glencoe, Illinois. By the late fifties it had grown, like many Jewish congregations around the country, to a size that made its home unsuitable. The members established a committee to search for a high-profile architect to design a new complex. The committee asked Alfred Alschuler Jr., a congregant and well-known Chicago architect, to proffer advice and serve as resident architect to assist whomever would be selected as main designer. Inspired by Rabbi Edgar Siskin, the group aimed high, compiling a list of more than sixty potential architects. The minutes of an architect selection committee meeting in April 1959 revealed Siskin’s ideas for the new temple: “Dr. Siskin visualized the new Temple building as a modern structure of clean, simple, graceful design but touched by the warmth and inspiration which an old and hallowed tradition can bestow. He hoped that it would not be a starkly functional structure, a sterile box, or a series of boxes. He saw it as a building which soared, lifting its head above the surrounding landscape, but not flamboyantly in conflict with the surrounding architectural and natural forms.”30 That month the congregation sent some committee members to a conference on church planning and design in Chicago to gather advice about choosing an architect and planning a new building. On their return, after discussions with the selection committee and Rabbi Siskin, the field narrowed to seven firms or individuals, all of whom would be invited to Glencoe. The finalists were yla, Saarinen, Stone, Harrison & Abramowitz, Breuer, hok, and Kivett & Meyers of Kansas City. In June most of these architects visited the committee. By mid-summer, Yamasaki had emerged as the clear favorite. Committee members then traveled to Detroit to interview him and see some of his work, and to visit Saarinen. In the end, the choice appears to have come down to the same three potential architects as the London Embassy: Yamasaki, Saarinen, and Stone. The building committee apparently placed great stock in the fact that Yamasaki had been the only architect other than Wright to have been feted with both an exhibition and a banquet by the Architectural League of New York. Immediately after his selection, he began a self-education program in Judaism and synagogue architecture, attending North Shore’s Yom Kippur services and reading extensively. With Rabbi Siskin, Yamasaki traveled to Cleveland to view religious designs by Erich Mendelsohn and America’s leading synagogue architect, Percival Goodman. Goodman was credited with being the father of modern synagogue architecture. By the late 1950s, architects faced two fundamental design problems with this building type: how to handle the extensive crowds that jammed into buildings created for much smaller weekly audiences during celebrations of Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, and how to distinguish synagogues from Christian churches. The most popular solution to the first dilemma came from Goodman, who devised a formula that involved placing a social hall as an anteroom to the sanctuary, separated by a movable wall so that the social hall could be opened to handle the High Holy Day overflow attendance. Goodman used this scheme in numerous examples, and it was adopted by other architects as well. The second problem was less easily solved. Historically, American synagogue architects mined a plethora of sources, from Roman

148

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 148

5.21. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, North Shore Congregation Synagogue (Glencoe, Illinois, 1959–64).

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:33 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 149

29/7/2017 3:33 PM

Beaux-Arts classicism to Moorish and everything in between. There never has been an indigenous Jewish architectural style or a mode of religious expression or even a set of requirements for synagogue architecture: synagogues have always exhibited the architectural tastes of the architects or congregants. Because of this lack of traditions, many synagogue architects found post–World War II modernism liberating. Instead of referencing the historical past of some other culture, religious buildings could now be designed to express emotional or spiritual ideas, limited only by the designer’s imagination and the technology. This led to a slew of unique synagogue designs, related to one another only through the widespread use of Goodman’s floor plan and standard elements like the Ark and bimah. Simultaneously, architects composing Christian churches also were exploring the new architectural freedom, casting off conventional symbols like the cruciform floor plan and tall steeple. Thus, in the postwar period it is often difficult to distinguish a synagogue from a Christian church by appearance alone; the decorations and interior layout are often the only means of differentiation. Yamasaki had some experience with religious buildings, but his previous churches for Christian congregations had not adequately prepared him for the task—they were small-scale structures and did not address what Yamasaki considered the most complicated aspect of synagogue design, namely the huge discrepancy in attendance between normal services and High Holy Days. During his studies he became impressed with what he believed to be the close relationship between God and his people in Judaism; in an interview he stated, “Judaism appears to offer a beautiful combination of tradition, thought, and equality. The old Gothic cathedrals put men in awe of the Lord. . . . Judaism seems to place them side by side.” From these investigations he developed a parti that he would describe as “an interlacing of daylight and solids,” intended to give the sanctuary space “a sense of uplift.”31

150

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 150

5.22. North Shore Congregation Synagogue.

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:33 PM

As constructed, the building was an expressionist interpretation of Gothic architecture, highlighting the union of structure and aesthetics. The sanctuary embodied the soaring quality favored by Rabbi Siskin, along with a technological virtuosity that fused walls and roof in graceful, curving forms (figure 5.21). In keeping with his tendency for rectangular structures and skylights, he imagined a building in the shape of an extended pointed vault punctuated by light. It was unlike anything Yamasaki ever created. Eight pairs of columns flanking the main space rose from the floor and inclined toward each other, expanding when they reached the ceiling level into elongated elliptical vaults that gently touched each other over the sanctuary. These supports, which Yamasaki sometimes called “fan vaults” in an allusion their medieval Gothic ancestry, were made with poured-in-place concrete. Their elliptical shape meant that the roof would not be a continuous surface. In the spaces between the vaults, Yamasaki installed skylights and window strips, ensuring sufficient light for the sanctuary below. Despite such references, Gothic churches appear to have been only one source of inspiration for Yamasaki’s synagogue design. Another, curiously, was natural. In a rare manifestation of organic design, he invoked the calla lily as an influence for North Shore’s vaults. According to longtime colleague Henry Guthard, Yamasaki loved plants, and specifically sought to mimic the elegant curves of the calla lily’s petals in the sanctuary’s arched ceiling.32 Although this unique structural system established a roof for the building, it did not make walls; the end and side walls had to be independent of the arches, just as they were at the Dhahran Air Terminal. The precast, reinforced concrete side walls actually were pointed arch screens filling the spaces between each pair of columns (figure 5.22). Their nonstructural nature was emphasized by leaving a gap between wall and column, filled with opaque, gold-tinted glass to outline each wall unit. A similar light strip bordered the end wall behind the bimah. Because Yamasaki wanted congregants to see the outdoors from within the building, a series of clear windows at ground level afforded views from the interior. He originally used this technique in the First Methodist Church, where a steeply pitched, tent-shaped roof hovered over a continuous band of windows at the bottom. These relations of wall and window evoked Yamasaki’s concept of “an interlacing of daylight and solids.”33 The sanctuary’s floor plan placed the Ark and bimah at one end of a space 126 feet long and 80 feet wide. Eight hundred permanent seats divided by a central aisle faced them. At the other end of the room was a choir loft and room for an organ. Beyond the sanctuary Yamasaki decided to reject contemporary synagogue trends—and Percival Goodman’s advice—by not positioning an overflow space between a sanctuary and an auditorium. He disliked Goodman’s solution for handling excess crowds and instead included a low platform along the sanctuary’s side walls that curved around the seating area and merged with the bimah. This platform could be used for temporary seating during the High Holy Day services, increasing the sanctuary’s seating capacity to twelve hundred. If even more space was needed, a series of folding doors at the rear of the sanctuary opened to the Memorial Hall, which could hold an additional six hundred portable seats. The sanctuary was more than 10,000 square feet in size. Its ceiling soared to 55 feet from floor level. In this vast space, light became an ever-changing phenomenon. Yamasaki wanted to provide a mixture of natural and artificial light, with an emphasis on the former. The amber-colored glass throughout the room engendered magnificent and beautiful lighting effects. The soft glow symbolized Yamasaki’s

151

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 151

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:33 PM

understanding of Judaism as a religion of light rather than one of mysticism and darkness. It also responded to the language of a document in the North Shore archives that appears to have been prepared by Rabbi Siskin to explain Judaism to prospective architects; this document explains that Judaism is “not a religion of mysteries so the sanctuary should be bright and light, expressing the ancient and precious tradition which binds the Jew to God in adoration and Thanksgiving.” And finally, the unique lighting helped the sanctuary avoid being the kind of “sterile box” that Rabbi Siskin criticized at the beginning of the search process.34 Yamasaki’s design further diverged from Goodman’s recommendations by emphasizing verticality. In a 1962 article on synagogue design intended for an audience of architects, Goodman wrote: “Spiritually, the essential style difference between churches and synagogues is that the synagogue represents a faith that does not accept mysteries and believes the earth is the Lord’s and all that is on it. Thus the interior must be bright and light, the expression horizontal and earth-embracing, rather than vertical and earth-escaping.” Yamasaki’s sanctuary was intended to be anything but earth embracing. It soared upward over five stories, giving form to his desire for “a sense of uplift.”35 Yamasaki turned to frequent collaborators for the synagogue’s design team. The bimah and Ark inside the sanctuary came from Lee DuSell. He covered the cylindrical teakwood Ark with gold leaf and used double doors that opened to reveal the Torah scrolls; by tucking the Ark into the wall and partially wrapping the wall surface around it with a supple hood, he was able to mimic a prayer shawl, although the ensemble—like the arches above—also had a faintly organic ambiance (figure 5.23). Outside the sanctuary, Yamasaki and Lawrence Halprin minimized the architecture’s disturbance of a wooded bluff overlooking Lake

152

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 152

5.23. Lee DuSell, North Shore Congregation Synagogue Ark.

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:33 PM

5.24. North Shore Congregation Synagogue.

Michigan. The synagogue was originally intended for another spot in Glencoe, attached to an existing building and surrounded on three sides by residences. But a fortuitous event changed the congregation’s future. In the spring of 1961, just months before the proposed groundbreaking ceremony, a Glencoe resident offered to sell her nearly twenty-acre lakefront estate to the North Shore Congregation. Negotiations for this property took a few months, but by May it had been purchased. Everyone involved with the project agreed that the new site was much better than the cramped city location. Halprin was a pioneer modernist landscape designer whose projects reflected a concern for viewers’ spiritual and psychological connections with nature. His policy was to work closely with the architect to formulate a design that enhanced a landscape’s existing natural features and emphasized movement through outdoor space. He would become famous for his urban spaces and landscape fountains in cities like Portland and San Francisco and in his Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C. Yamasaki had met Halprin during the planning for the Seattle World’s Fair and subsequently hired him to plan the walkways, plantings, and reflecting pools for the initial synagogue project to accentuate the feeling of serenity within the suburban lot.36 When the new property was acquired, Yamasaki chose to transplant his concept intact to the lake bluff site with no fundamental changes to the sanctuary (figure 5.24). Because the conditions would be different and there was more room on the new land, the building could now stand alone, no longer attached to an existing structure. So Yamasaki created an entrance court, rearranged the school and office spaces, and deleted an arcaded wall that circumscribed the sanctuary in its previous incarnation. He oriented the building so that it sat perpendicular to the shoreline with the back, or bimah, end to the water. With the decision to remove the surrounding arcade, Halprin

153

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 153

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:33 PM

had was able to relate the land to the building in a less formal manner. He focused on views from inside the sanctuary out through the arched windows to scenes of grass, trees, water, and sky. Halprin described his work at North Shore in the following terms: “Our landscape is attempting to do several things. One, to preserve as much as possible the beautiful natural quality of the site, to enhance and use the existing trees, and to keep the ground serene and almost gentle around the building. But we also want to and need to use the site so that people will be encouraged to feel that the whole area is part of the Temple conception.” Although the sanctuary may have appeared slightly awkward as a stark, manmade object in a clearing, Yamasaki’s concern was for the experience congregants would have from inside the building, and in that sense he was ultimately successful.37 Groundbreaking for the synagogue occurred in June 1962. In the final plans, the sanctuary was part of a larger complex with two wings: the north contained a two-story, eighteen-classroom school, while the south included a rabbi’s study, a caretaker’s apartment, and secondary rooms. Connecting the two wings would be an enclosed walkway, a remnant from the earlier design. Construction of the sophisticated building went smoothly, and the congregation dedicated the sanctuary and school during a series of events in May 1964. In the years following the synagogue’s completion the sanctuary was featured in numerous advertisements, usually for concrete companies. It became a contemporary icon of modernist concrete construction, symbolizing the free-ranging expressionism now possible through the use of precast and poured-in-place concrete—similar to Saarinen’s exciting TWA Terminal at Kennedy Airport in New York (1956–62). Unfortunately, Yamasaki never again attempted such a poetic or naturally inspired design. And in everyday use the cavernous sanctuary proved impractical, dwarfing the normal service participants to such an extent that the congregation added a smaller sanctuary to the complex in 1982. The Dhahran Air Terminal and North Shore Synagogue indicated a new tendency for Yamasaki in addition to their more prominent use of arches. These designs employed a novel approach to the relation between structure and screen. He had begun his explorations by probing the connection in projects like the Kobe Consulate, the McGregor Center, and particularly the Reynolds Sales Office, where the structural box and the screen applied to it were distinct—often a partial screen at some distance from the building’s outer wall. Within a few years these screens became blatantly ornamental in Oberlin’s King Humanities Building and Carleton’s Olin Science Building—nonstructural concrete grilles of round and triangular arches, respectively, almost wide enough to be walkways, appended to the wall. With the airport and synagogue, Yamasaki tested another option: the screen integrated as wall panels filling in between arched supports. The panels’ glazed borders added to their screenlike appearance by emphasizing their nonstructural nature. This variation allowed him to continue using ornamentation while avoiding the extraneous quality common to the college buildings. The arched panels seemed more naturally part of the building—almost organically so—in contrast to the artificiality of those predecessors. Gendering Modern Architecture The architectural press generally refrained from severe censure of Yamasaki’s work until around 1960. The negative comments that emerged after that time were due in part to his higher profile—especially after the World Trade Center commission was announced— which led to more attention directed toward his designs. But at least

154

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 154

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:33 PM

some of the condemnation revealed trepidation that his buildings portended a more serious problem with modern architecture beyond its complicated relation with ornament. To some elitist critics, accepting Yamasaki’s brand of “feminine” architecture moved contemporary design one step closer to a populist Googie style that prized titillation and sensual effects over serious responses to program, materials, and context. A critical narrative founded on modern architecture’s alleged masculine-feminine dichotomy emerged at this time. Henry-Russell Hitchcock was among the first to identify what he believed to be two dominant strains in contemporary design: “one exaggeratedly masculine, the other almost daintily feminine.” He did not elaborate on this comment except to align the feminine with “the readiness . . . to beguile with somewhat saccharine ‘beauty,’” but even without explication, Hitchcock’s duality implied something wrong with this “feminine” approach, since “dainty” is not a term that expresses anything positive or serious about a piece of architecture. It would, in fact, become one of the code words used to denigrate the work of Yamasaki and others.38 “Dainty” would not be the only epithet of a gendered nature to be directed toward Yamasaki’s work: a comprehensive list would include terms like “frilly,” “precious,” “prissy,” “saccharine,” “lacy,” and “epicene,” in addition to phrases like “spun candy,” “costume jewelry look,” “forced, hothouse elegance,” and “confections of the decorated box school of design.” Every one of these words or phrases was firmly connected in the popular mind with women and their “frivolous” obsession with decoration, whether it be of themselves or of their environment. And such words also were code, when applied to the activities, appearance, or products of a man, for effeminacy and homosexuality. The most lasting of these jibes was the one coined by Reyner Banham—the “Ballet School.” The phrase ingeniously encapsulated multiple fears: that elegant, balletlike forms were proliferating without sufficient theoretical foundations and turning modern architecture into undisciplined populist nonsense; that feminine tastes, which by nature were oriented toward decorative effects rather than more serious concerns like materials and function, might turn architecture into a haven for effeminacy, similar to ballet; and that this approach was organized or at least widespread enough to have achieved the status of a “school.” It originated from Banham’s critique of Saarinen’s U.S. Embassy in London, which struck him as straddling the fence between two primary impulses—both disappointing—in American architecture: the “Neo-monumental” on one hand, and the Ballet School on the other. Unfortunately, according to Banham, the embassy building was “monumental in bulk, frilly in detail.” He refused to probe the implications of the word “frilly” for architecture in the Cold War context, but it is clear that he meant overly decorative and feminine; years later he revived this gendered contrast in an evaluation of the Festival of Britain entitled, “The Style: ‘Flimsy . . . Effeminate’?,” wherein he never explained what might constitute such an architecture but made certain that the reader understood that flimsy and effeminate design was undesirable.39 It is possible that Banham was inspired to invent the Ballet School moniker by William Jordy’s article on Philip Johnson from the previous year. In describing Johnson’s “declaration of independence from Miesian discipline” and newfound fondness for historical allusions, Jordy critiqued Johnson’s modernist porticoes, calling them “so two-dimensional as to recall stage backdrops for some ballet dream sequence.” That Johnson was the subject of Jordy’s review is fitting, for the Ballet School, as it was then widely understood,

155

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 155

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:33 PM

included Yamasaki, Johnson, and Rudolph as its most prominent practitioners. Critics attacked those iconic works by these men that exemplified their concerns. So Stone was pigeonholed as someone who slapped grilles on all of his buildings after the success of the highly praised U.S. Embassy and then devolved into outright kitsch with the Huntington Hartford Gallery of Art in New York City (1958–64). Rudolph’s Jewett Center continued to be singled out for its fragile delicacy long after he had switched to a rugged, mass-dominant Brutalist concrete construction. Johnson’s apostasy was more broadly offensive and less tied to a singular structure, perhaps because of his willingness to experiment and his flippant public personality. With Yamasaki, the McGregor Center and the Reynolds Sales Office came to symbolize to his enemies an unfortunate tendency to cherish ornament and decorative effects over more appropriate emphases on space or tectonic rigor. Jordy, for example, admitted that although the McGregor Center was delightful, it troubled him with its “precious, even faintly saccharine, quality.” Jordy intended to express anxiety over the future direction of midcentury modernism, but his more direct effect, because of the terms he used, was to imply that Yamasaki’s approach was as sweet, ephemeral, and insubstantial as candy. Other critics left no room for confusion. Scully referred to Stone’s grilles—and by association Yamasaki’s—as having “feminine scale.” West Coast critic Alan Temko, invoking Banham’s Ballet School without naming names, bemoaned the nation’s “growing collection of epicene new buildings.” John Jacobus attacked Yamasaki on numerous fronts; in addition to the accusations of Mannerism cited earlier, he further decried the “forced, hothouse elegance” of Yamasaki’s work and its “prissy character.” Wolf von Eckardt’s analysis reduced Yamasaki to a practitioner of “all manner of lacy Venetian Gothic” and “Busy Arabesques.”Even Ada Louise Huxtable joined in, with her oft-cited depiction of the World Trade Center as “the world’s daintiest architecture for the world’s biggest buildings,” which gender-identified Yamasaki’s work as much as similar comments by her male counterparts.40 These gendered and homophobic depictions of Yamasaki’s work by commentators in the sixties shaped a powerful and lasting impression that lingers today. In this new century there have already appeared instances of a troubling continuation of this trend. In analyses published since 2000, for example, Robertson Hall has been described as having “rather effete” columns and the entire building as having been “betrayed by prettification”; the World Trade Center has been called an example of “sissy finesse” and “gracile and fussy”; and Yamasaki’s general architectural tendencies have been labeled “vaguely feminine.”41 Combined with the World Trade Center criticism described in the next chapter, this pigeonholing of Yamasaki as a frivolous decorator damaged his reputation over the long term. The impression of him as a cosmetician only interested in superficial embellishment stuck. Even though he abandoned screens and grilles in the late 1950s and virtually stripped his work of decoration shortly thereafter, many critics and doubtless some members of the public never moved past the opinions they formed during those few years when Yamasaki experimented with applied ornamental features or sought to synthesize decoration and structure. And in contrast to later assessments, the early criticism of Yamasaki—by those who knew him and had experienced his work firsthand—was tinged with disappointment and the feeling that something had been lost. The beginnings of a fallfrom-grace narrative to his career can be traced as far back as this

156

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 156

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:33 PM

period in the musings of prominent critics. Scully may have been the earliest when he lamented that a mania for pavilions sweeping through modernist circles “has had the bad effect of causing better architects [Yamasaki and Stone] to concentrate upon the superficial decoration and embellishment of the pavilion, rather than upon more profound problems of function and structure,” as if the perceived change in their approach was influenced by powerful forces outside the architects’ control. Von Eckardt described Yamasaki as gifted but misguided. Gordon Bunshaft, who had admired the aci Headquarters just a few years before, stated in characteristically blunt fashion, “He was an architect, but now he’s nothing but a decorator.”42 Ada Louise Huxtable Perhaps no one struggled more with Yamasaki’s work in the early sixties than New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable. She seemed to grasp the essence of Yamasaki’s designs, and their essential contradictions, better than any other commentator. In 1962 she introduced Yamasaki to her readership via two avenues: an analytical article for a popular audience in the Times Sunday Magazine and a photo essay for a more select audience in the journal Art in America. These analyses elucidated Yamasaki’s better qualities while also raising some serious concerns. “Minoru Yamasaki’s Recent Work,” in Art in America, presented Yamasaki’s words alongside photographs of buildings and models. In the brief introduction—her only writing in the piece—Huxtable admitted that he was one of America’s most important architects because of the commissions he was receiving and the “personal nature of his work.” Huxtable portrayed Yamasaki as a transgressive maverick who “uses structure and the new concrete technology as a starting point for an ornamental style and a conscious historicism that often recall Gothic and Oriental forms with evocative elegance.” She captured his incongruous nature in her closing lines: “Yamasaki’s architecture is deliberately decorative and, among professionals, highly controversial. It is also sensitive, conscientious, exploratory, delicately sensuous and very beautiful.”43 Huxtable offered more insight in “Pools, Domes, Yamasaki— Debate” for the Times. In a much lengthier and more detailed fashion, she reviewed the pros and cons of his work and her own ambivalence toward it. In general, she praised his philosophy while questioning his execution. One of his best characteristics was his ability to create beautiful and serene outdoor spaces, and she applauded him for popularizing water features in Western architecture. She further complimented his “preoccupation” with infusing designs with “expressive or poetic values.” As the article continued, however, the account became more critical. Beginning with the judgment that his “preoccupation” with bringing beauty into modern architecture was “real if, to some, his methods may be suspect,” she included negative comments from fellow architects who believed that Yamasaki’s more recent work had “strayed down the primrose path of token visual pleasures without thinking through the problem ‘in depth.’” These peers questioned his perceived reliance on decoration, his lack of intellectual rigor, and his “selling out” to popular taste. Then she switched back to her own appraisal, tied to her belief in the fundamental role of structure in architecture, and faulted him for failing to expose the structure in many of his buildings.44 Moving on to the relation between modern technology and aesthetics—which Yamasaki himself felt was the basis of his approach to architecture—she attacked some of his most cherished ideas. “In today’s architecture, techniques are as important as art, and the expression of technology must take its place with the search for beauty.

157

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 157

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:33 PM

Yamasaki acknowledges the dual principle, but in the final analysis he often overbalances the scales for delight.” This caused structural members, like the columns in Robertson Hall or the nwnl Building, to become too attenuated and visually unconvincing as supports. Next, in a passage that must have pained Yamasaki to read, she condemned his reliance on Japanese inspiration, calling his “orientalism” “consciously borrowed and not very deeply absorbed.” In closing, Huxtable expressed her quandary while holding out hope that his recent work might signal a corrective to these alleged faults: “At the same time—and this is the crux of his critics’ dilemma—many of his buildings are undeniably wonderful to look at. And there is a new and necessary restraint in his latest projects which suggests that he may be moving closer to the ideal: the building that has structural clarity, and still entrances the eye.” Although Huxtable’s critiques were interspersed with favorable comments throughout the article, the overarching impression given was that Yamasaki was a talented architect with some intriguing ideas about architecture whose designs were becoming overwhelmed by trivial concerns.45 Large-Scale Planning As Yamasaki’s fame escalated he was asked to devise master plans for institutions of higher education and real estate developments for commercial clients. He seemed to favor these multibuilding ensembles, perhaps for their complexities, perhaps for reasons of ego. Although he had considerable experience in that area, dating back to his participation in the Sampson Naval Training Station during World War II, the success of his designs for American exhibitions at two international fairs in particular led to more large-scale planning opportunities for mya. U.S. Pavilion, World Agricultural Fair The first of these commissions involved a complex of buildings and exhibits to represent the United States at a twelve-nation World Agricultural Fair held in New Delhi, India, in 1959. The event was part recognition of India’s current and future food supply problems and part Cold War ideological battle. The official government propaganda for the American section described its agricultural achievements as a combination of technological superiority driven by “food, family, friendship, and freedom,” but Yamasaki recounted that he was given only one directive by the Department of Commerce: to “beat Russia.” His design sought to exemplify the official theme through a friendly, welcoming environment with a few surprises. The contorted L-shaped site lent itself naturally to a promenade, and Yamasaki designed a journey for visitors that wove together natural and manmade elements in outdoor, partly covered, and indoor exhibits. Three main buildings held evidence of American prowess in food growing, processing and distribution, and atomic energy, respectively; in the center, an open-air display of farm equipment and a barn were next to an area of tented structures evoking an American county fair (the pavilion’s official name—“Mela U.S.A.”— intentionally used the Hindi word for a harvest fair).46 The buildings mya designed were plain, their stuccoed brick walls containing almost no decoration apart from pointed-arched entries (figure 5.25). Attempting to infuse these surroundings with delight, Yamasaki placed two reflecting pools within the complex, one at the entry and one before the final exhibition building in the back corner. Visitors encountered them on their figure-eight route through the complex. They approached the compound via a curving path, on which they could glimpse a cluster of gold-painted onion domes

158

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 158

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:33 PM

over an eleven-foot-tall, interlocking brick wall. As visitors passed through the main gates, Yamasaki hoped that they would be surprised to discover not a building but the first reflecting pool. A travertine-topped walkway, hovering a few feet above the water, led them past the fountains and circular planters scattered throughout the pool, and they walked beneath the exhibition’s signature architectural features—a series of thirteen gilded domes. The domes were hollow concrete shells, 40 feet in the air, resting on a prominent framework of white-painted, H-shaped concrete supports. They were raised too high to block the sun effectively and instead acted as decorative members that advertised the exhibit from a distance. Yamasaki claimed that the domes were inspired by their context: “The domes we placed there because we thought it would have an appeal to the Indian who has lived in Delhi which is surrounded by domes which were at one time white, blue and gold,” he told an interviewer. But a simpler explanation was that they referenced Yamasaki’s beloved Taj Mahal. He mentioned it once when professing his admiration for Indian art. “We had to think of a very friendly and gentle approach and an appeal to the intelligence of the Indian. Which is very high,” he said. “And also to his artistic impulses. In other words, any nation which loves the Taj Mahal as much as they do would love anything that was beautiful, we would think.”47 Life magazine published photographs of the domes, and a reviewer for the Architectural Record breathlessly deemed the complex “more than outstanding . . . one of the most successful foreign exhibits the U.S. has ever built.” Wire services ran a photo of the model and a brief caption identifying Yamasaki in countless local newspapers

5.25. Yamasaki, Leinweber & Associates, U.S. Pavilion, World Agricultural Fair (New Delhi, India, 1958–59; demolished). John Dominis, photographer.

159

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 159

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:33 PM

throughout the country in the autumn of 1959, exposing him to a wide public audience for the first time. An argument can be made that this exposure and his analogous project for the World’s Fair in Seattle increased his popularity nearly as much as the publicity surrounding the World Trade Center commission.48 U.S. Science Pavilion, Century 21 Exposition When the Agricultural Fair was at the height of its publicity in America, Yamasaki was being confirmed as the architect in charge of designing a science pavilion for the U.S. government for the “Century 21” World’s Fair. The fair would be held in Seattle in 1962, and the government wanted to dazzle visitors and the world with a demonstration of the country’s scientific superiority. Since the Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of the Sputnik satellite, the Cold War had infiltrated America’s scientific establishment; the fair was the perfect setting to celebrate the nation’s achievements at the onset of the “space race.” The Science Pavilion’s design and construction would prove to be a seminal experience for Yamasaki. It was widely published in the popular press during and after the exposition, with photographs of its iconic towers appearing in Time and Life, establishing Yamasaki in the public mind as an architect whose exuberant, sensuous designs suggested an attractive new route for contemporary architecture that uncannily referenced both the past and the future simultaneously. The Science Pavilion’s appealing atmosphere and favorable reception would influence his eventual selection as architect for the World Trade Center, one of the prize American commissions of the early sixties. And perhaps most significant, it was during the Science Pavilion project that Yamasaki met John Skilling, Jack Christiansen, and Leslie Robertson, three young engineers whose Seattle firm, Worthington, Skilling, Helle & Jackson, was engaged in cutting-edge research with an alternative method of skyscraper construction that revolutionized the field with column-free interiors made possible by load-bearing walls. Serendipitously, the physical requirements of this structural system—small supports narrowly spaced—matched perfectly Yamasaki’s aesthetic preferences for slender windows and verticality in tall buildings. Their common interests led mya and the Skilling firm to become frequent collaborators, collaborating on all of Yamasaki’s best buildings of the early sixties. The Science Pavilion’s parti was similar to that of the Agricultural Fair exhibition—a walled compound with one access gate; a promenade across elevated platforms overlooking pools and fountains and through different exhibition buildings before looping back to the entry; and a tall structural icon, towering above the buildings and interpreting some element of architectural history (figure 5.26). A differently shaped site, however, necessitated a less sophisticated promenade. The Seattle location was an almost square lot bounded on three sides by city streets. The awkward plot of land Yamasaki had to work with in India actually lent itself to a linear progression of structures and pools that revealed itself only through movement; without this stimulus, and because of the surroundings, the Science Pavilion was more introverted and sheltering than its compatriot. On entering one could visually grasp the basic layout in its entirety— there was little room for surprise to make the journey stimulating. Yamasaki’s solution to the site’s limitations was to borrow the historical archetype of the sacred precinct—appropriate for an age that worshipped science. His self-enclosed pavilion would be organized by a counterclockwise route through exhibit buildings surrounding a reflecting pool. The sizable buildings were connected in a continuous ring around three sides, giving the ensemble the appearance of a

160

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 160

5.26. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, U.S. Science Pavilion, Century 21 Exposition, site plan (now Pacific Science Center, Seattle, 1959–62). 5.27. U.S. Science Pavilion. Charles R. Pearson, photographer.

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:33 PM

Rest Area

REST AREA

Spacearium

SPACEARIUM

SPIRIT OF The Spirit of Science SCIENCE

Law of Science

LAW OF SCIENCE

SITE PLAN SITE PLAN

38788C-Yamasaki v04.indd 161

0

North

100 Feet FEET

NORTH

THEATRE Theatre FRONTIERS OF Frontiers the Future THE of FUTURE

Summary

SUMMARY

16/8/2017 6:23 PM

private, sunken courtyard, an illusion enhanced by the ingenious decision to force visitors to choose a path immediately on entering— either up to an elevated viewing terrace or down to a lower platform just above the water level (figure 5.27). In contrast to the Agricultural Fair’s emphasis on surprise, the Science Pavilion exuded serenity. Much like the Wayne State campus plan or the sculpture garden at the McGregor Center, it was intended as a peaceful escape from the crowded, chaotic world beyond its walls, and its enclosed nature enhanced this effect. Here the pools and fountains could be contemplated from multiple levels and directions, encouraging lingering and people-watching.49 Visitors also could use the platforms to gaze up at the ensemble’s iconic marker, a group of five soaring, open-framed concrete vaults. Often described as “Space Gothic” by popular commentators, these structures were like elongated versions of the Agricultural Fair domes. At 100 feet tall, they could not compete with the nearby Space Needle but were visible enough to landmark the pavilion. Although the vaults’ webbing resembled geometricized versions of the rib vaults in Gothic cathedrals, Yamasaki intended no such imitation; he politely refuted such comparisons in his autobiography: “While the form of the arch may be Gothic, I have never seen towers like these in any Gothic architecture.” That he made such a slightly defensive statement sixteen years after the fair indicates that the label still stung.50 These skeletal arches and the courtyard beneath them were the Science Pavilion’s salient attractions (figure 5.28). The buildings themselves were nondescript containers totaling more than 100,000 square feet of space for the science-oriented exhibits inside, which were designed by the likes of Charles and Ray Eames and Walter Dorwin Teague Associates. More than a hundred exhibits chronicled the history of science up to the present, making this the largest government-sponsored science exhibition to date. Six connected buildings of varying heights completed the path around the courtyard. The first and last included two-level arcades (pointed arches above,

162

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 162

5.28. U.S. Science Pavilion.

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:33 PM

wishbone arches below) that tied into the viewing platforms. The fourth building on the counterclockwise circuit was a rest area and therefore slightly different; although its pattern of concrete tracery matched its neighbors, the wall surface was glazed instead of solid. For the others, Yamasaki and the Skilling firm resorted to precast, prestressed wall panels 5 feet wide, 30 feet to 50 feet tall, and only 3 inches thick. When the panels were fitted together their tracery patterns acted to both stiffen the load-bearing walls and decorate their surfaces (they would use the same technique at the DeRoy Auditorium at Wayne State University). All of the arches and wall panels incorporated the same white quartz aggregate to unify the surfaces; their gleaming texture enhanced the complex’s pleasant character. Although the Science Pavilion garnered positive reviews from the architectural and popular communities, it was not without its drawbacks. The repetitious arches could be overbearing from some viewpoints, shattering the serenity of the courtyard for some and defeating its purpose as a place of calm relaxation. This tendency had been identified by Scully, who lamented Yamasaki’s “impulse to embellish the neoclassic cube” in works like the McGregor Center, which “led to the fragmentation of its mass into a nervously linear pattern of precast concrete components.” The same could be said for the Science Pavilion. Yamasaki was still finding his way with this relatively new material and sometimes made dubious choices. As a totality, however, the project was a success. And perhaps its most lasting influence came when it captivated a visitor named Guy F. Tozzoli, an executive with the Port of New York Authority who would become instrumental in Yamasaki’s commission for the World Trade Center the following year.51 Japanese Cultural and Trade Center Yamasaki’s work for Wayne State University led to opportunities to design buildings at numerous colleges and master plans for Pahlavi University in Iran and the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. He also became involved in medium- to large-scale commercial developments, a practice he would continue for decades. Examples would include “The City,” a collection of offices and businesses in Orange, California (1964–71), and the Japanese Cultural and Trade Center (1960–68) in San Francisco (figure 5.29). The Japanese Center would seem to have presented Yamasaki with an appropriate occasion to fuse two dominant inspirations—modernism and Japanese architecture.

5.29. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, “The City” master plan model (Orange, California, 1964–71; unbuilt).

163

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 163

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:34 PM

A previous gesture in that direction in the Kobe Consulate had been well received. And it had not been Yamasaki’s sole Japanese-inspired endeavor. Generally, he refrained from direct imitation in his building designs, but gardens were another matter. At Oberlin College he had inserted a Japanese garden between his auditorium and classroom buildings for the Conservatory of Music (1959–64) (figure 5.30). Designed by Edward Eichstedt (with his partner John Grissim), the small space effected a harmonious melding of trees, water, and stones to create a tranquil space outside the busy buildings. A similar garden with koi ponds and tea houses occupied the central space between buildings at the Queen Emma Garden Apartments in Honolulu (1959–64). Nothing so traditional was attempted at the Japanese Center, despite the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency’s stated goal of creating a “contemporary center sympathetic to the principles of traditional Japanese architecture and gardens.” The urban renewal project was burdened from the beginning with conflicting expectations. The Redevelopment Agency, working through the National-Braemar Corporation, wanted the complex to be both cultural and commercial, Japanese and American, and a blending of Japanese and modern architecture. Asian American architects were hired specifically for their perceived ability to attain those delicate balances: Yamasaki for the master plan and California firm Van Bourg/Nakamura & Associates as architects of record. For authenticity, the developers retained Japanese architects for the building interiors (Takenaka Komuten) and the center’s architectural signature, the five-tiered Peace Pagoda (Yoshiro Taniguchi).52 Yamasaki conceived the center as a linear arrangement to fit a narrow site, which was three blocks long and one block wide (figure 5.31). A multistory hotel anchored the east end, balanced by a Kabuki theater and underground parking garage on the west. Between them was a series of boxy rectangular buildings punctuated by the central courtyard, home to the official entryway and Taniguchi’s pagoda. The buildings were two-story shopping malls with room for exhibit spaces; visitors circulated through the shops via interior streets. Although the hotel tower made little effort to imply Japanese character on its exterior and in fact resembled most of Yamasaki’s other tall buildings of that period with its square plan, wide overhanging cornice, and unsupported corners, the mall buildings sought

5.30. Eichstedt-Grissim, Japanese Garden, Oberlin Conservatory of Music (Oberlin, Ohio, 1959- 64).

164

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 164

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:34 PM

to imitate the tectonic clarity of traditional Japanese wooden construction in concrete. The concrete walls and roof were shaped to resemble a structural grid of vertical columns and horizontal beams; these mock elements were painted dark to contrast with the white walls and foster the impression of fusuma. But the walls’ inherent thickness and material uniformity could not be denied, and the overall effect failed to invoke the light and airy quality that made traditional Japanese buildings so unique. There were no natural materials or prominent roof structures. Nor was there any nature visible, apart from a diminutive reflecting pool at the entrance. These were truly modernist buildings with a thin—and unsuccessful—Japanese veneer. The Japanese Center revealed how Yamasaki’s relation with Japanese design was more complicated than most observers imagined. Curiously, despite his reputation as an advocate for blending modern and Japanese elements, in interviews and publications from the early stages of the center he continually emphasized the impossibility of a true synthesis of these approaches, in what appeared to be a retreat from the attitude that produced the Kobe Consulate. But for Yamasaki, the attraction of Japanese design always lay in its conceptual qualities, such as serenity and surprise, and not in literal forms. “I am aware of the impracticability of trying to house 20th-century civilization within the framework of traditional Japanese architecture,”

5.31. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Japanese Cultural and Trade Center model (San Francisco, 1960–68).

165

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 165

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:34 PM

he told an Architectural Record writer. “We tried to design a simple and straightforward construction system which would appear somewhat Japanese.” The response was consistent with other statements he made about such a union. For example, a reporter for a local Nisei newspaper, after talking to Yamasaki, agreed with the architect that “formal Japanese temple-style structures for a building complex to be constructed in an American city would be unreal. . . . Instead of purely Japanese-style buildings, his designs will call for the use of American products, knowledge, and equipment to construct a center which conveys a feeling of Japan.” Similarly, he once told a reporter, “I couldn’t build a Japanese house if I tried. . . . I don’t know how. I haven’t the training or the background for it.” His sensitivity about the subject boiled over on at least one occasion during the design process. When Justin Herman, head of the Redevelopment Agency, advised designing the hotel rooms as authentically Japanese as possible, Yamasaki peevishly replied, “As I have told you before, I really do not know enough about Japanese detailing to feel adequate in this respect. . . . Neither we nor Van Bourg-Nakamura are suited to this kind of Japanese detailing.” Statements like these made the faux historicism of the final buildings difficult to understand.53 Nisei Hero The Japanese Cultural and Trade Center’s contradictions may have influenced Yamasaki to abandon any effort at blending Japanese and modern that involved verbatim or semitruthful representations of Japanese buildings. By its opening in 1968, he had removed all traces of historical elements and almost all decorative tendencies from his firm’s designs. Even the two buildings he would construct in Japan after this point—the Miyako Hotel (1968–73) in Tokyo and the Meishusama Hall Temple at the Shiga Sacred Garden near Kyoto (1978–83)—followed suit, demonstrating more in common with previous Yamasaki designs than any Japanese traditions. The center’s lackluster imitation of Japanese architecture is therefore unique. Perhaps the developers’ pressure for historical accuracy unnerved him. Could it be that this project for the Nisei community, framed as a celebration of both their Americanness and their Japanese roots, touched too many raw nerves, exposing mixed feelings about his heritage that made him uncomfortable? Yamasaki had become a Nisei hero by the early sixties. The Japanese American Citizens League had given him a Distinguished Leadership Award and then honored him as one of their “Nisei of the Biennium” for “elevating the dignity of man in his environment” by “artfully blending his understanding of Japanese art and culture with that of Western architecture.” An invitation to the White House for a state dinner in honor of Japanese premier Eisaku Sato’s official visit in January 1965 confirmed his status in the Nisei community.54 Certainly Yamasaki had much ambivalence about his heritage. As a child he had been stung by incidents of ethnic prejudice against himself, his family, and friends. Much of the autobiographical essay that opens his book, A Life in Architecture (1979), reveals lingering pain. In the midfifties, he wrote, “I felt that something was missing and that I had to keep running after it. But look: everyone has a complex. It took the ulcer to show me what mine was—that I was Japanese.” Long before that publication, an aborted attempt at writing an autobiography, which appears to be from the early fifties, began with a poignant statement: “I had been born and gone to school, much as any other youth lives in America. I was different, however. I had been stamped at birth by uncontrollable circumstances. It was very early when I first became aware of it.” He proceeded to describe an

166

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 166

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:34 PM

encounter wherein his “refined, well mannered” mother was victimized by blatant prejudice on the trolley car one day, rendering her “infinitely sad.”55 Like many people affected by bigotry early in life, Yamasaki preferred to downplay his “otherness” and minimize ethnic differences. At the same time he quietly contributed to Nisei causes and consistently hired Asian American architects. Gyo Obata, Wallace Kagawa, Don M. Hisaka, William Ku, and Harold Tsuchiya were a few of the many talented young architects who played pivotal roles in crafting and implementing Yamasaki’s design vision during the decade. Because they were still viewed with suspicion and there were few of them, fellow Nisei architects must have watched Yamasaki’s rise to fame with pride. Ben Honda, a California architect and key figure in Bertrand Goldberg’s Chicago office for decades, described the situation faced by these young architects, particularly those from the West Coast, while giving a hint of the esteem they had for Yamasaki: Interviewer: Why did you choose not to go to Murphy?

Honda: Well, as I had indicated earlier, there was kind of an emotion. You have to understand what I had come through from my childhood through school to the Army and being considered almost a second-rate citizen—not by my immediate friends, but on the whole. Many of my peers or older ones had graduated from universities. . . . Well, a case in point was Minoru Yamasaki. When he graduated from the University of Washington, he immediately went to the Midwest and to the East because the West Coast was very hostile to those of us who were referred to as “the yellow peril.”

The Yamasaki archives are filled with correspondence with Asian American architects and students seeking advice, looking for work, or expressing admiration. And his efforts toward equality in architecture were not limited to that group; Yamasaki’s firms also employed female designers (such as Astra Zarina Haner and Lillian Pierce) and paid for an African American high school student from Detroit to attend the architecture program at the University of Michigan.56 But Yamasaki’s support for the Nisei community was not unqualified. He expressed mixed feelings in a letter to representatives of the Japanese American Citizens League after they contacted him to solicit funds for a national headquarters building. “Although I am pleased to be a member of the 1000 Club,” he wrote, “I feel that at any time the Nisei and Sansei are sufficiently included as full-fledged members of our citizenry, then that Fund should cease. . . . Building a new building for the purpose of setting apart any group of people in the United States is something in which I cannot believe and, therefore, though I am pleased to continue with the 1000 Club because of the present activities of the JACL, I do not feel that I want to contribute to the building which will be a symbol of setting aside the Nisei and Sansei as different from other Americans.” Like so many of his peers, Yamasaki was proud of this heritage but also frustrated that it excluded him from full participation in American society.57 As he rose in stature among the Nisei community, Yamasaki attracted increasing attention in the architectural world and beyond. As mentioned earlier, criticism of his work began to appear after 1960 in response to his widespread publicity. In general, however, the architectural press regularly promoted his work. The most revered architectural magazines in America at the time devoted enough pages

167

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 167

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:34 PM

to Yamasaki’s architecture to make him one of the ten most publicized architects-firms of the 1950s, ahead of Rudolph, Mies, and Neutra. Considering that he did not begin to achieve consistent coverage in these journals until 1954, this was quite an accomplishment. Writers and critics struggling to gauge architecture’s current and future directions regularly sought his opinions and confirmed his membership in the upper echelon of American designers, while compilation books such as Architecture USA and Architecture: Today and Tomorrow prominently displayed his most publicized designs. Perhaps the surest sign of success was an article in Time—entitled “Serenity and Delight” in a nod to his theoretical approach—that introduced him to the mass public, showcasing the Reynolds, McGregor, Kobe Consulate, and Lambert–St. Louis Airport buildings.58 By the early sixties Yamasaki received a steady stream of requests from student groups and architecture departments for lectures, organizations for contributions or participation, journals for project details, and potential clients. He was named an aia Fellow and participated in the World Design Conference in Tokyo. He was twice nominated for the National Institute of Arts and Letters Prize in Architecture (the A. W. Brunner Memorial) and was made a Fellow in Fine Arts and Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His struggle from humble origins was celebrated with a Horatio Alger Award. The Yerbury Foundation invited him to present the annual Marley Lecture at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London. Both the Reynolds Sales Office and Dhahran Air Terminal won aia Honor Awards. An inquiry from the Library of Congress for information about the future of his personal papers indicated that he was considered by that institution to “have made significant contributions to the civilization of this country.” And in the summer of 1962 he was selected to serve on President John F. Kennedy’s Advisory Council on Pennsylvania Avenue, joining such architectural and political luminaries as Charles Eames, Dan Kiley, Douglas Haskell, and Daniel P. Moynihan in an effort to revitalize the corridor between the U.S. Capitol and the White House. At approximately the same time, he was courting a client whose approval would launch him into another level of notoriety, unaware that the job would have devastating effects on his life, career, and legacy.59

168

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 168

MODERN HUMANISM

29/7/2017 3:34 PM

CHAPTER 6

TALL BUILDINGS

Minoru Yamasaki is known to much of the public as the architect of the ill-fated World Trade Center, one of the world’s most (in)famous buildings. Few realize, however, that he was not an experienced skyscraper designer before receiving that job. In fact, the first Yamasaki-designed tall office building was not even completed when he won the Trade Center commission. To undertake the herculean task of planning such a massive and complex project would be daunting for any architect, particularly so for an architect with an undersized office and negligible skyscraper experience, but he vigorously pursued the job despite its challenges. Such potential shortfalls were disregarded by a selection committee impressed by Yamasaki’s structural virtuosity and creative ability. Both would be tested by the World Trade Center. The experience of designing and constructing the Twin Towers would permanently affect the man and his career. Through them Yamasaki achieved the fame he seemed to crave, but at great expense to his health and reputation. Michigan Consolidated Gas Company Headquarters A crucial event in Yamasaki’s life occurred in 1958 when the Michigan Consolidated Gas Company selected his firm as the architects for its new corporate headquarters in downtown Detroit, which provided him with opportunity to design his first skyscraper. At a time when the tall office building was the most prestigious commission available in the United States, an architect or firm could become famous for a well-received skyscraper. Yamasaki surely recognized that this commission would be his most publicized to date. Michigan Consolidated Gas had purchased a prime lot at the busy intersection of Jefferson and Woodward Avenues, fronted by a park on the Detroit River and adjacent to the new City-County Building. The park was part of a civic center originally conceived in 1890, but not until the fifties was any action taken. Eliel Saarinen had prepared two master plans for the civic center in the twenties and thirties, and he revised one of them with his son Eero and J. Robert F. Swanson during and after World War II. Although the plans were not followed precisely, they guided the city’s efforts. A group of buildings had been erected both in and next to the park, all prominently featuring white marble cladding. Most significant was the City-County Building (Harley, Ellington & Day, 1955), home of the city’s municipal government and judicial branch (figure 6.1).

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 169

29/7/2017 3:34 PM

Behind the newly purchased lot, the riotous Guardian Building (1927–29), by Detroit’s Art Deco virtuoso Wirt Rowland (working for Smith, Hinchman), rose thirty-six stories with its setback, faceted form, and tangerine-colored brick creating a striking image. At the other end of the three-block chain anchored by the gas company site at one end and then under construction was the National Bank of Detroit (Albert Kahn Associates, 1957–59), the first corporate headquarters erected downtown since the end of the war and only the third true modern structure after Yamasaki’s Federal Reserve Bank Annex and the City-County Building. Michigan Consolidated Gas’s headquarters would stand in line with these other landmarks, along the city’s main street (Woodward Avenue), next to city hall and across from a developing waterfront plaza. Its full height would be visible from the park across the street and from Windsor, Canada, across the river. This was truly the most coveted real estate in Detroit. The driving force behind the new building was the gas company’s president, Ralph T. McElvenny. He was a successful businessman, civic booster, and patron of the arts who was about to preside over a period of great corporate prosperity. The architect and the executive connected immediately, and their friendship lasted for decades. Yamasaki had a knack for establishing relationships with clients that

6.1. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Michigan Consolidated Gas Company (now One Woodward, Detroit, 1958–63).

170

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 170

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:34 PM

continued beyond the commission, but McElvenny seemed to stand out in this regard. Years later, when organizing a dinner as part of a retrospective exhibition and celebration of his work, Yamasaki requested that McElvenny and his wife sit at the head table—the only current or former client awarded that honor. The executive was “a perfect architectural client,” he said. “He was interested in the arts and is one of the most alive people I have ever known. As a matter of fact, we are still very close friends.”1 During the tower’s design process Yamasaki sent McElvenny a list of buildings to study as models of corporate headquarters. His suggestions were arranged into categories: Category A (“most beneficial for you to see”) consisted of Mies’s Seagram Building; 666 Fifth Avenue (Carson & Lundin, New York, 1957); the Corning Glass Building (Harrison, Abramovitz & Abbe, New York, 1959); som’s Lever House (New York, 1950–52) and Connecticut General Life Insurance Company (Bloomfield, Conn., 1954–57); I. M. Pei’s Mile High Center in Denver (1952–56); and the Wachovia Bank in Charlotte, North Carolina (Harrison & Abramovitz, 1958). Six of the seven examples in this group had prominent steel and glass curtain walls and, except for Connecticut General, which was outside a city, some type of plaza or courtyard. The Wachovia building, in contrast, had one of the first precast concrete skyscraper facades in the country. It seems that Yamasaki was priming his client to think of the lobby or ground area as important, which was fitting, since he subsequently claimed that the only condition McElvenny put on the design was that it be something to be shared with the people of Detroit and not just a self-glorifying monument.2 Yamasaki’s main concern was how to be a good neighbor to the existing buildings. In interviews and articles he recounted how the white marble facing of the City-County Building and other civic center structures encouraged him to imagine a similarly white building for Michigan Consolidated Gas. Because marble would be prohibitively expensive for such a tall building, the only other option was precast concrete. This would present the firm with a new challenge; Yamasaki had taken up concrete just a few years earlier with projects like the aci Headquarters and the Wayne State Education Building, and he had never used it in a building taller than four stories. In fact, Yamasaki had never built a skyscraper. This was not for lack of trying, however. His initial foray into the type was during his tenure with Smith, Hinchman. The Stevens T. Mason State Office Building was imagined as a twenty-three-story rectangular slab with exposed steel columns (faced with marble) and pilotis; it was comparable to Mies’s Promontory Point Apartments (Chicago, 1946–49), first publicized at the same time. Disputes over the Mason Office Building appear to have been a deciding factor in Yamasaki’s departure from Smith, Hinchman, and a truncated eight-story version was built by that firm with many alterations. Despite its failure, the project displayed two characteristics that Yamasaki carried forward into his mature skyscraper designs: the frank expression of structure and the inclusion of a light, open lobby at the base to counter the heaviness of the tower above. Yamasaki proposed a pair of skyscrapers in 1954 that never advanced beyond the early stages of development. The Linwood Arms Apartments is difficult to understand because scant evidence of the project exists, but two photographs of a model seem to depict a twenty-six-story structure with a steel frame and infill panels of an unknown material (figure 6.2). On the other hand, the proposed tower intended for the New Haven Railroad station was the true prototype for the Michigan Consolidated Gas structure. A twenty-story steel

171

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 171

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:34 PM

and glass building, square in plan, the New Haven hotel drawings and model showed no vertical emphasis and no visible structure other than pilotis. It stood in a reflecting pool unattached to any other building, allowing a panoramic view of the New Haven property. On the roof was a three-story square cap painted bright orange with a prominent company logo on all four sides. Though unbuilt, it would serve as the conceptual precursor to many of Yamasaki’s future skyscraper designs.3 McElvenny’s proposed site in Detroit, while excellently located, was small, approximately 230 feet by 210 feet. Parking would need to be placed below ground. Its square shape was another restriction, but a fortuitous one for Yamasaki: the New Haven Railroad hotel scheme could be easily adapted to fit the site. The plan included a centralized core of elevators, stairs, and utilities with an outer ring of offices (figure 6.3). In this era designers attempted to ensure that employees’ working areas were not more than 35 feet from daylight, and the gas company building’s arrangement satisfied this desire. Yamasaki gave the structure some frontality by placing the main entry toward the waterfront park and pushing the central core slightly toward the rear. Interior divisions on each floor would be determined by need. Although he was unable to create the completely column-free interiors so cherished by developers and occupants, the building’s floors were nonetheless very open. mya, working with associated architect Smith, Hinchman’s engineers, organized the building around a steel cage, setting a distance between columns of just over 30 feet. Core elements occupied 25 percent of that grid on the floors above the lobby; the rest of the space was free, hindered only by three interior columns.

6.2. Yamasaki, Leinweber & Associates, Linwood Arms Apartments project (1954; unbuilt).

172

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 172

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:34 PM

The building’s form was almost predetermined compared to the design and engineering of the concrete facades. For his first tall building Yamasaki wanted to follow Louis Sullivan’s advice and emphasize its verticality, which he viewed in symbolic terms rather than as a blatant expression of height (figure 6.4). “I think a tall building should have, a sense of soaring upwards, a verticality which I think is the thrilling thing about a high building for the average person, the man on the street,” he said. “As he looks at a high building, I think that if he can have the sense of upwardness, this replaces to a degree the feeling of aspiration that the man had in the medieval days when he walked into a cathedral, you see, the sense of aspiration.” The cathedral metaphor is muddled, given the significantly different roles played by religious and commercial structures, and it is unclear if in statements like these Yamasaki meant “aspirational” in the conventional sense. It is doubtful that he believed that viewing the building could inspire a hope of achieving something or that the tower might impart a sense of “reaching for the sky.” What is more likely is that he was struggling to describe some pleasurable emotional reaction to the building’s vertical orientation, more akin to the “sense of soaring upwards” or the “feeling of beautiful upward movement” descriptions he also used—in other words, the intangible quality that would give a skyscraper “delight.”4 In an effort to express this delightful verticality, Yamasaki discarded the common office tower curtain wall and began anew. Each of the building’s four elevations was divided into four equal-size bays by vertical supports expressing the structural frame. Within each bay, twelve elongated windows and their spandrels created alternating

Lobby LOBBY

173

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 173

Feet FT.

N

rth

100

0

No

FIRST FIRST FLOOR FLOOR

6.3. First-floor plan, Michigan Consolidated Gas Company.

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:34 PM

horizontal bands. The windows were extremely unusual and gave the building its true character. Nine feet tall and only 2 feet wide, they were stretched hexagons with pointed arches at the top and bottom (figure 6.5). The London Embassy proposal’s narrow windows were an antecedent. Yamasaki cited aesthetic, technological, and psychological reasons for their unusual shape and narrowness. First and foremost, he found them beautiful; he believed that the windows’ verticality reinforced the building’s “aspirational quality” and contributed to “an over-all feeling of quiet.” A reviewer of the finished building agreed, noting that the windows’ shape “softens the strong lines spandrels normally create.” Further, Yamasaki alleged that the triangle-head arches were cost-effective. He argued that because rubber gaskets surrounding windows had to be vulcanized at each joint, a hexagonal window required only two vulcanizings rather than the four needed for a rectangular pane of glass. Finally, he wanted to provide a sense of security for people working in the building. Claiming to suffer from acrophobia, Yamasaki said the windows were just wide enough so that people with similar fears could hold on to the wall with both hands while looking out. To compensate for the fragmented view from inside the offices, the windows were extended from floor to ceiling. These slender windows became characteristic

6.4. Michigan Consolidated Gas Company.

174

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 174

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:34 PM

6.5. Typical interior, Michigan Consolidated Gas Company.

features of Yamasaki’s skyscrapers, and he would rely on them for the rest of his career.5 To form these windows he employed a concrete cladding similar to that of the Wayne State Education Building. That project used precast concrete “trees,” each of which included a spine three stories high t hat sprouted half of a spandrel–window head on either side at each floor. The trees were bracketed to the building’s structural system of concrete columns, beams, and floor slabs to make an exterior wall. Yamasaki wanted to vary the system for the Michigan Consolidated Gas building by casting the verticals and spandrels separately, but when that proved cost-prohibitive he resorted to units nearly identical to those of the Education Building: 24-foot-tall “double lollipop” panels with a 5-inch-wide mullion as a spine branched into half-spandrels. To facilitate shadows that could add visual delight, the window glass was recessed 11 inches from the cladding. As Yamasaki said, “We wanted a classic look and yet we wanted a quality of richness which would be enjoyable as the sun played on its surface.”6 The subsequent building differed significantly from the common steel-and-glass curtain-walled skyscraper. The Michigan Consolidated Gas Headquarters’ intriguing skin gave it weight and mass—but only when seen up close (figure 6.6). While the columns, mullions, and windows created strong vertical accents, as one gained distance that verticality began to disappear. The angled window heads could not be read from afar, and the mullions were too thin. As Yamasaki himself admitted after the building was finished, “From far off, the thin panels get lost and only the . . . frame stands out.” This gave the appearance of a screen laid over the building in the manner of the Reynolds Sales Office, which was neither architecturally honest nor what he intended.7 And yet, the architect should have had no misgivings about the building’s lobby. Its appealing, pristine nature made it the most successful part of the project. In its previous home, Michigan Consolidated Gas had exhibited appliances in the lobby, but now the space itself and its luxurious materials would be the attraction. Although he

175

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 175

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:34 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 176

29/7/2017 3:34 PM

6.6. Michigan Consolidated Gas Company from Windsor, Canada.

insisted that it was McElvenny’s decision to regard the lobby as a public space, Yamasaki was more likely the driving force behind this concept. He followed the lead of those tall buildings on McElvenny’s scouting list by emphasizing this area. “The entire first floor of the building will be a public space where you can enjoy the wonderful view of the river and the various pools, fountains and landscaping which we hope to arrange around the building,” he told an audience early in the project’s development. To enter the building, visitors approached from the southeast side facing the park. The small site restricted landscaping possibilities. Sidewalks bordered the lot, and a ramp to the parking garage occupied the rear portion, but in the front Yamasaki was able to include a tiny reflecting pool crossed by an off-center bridge. A sculpture by Italian artist Giacomo Manzu— an 11-foot bronze of a nude female dancer entitled Passo di Danza (Dance step)—was placed in the pool shortly after the building’s opening.8 Yamasaki’s ability to create beauty through precise details and fine materials was on full display in the lobby (figure 6.7). An extended ceiling height accentuated the light and airy nature of the space, and this was enhanced by huge sheets of plate glass held in place by thin, mirrored steel mullions. The plates’ size (25 feet tall and 4 feet, 8 inches wide) made them vulnerable to wind damage on the open site. Designer Harold Tsuchiya conquered the problem by placing the slender mullions in tension, which allowed him to reduce their size and minimize their appearance as structural entities. Yamasaki was sensitive about this topic because he believed that the mullions at both the Lambert–St. Louis Airport and the aci Headquarters had been too thick and looked structural to unsophisticated viewers. The gas company lobby mullions’ thinness, in contrast, achieved the delicacy that he sought in public spaces. The mullions’ mirrored finish joined with the marble walls, columns facings, and floor to give the lobby a pristine, shimmering quality—the clean, shiny, precisely machined effect that was so coveted at this time. Lee DuSell designed the lobby’s elevator doors, a reception desk, and an unusual lighting system. The doors, pressed from stainless steel tubing, had a lively and textural surface to offset the lobby’s prevailing smoothness. DuSell’s reception desk modified the one he made for the Reynolds Sales Office: both were circular and raised on a slight marble pedestal, with a thin overhanging top. But for Michigan Consolidated Gas he used a black marble table top with stainless steel trim and decorated the desk’s body with a steel pattern that mimicked the building’s hexagonal windows, arched elevator bank passages, and screened facade. It was the only overdone facet of an extremely restrained space, prompting an early reviewer to characterize the reception desk as “a bit rococo” with an effect that was “a little frivolous.” The same could not be said for DuSell’s elegant lighting solution. Suggested by James McDonald of Smith, Hinchman, the design featured a field of square, white plastic coffers in a grid pattern on the ceiling. A small spotlight in the center of each panel directed light down to a blue plastic bead suspended by four spindly, polished steel arms emerging from the corners. This “jewel lighting” system drew one’s attention at night with tiny spots of color in a space that was predominantly white and silver.9 David B. Carlson, writing for the Architectural Forum, captured the Michigan Consolidated Gas Company Headquarters’ uniqueness in a review published shortly after the building opened: “Yamasaki’s bejeweled lobby forms a dazzling Eastern gateway for a midwestern public utility. . . . By night it is a gleaming white oasis in the gloom of Detroit’s river front; by day, it beckons, like an Arabian Nights fantasy.

177

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 177

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:34 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 178

29/7/2017 3:34 PM

6.7. Lobby, Michigan Consolidated Gas Company. Balthazar Korab, photographer.

There is nothing like it in the city, and certainly no other architect anywhere has had the temerity to make an Eastern temple out of the entrance to anything so ordinary as the headquarters of a public utility corporation.” The building’s distinctiveness extended from the cool elegance of the lobby to the illuminated crown. Borrowing from his New Haven Railroad hotel proposal, Yamasaki had included a square four-story cap to the twenty-eight-floor tower to house the cooling tower and boiler room. He covered this penthouse and the two stories below it full of mechanical equipment, with concrete grilles that modified the hexagonal pattern derived from the window and spandrel system. These top two floors were windowless, so Yamasaki moved the walls back and added a lacy open screen across the resulting walkway. The penthouse grille was constructed of vertical supports that projected above the tower’s roofline in pinnacles to create an intriguing silhouette.10 These upper six stories are where Yamasaki proposed a color experiment. Because of their solid walls, the uppermost floors already read as a white cap terminating the building from a distance, but he had something more arresting in mind—night illumination. Lighting buildings with floodlights and colored filters had been popular in the thirties, but the practice was abandoned during the defensive blackouts of World War II and not revived. In 1958, Mies’s Seagram Building and the nearby Tishman Building on Fifth Avenue had been completed, and their innovative night illumination systems were applauded for enhancing the buildings. As one who followed Mies’s career closely, Yamasaki would have been well aware of the importance of Seagram’s lighting. He might also have been influenced by New York’s General Electric Building (Cross & Cross, 1931), which installed lighting features in 1940 while he lived in the city. The building’s faux-Gothic cap, with stone tracery depicting “radio waves,” was lit at night with bright red and blue filters, making the structure visible for miles. Yamasaki wanted to use colored light as a new way to inspire delight. Although he characterized such illumination as modern technology, its roots were decades old. “We want to bring about the enjoyment that technology has brought about in a very subtle way throughout this whole building,” he said. He consistently expressed his hope that these lighting effects would be “enjoyable,” and a wide range of options was planned, including red and green colors at Christmas (suggested by McElvenny), a color-coded weather forecast system, and an everyday blue hue to signify a gas flame. When combined with floodlights to illuminate the blank walls of the top two floors, the effect of two streaks of brightly covered bands floating on a column of white (office) lights could be dazzling in the dark.11 A decade after it opened, critic Charles Jencks would dismiss the Michigan Consolidated Gas Company Headquarters as “good High Camp” and “failed seriousness.” He attacked both the Gothic verticality and the illumination scheme, calling the lighting “a crown of thorns and eternally-burning-blue-gas-flame.” On the other hand, writers at the time of the building’s construction and dedication were overwhelmingly positive in their support for Yamasaki’s achievement. The Architectural Record published three multipage articles on the building in less than four years, and the Architectural Forum covered it with a lavishly illustrated sixteen-page spread. Carlson, writing no doubt what many others were thinking, felt that the gas company skyscraper “has thrust [Yamasaki] into the front-rank of those working on this most prestigious building type.” But not everyone was satisfied with Yamasaki’s inaugural skyscraper. Huxtable, ever skeptical, believed that the architect was in danger of allowing his decorative

179

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 179

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:34 PM

instincts to trump what she saw as the absolute necessity of modern architecture to highlight structure. “In his skyscraper for the Michigan Consolidated Gas Company, to cite one instance,” she said, “the main columns are dressed up in white marble; where the buildings needs to say ‘strong,’ it says ‘pretty.’”12 IBM Building Yamasaki had great respect for Huxtable and cared deeply about her opinions, as subsequent events surrounding her condemnation of the World Trade Center would reveal. Her concerns might have played a part in his decision to approach his next series of tall building projects as an opportunity to reassert the traditional skyscraper notion of structural expression over decorative elegance. During the development and construction of the Michigan Consolidated Gas Company Headquarters, Yamasaki designed other midsize tower buildings, although none were commercial office structures. The Queen Emma Gardens in Honolulu was an apartment complex for moderate-income families, consisting of three slabs of twenty-four, twenty-three, and twelve stories, arranged around the edges of a site filled in with natural plantings, two Japanese teahouses, and a koi pond (figure 6.8). The Miyako Hotel at the Japanese Cultural Center in San Francisco stood fourteen stories with a similar garden at its base. Joining this group was William James Hall, a classroom building at Harvard University (1959–65) (figure 6.9). Because Harvard had limited territory for expansion in Cambridge, university administrators made the controversial decision to build taller on the tradition-bound campus. Yamasaki was hired to design a building for the behavioral sciences department on a corner site not far from its namesake’s former home. For the first time, he placed the utilities and elevators in a rear appendage separated from the main rectangular block, a popular technique best described by Louis Kahn’s evocative terminology of “servant” and “served” spaces. This gesture worked together with the structural system of ten poured-concrete columns— boldly flared at the bottoms—connected to precast concrete beams and girders and poured-in-place floor slabs to create columnless

6.8. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Queen Emma Apartments (Honolulu, 1959–64). Balthazar Korab, photographer. > 6.9. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, William James Hall, Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass., 1959–65). > 6.10. Library, James Hall.

180

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 180

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:34 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 181

29/7/2017 3:35 PM

interior spaces. Capitalizing on this freedom, Yamasaki used a central core of rooms on each floor (usually research rooms and lounges) encircled by a corridor, with offices and seminar rooms arranged along the exterior walls. In the ground-floor library an elliptical mezzanine added a rare curve to his otherwise rectilinear tendencies (figure 6.10). Outside the building he relied on now-common effects such as rectangular reflecting pools and an off-axis entry to impart variety. The facade, however, forged new territory in his work. Unlike the Michigan Consolidated Gas Headquarters, at James Hall the structure was accentuated. On the building’s front and back sides the columns, concrete spandrels with elongated hexagon designs, and strips of ribbon windows occupied different planes, giving the building a depth not found in Yamasaki’s contemporary skyscrapers. This three-dimensionality was enhanced by recessing the ground floor and the top-floor terrace. The Harvard community and local critics attacked James Hall’s height and how it dwarfed the campus; one commentator described it as “an embarrassing phallus,” another as “a real visual blunder and a mistake to be regretted for a long time to come.” Conversely, none of the critiques of James Hall faulted the interior arrangements or general appearance. Harvard was embarking on a new policy of building vertically with a commitment to modern architecture; coincident with James Hall, the university dedicated Roy E. Larsen Hall (Caudill, Rowlett & Scott, 1963–65) for the Graduate School of Education and a number of high-rises by Josep Lluís Sert, then dean of the Graduate School of Design. Harvard approved these taller buildings out of desperation, and perhaps in recognition of this its decision makers did not seek dramatic results from their architects. One administrator admitted to Yamasaki at the time of his hiring that Harvard did not conceive of the behavioral sciences building as “a monumental work or of unusual artistic importance,” and Yamasaki agreed. Harvard continued its policy of building tall in subsequent years, and the enmity provoked by James Hall soon receded as the community grew used to the tower. Nonetheless, James Hall signaled an adjustment in Yamasaki’s approach to skyscraper design in the few years since the Michigan Consolidated Gas Headquarters, one that generated more powerful-looking structures that certainly could not be accused of being “pretty” or hindered by decoration.13 With the ibm Building in Seattle (1962–65), Yamasaki continued to highlight structure (figure 6.11). The ibm Building was in the forefront of a revolution in skyscraper design. Its structure was far more advanced than any of his previous towers. The building’s bearing wall construction, devised by Seattle engineering firm Worthington, Skilling, Helle & Jackson, was one of the first of its kind in the United States, and it reestablished Yamasaki as an architect operating on the cutting edge of engineering innovation. ibm had been brought to downtown Seattle by the University Properties, Inc., development company. The building’s site was part of a ten-acre strip in the city’s commercial core owned by the University of Washington since 1861 and called the Metropolitan Tract. The university leased the tract to University Properties (Unico) for sixty years, leaving Unico to develop and manage the existing and future properties on it. Yamasaki may have become connected with the project through his U.S. Science Pavilion, which was causing a stir in the city and in the popular press and may have attracted Unico’s attention. Similarly, Unico’s resident architectural firm, Naramore, Bain, Brady & Johanson, worked with Yamasaki on the Science Pavilion, and one of its principals (Perry Johanson) had graduated from the University of Washington’s architecture program with

182

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 182

6.11. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, IBM Building (Seattle, 1962–64).

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:35 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 183

29/7/2017 3:35 PM

Yamasaki in 1934. Alternatively, Yamasaki might have been recommended by Eliot Noyes, ibm’s in-house designer, who had a hand in selecting most if not all of the designers for the many buildings ibm would construct across the country; Noyes was part of the elite designers’ network that included Nelson and Saarinen, both good friends with Yamasaki. The Skilling engineers’ participation in this project would prove to be crucial. During the design and construction of the Science Pavilion they impressed Yamasaki with their savvy, and he had used them for his most important commissions since then, including the North Shore Congregation Synagogue, James Hall, the nwnl Building, and Robertson Hall. Yamasaki’s natural inclinations seem to have been in sympathy with the leaders of Skilling’s office. Their close relationship affected the decision to use the ibm commission as an experiment in skyscraper structure. The Skilling firm’s engineers had been pursuing the idea of returning to the traditional load-bearing wall in tall buildings, but with the benefits of modern materials and technology. Such thinking was in keeping with the growing trend among architects, like Yamasaki, of revisiting historical aspects of architecture considered outdated by the first generation of modernists, who sought to distance themselves from any taint of historicism. The load-bearing wall trend thus revealed the increasingly complicated relationship between past and present then developing in the architectural world. The Skilling firm was working with New Orleans architects Curtis & Davis on an ibm building in Pittsburgh (1961–63) that many consider to be the first postwar skyscraper with fully load-bearing walls. From the perspective of the early sixties, this was a daring gesture. Until the late nineteenth century, tall buildings had been constructed with walls that carried the weight of the structure. Masonry or brick walls were solid and sturdy, but the taller the building was, the thicker the wall had to be. In addition, because electricity had not yet been incorporated into these buildings, occupants depended on windows for light and fresh air, creating a struggle between the desire for larger openings in the wall and the necessity for structural integrity. This tension was enhanced by the building owner’s desire to maximize square footage. All of these limitations, magnified by absent or inadequate elevators, combined to produce a viable building height of about five to ten stories. Then in the 1880s architects and engineers invented a new structural system that employed an internal steel cage to carry all of the building’s weight and a curtain wall skin to protect the interior. Windows could now grow larger, because the wall carried no load, and the buildings could be made taller, because there was no difference in the wall’s thickness at the top and bottom. By the fifties the system was still being used (sometimes with a concrete instead of steel frame); the only physical difference was that the windows had expanded to cover almost the entire facade. Curtain walls proved so popular and practical after World War II that many observers considered them the centerpiece of a new modern vernacular architecture. The British journal Architectural Review even published a taxonomy of curtain wall configurations (derived in part from an American Building Research Institute conference) to guide designers, sorting them into four basic types: the sheath (where the wall gave no indication of the building’s structure), the grid (where the horizontal and vertical structural members received equal visual emphasis), the mullion (emphasizing vertical elements), and the spandrel (emphasizing horizontal elements). So, for example, Yamasaki’s Federal Reserve Bank Annex had a sheath wall, with none of its structural members visible on the facade, while the Michigan

184

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 184

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:35 PM

Consolidated Gas Company building fluctuated between a grid wall when viewed up close and a spandrel wall when seen from a distance. But a crucial aesthetic failing of the curtain wall, beyond its potential monotony and strict rectilinear proportions, was its lack of three-dimensionality. Robert W. McLaughlin, director of Princeton’s School of Architecture—which was becoming a leading center for the investigation of architectural structure—described a “fetish for flatness” in contemporary office buildings.14 The glass curtain wall’s hegemony would not last long, in historical terms; by the early sixties concrete walls or masonry cladding on a steel frame were becoming more common as a new era of opaque facades was born and the attenuated lightness of fifties style gave way to heavier, thicker buildings. Leading architects like Bunshaft, Saarinen, Pei, Harrison, and others had all designed tall buildings with stone or concrete surfaces, and the impact of Corbusier’s newer work with concrete and brise-soleil was spreading around the globe. Yamasaki was among those architects who were unenthusiastic about glass curtain walls, mainly because of their flat, bland appearance. His search for delight in architecture led him to seek more modeled surfaces that could create shadows and highlight textures. Moreover, the curtain wall touched on the love-hate relationship with technology that Yamasaki shared with many of his contemporaries. As committed modernists, they firmly believed that a true architecture had to be responsive to the materials and techniques of its time, and in the twentieth century that meant accepting prefabrication. However, there was a devil’s bargain involved with prefabrication in the sense that the plethora of manufactured projects available and their low cost were offset by a loss of creative control. “As long as the manufacturer is in control the architect can’t use his sensitivity,” Yamasaki said. “One of the problems of modern building has been that the manufacturer of such materials as porcelain and enamel or glass and aluminum elements has been accidentally controlling the design because his products offer the only economical solution.” Like many other designers, Yamasaki saw precast concrete as the answer to this dilemma. The Michigan Consolidated Gas Company Headquarters was his attempt to use concrete to craft an alternative to the impersonal steel and glass skyscraper curtain wall.15 As buildings were rising higher and higher and becoming affected by greater gravity and wind forces, new engineering solutions were needed. One invention was the framed tube structure, where closely spaced perimeter supports carried most of the gravity load and worked with rigid spandrels and floor diaphragms to brace the building against wind without resorting to internal supports. Conceptually it was a step backward to the era of load-bearing walls, but the framed tube was an engineering advance, providing structural stability while requiring less steel and allowing partition-free interior spaces. The honor of the first to take this important step is in dispute, but what can be said with certainty is that the Skilling firm was a pioneer in the field. Fazlur Khan, an som engineer in the Chicago office, probably invented the framed tube structure for tall buildings and implemented it while working with som architects Bruce Graham and Myron Goldsmith on the DeWitt-Chestnut Apartments (Chicago, 1962–65). Acting like the cardboard tube inside a roll of wrapping paper— hollow but sturdy—the system channeled the building’s weight to the exterior walls, leaving the floors free of internal obstructions. The forty-two-story DeWitt-Chestnut building used steel supports clad in travertine limestone for its walls. This system, with subsequent improvements, would be the basis for Khan’s structural achievements in the John Hancock Center (1965–70) and Sears Tower (now Willis

185

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 185

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:35 PM

Tower, 1968–74) in Chicago. Independently, the Skilling firm was developing a framed tube building for ibm in Pittsburgh when hired for the Seattle project. Under the direction of Leslie Robertson, a young engineer who would play a pivotal role in the World Trade Center, steel walls were employed in a more dazzling fashion. Diamond latticework walls and a concrete central core carried the thirteen-story ibm tower’s load, with most of the building’s weight directed to only two points at the bottom of each of the four walls.16 Framed tube construction had the added attraction of serving as two structural systems at once. Taller buildings need to have wind bracing in order to resist excessive swaying, which can threaten structural stability and cause occupants to experience physical distress. Cross-bracing, which counteracted wind forces, had been invented before steel framing and was even more important in the postwar wave of immense buildings. Tube construction eliminated the need for wind bracing except in extremely tall examples—which is why Khan resorted to a visible X-frame for the Hancock Center and “bundled tubes” for the Sears Tower. But in smaller buildings, the exterior wall could both carry the load and resist winds by redirecting their forces down to the building’s foundation. For framed tube construction to work, the exterior wall needed to be made up of numerous, closely spaced vertical supports. som’s DeWitt-Chestnut Apartments, for example, had columns placed 5½ feet apart on center, and Saarinen’s CBS Building (New York, 1960–65) was under construction with triangular concrete supports only 5 feet apart. Fortuitously, Yamasaki had already been working in that direction: the Michigan Consolidated Gas Company building’s mullions were less than 3 feet on center. So his image of the skyscraper, with its “sense of aspiration” carried out through repetitious, closely spaced mullions, was ready-made for this framed tube construction. There seemed almost an inevitability to the marriage of the Skilling firm’s structural dreams and Yamasaki’s aesthetic desires. The challenge would come in determining how to make the two systems compatible. mya and the engineers would offer two variants of the same solution simultaneously: the ibm Building and the World Trade Center. The ibm commission would have been enticing to Yamasaki for several reasons. Another chance to build a skyscraper was certainly one; that it would be located in Seattle less than a mile from where he grew up was probably another. And the opportunity to include a plaza with his building must have been attractive; he had been interested in public gathering places since his experiences with Rockefeller Center as a young architect and the Piazza San Marco on his world trip. An argument can be made that Yamasaki’s (and often Edward Eichstedt’s) landscaping designs were crucial to his success. Huxtable implied as much in a New York Times Magazine article: “On the positive side, one famous city planner feels that Yamasaki is bringing a new kind of ‘environmental enjoyment’ to American architecture because of the way he groups buildings, gardens, and pools to create effective relationships of indoor and outdoor space, areas of contrast and islands of repose. It is generally conceded that he has been largely responsible for reintroducing to the West the welcome Eastern idea that water adds charm and enrichment to architecture.” A survey of his most important designs since his 1954 epiphany confirms the significance of plazas and pools. Even when limited by space restrictions, as at the Michigan Consolidated Gas Company and nwnl projects, Yamasaki found room for a water feature next to the building.17 He was not alone in emphasizing the areas around his buildings, particularly in the cramped downtown lots found in most sizable

186

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 186

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:35 PM

American cities. Mies’s Seagram Building excited architects and planners as much for its plaza as for the building. At the time, aside from Central Park, there were few large outdoor gathering places in Manhattan. Rockefeller Center was a notable exception; Yamasaki knew it well from his years living in the city and admired its ability to serve as a shopping and dining center, vibrant public space, and circulation route. Its bilevel format would influence his own plaza designs. Lincoln Center, in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, was only beginning to arise in 1962, with the site finally cleared after a year of work and the first building, Philharmonic Hall (now Avery Fisher Hall), about to open. Other notable precedents were lacking. But city officials had begun to realize the value of these open spaces, and New York revised its building ordinances in 1961 to give developers an incentive to include plazas in their projects by allowing 20 percent more floor space in buildings with public areas at their base. The recent completion of the Time-Life Building (Harrison, Abramovitz & Harris, 1958) and Chase Tower, with their small corner plazas, inspired hope in some commentators that a trend was under way. And they were correct: sociologist William H. Whyte reported that within a decade, twenty acres of valuable Manhattan real estate had been given over to public plazas or comparable spaces.18 Architects, planners, developers, and activists in other cities soon followed New York’s lead. When ibm commissioned Yamasaki, he learned of the University of Washington’s desire to create more public space in downtown Seattle, an attitude congruent with his own beliefs. But the project was not without its difficulties. One problem to be solved was how to fit the building and plaza into the site. The location for the ibm Building was a square city block half-occupied by the Colonial Revival–styled Plymouth Congregational Church, constructed the year Yamasaki was born. The site’s advantages included potentially unobstructed views of Elliott Bay and downtown Seattle and proximity to a proposed (and controversial) new freeway, but the plot lacked space for parking. The only logical place for employees’ cars would be underground. Yamasaki used the subterranean garage as the foundation for his design. Working with the Skilling firm, he devised a system that would build on the garage and incorporate the engineers’ framed tube construction. The key would be an arched base, which allowed the weight of the walls above to be channeled through twelve columns placed to accommodate the subterranean parking spaces (figure 6.12).

6.12. Plaza, IBM Building.

187

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 187

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:35 PM

With spans of just over 37 feet, 4 inches, the arches provided wide openings for accessing the two-story, recessed lobby behind them. They also were structurally efficient—these would be real load-bearing arches, not mere decorations tacked onto an orthogonal steel frame. Yamasaki’s predilection for using arches in his concrete work, as demonstrated above, developed because he thought that the form naturally matched the material, and he was unperturbed by the arch’s historical allusions. He was not alone in this regard. Arches had been materializing with more regularity in the designs of high-profile architects like Philip Johnson; they also appeared more frequently in taller buildings. som architect Charles Bassett’s sixteen-story John Hancock Building (San Francisco, 1958–59) had recently employed load-bearing concrete exterior walls to carry the gravity load and transferred that weight to flattened concrete arches at street level to much acclaim.19 Above the arcaded base with its marble sheathing, the ibm tower rose eighteen stories to a flat top with uninterrupted vertical lines. Yamasaki again chose a square plan for the building because of its strength and simplicity; he and the engineers may also have been thinking of earthquake resistance (figure 6.13). But the ibm Building was no mere copy of its predecessors. It was designed without a crown to surmount it. And its structural grid was clearly visible. Yamasaki had learned from the Michigan Consolidated Gas Company experience and deliberately set out to design this subsequent attempt so that its “sense of soaring upwards” would be even stronger. Traditional glass curtain walls were replaced with a cage formed from 4½-inch high-strength steel pipes placed 28 inches apart on center (figure 6.14). The pipes were encased in fin-shaped, aggregated precast concrete sleeves as a finish material and for fireproofing. These sleeves acted as

188

38788C-Yamasaki v04.indd 188

TYPICAL TYPICAL FLOOR PLAN FLOOR PLAN

0

50

FT. Feet

FT. Feet

th NNor

6.13. First- and upper-floor plans, IBM Building.

50

0

h otrht NNNor

LOBBY AND LOBBY PLAN AND SITE PLAN SITE

TALL BUILDINGS

18/8/2017 10:55 AM

mullions, and their 13-inch depth provided an actively modeled surface for catching light and shadows in addition to accentuating the desired verticality. Taking no chances in his quest to achieve this effect, Yamasaki paired these prominent, white-colored supports with recessed spandrels of bronze-colored aluminum and gray-tinted glass, so that the horizontal aspects of the building’s exterior would be visually minimized. The framed tube construction system used the steel pipe walls in conjunction with concrete diaphragm floor slabs and a poured-concrete core to resist lateral loads from high winds. This allowed completely open floors (apart from the utility and mechanical core) with no permanent bay divisions. Such openness was not visible, however, at the ground level. The lobby occupied only about a quarter of the floor surface at the building’s base; the rest of that space was given over to mandatory elevators and stairs but also included room for offices and a display area. In general, the lobby was much less conspicuous than its counterpart at Michigan Consolidated Gas, and Yamasaki omitted the decorative reception desk. In its place, an elliptical stair of bronze and white marble provided a curvilinear counterpart to the tower’s dominant rectilinearity. The stair led down to a lower level that contained rental offices and a restaurant and opened out to a below-grade courtyard. The bilevel plaza, reminiscent of Rockefeller Center, helped integrate the building into its sloped

6.14. Framed tube construction, IBM Building.

189

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 189

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:35 PM

site. This lower level included a fountain designed by James FitzGerald, its elliptical shape echoing that of the lobby stair. Bearing wall towers were a new breed of building in the early sixties, and the ibm Building was hailed as “a notable mark in the evolution of the American skyscraper.” Commentators compared it favorably to Saarinen’s CBS Building and Curtis & Davis’s ibm Pittsburgh. Its vertically oriented facade escaped the criticisms of the Michigan Consolidated Gas Headquarters. James Hornbeck, writing for Architectural Record, praised the “pleasing expression of a wall at work” and quibbled only with the depth of the mullions, which he felt made the building appear to have a face of sheer concrete when seen from an angle.20 World Trade Center Some writers have wrongly identified the ibm Building as a precursor to the World Trade Center, when in fact the two structures were designed simultaneously. The complexity level of their design and construction, however, was vastly different. The World Trade Center was one of the largest, most sophisticated building construction projects in the world at that point. It was designed and built during the heyday of the U.S. space program, and its creators shared with that scientific adventure a sense of anticipatory optimism and a confident belief that nothing was technologically impossible (figure 6.15).21 For such an audacious scheme the project began rather quietly, in New York’s political and real estate circles, with the idea of a Manhattan center for international trade housing exhibition, sales, and office space appearing in various guises in the immediate postwar period. In the late fifties, David Rockefeller, brother of New York’s governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, assembled a team of other down-

190

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 190

6.15. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, World Trade Center (New York, 1962–76; destroyed). Balthazar Korab, photographer.

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:35 PM

town property owners to form the Downtown–Lower Manhattan Association, which sought to stimulate growth in the Wall Street section. It hired som to prepare a study, and the firm submitted a proposal for the extensive redevelopment of both riverfronts in Lower Manhattan. som drafted a second proposal at David Rockefeller’s request in January 1960; in it was a 5-million-to-6-million-square-foot center for world trade located near the Brooklyn Bridge. The plan envisioned a row of three buildings on a two-story base, a block wide and many blocks long. Most of the site would be occupied by the “World Trade Mart,” a rectangular structure with two interior courtyards. In the ensemble’s center was a small, square home for the New York Stock Exchange and at the other end was a fifty-to-seventy-story slab tower office and hotel building. Below it all, a three-story podium contained retail shops and parking.22 Selection To realize this considerable venture, Rockefeller’s group enlisted the Port of New York Authority, a municipal body that controlled transportation into and out of the city—it had the ability to raise funds for the project, the power to usurp private property, and a huge corps of employees familiar with large construction projects. The Port Authority engaged architect and former employee Richard Adler as a consultant to begin studying the problem and the som proposal. With Rockefeller, the Port Authority also assembled an “advisory board” of architects to assist. Unlike Adler, its members were well known on the national architectural scene. Wallace Harrison, the Rockefeller’s “family architect” whose firm, Harrison & Abramovitz, had built numerous skyscrapers in Manhattan, had overseen an international coalition in the recent design and construction of the United Nations complex (1947–52). Gordon Bunshaft of som, the nation’s leading skyscraper firm, was responsible in New York for such widely hailed examples as Lever House and Rockefeller’s Chase Tower; and Edward Durell Stone, who had resurrected his long career with the U.S. Embassy in India and was working on the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. (1958–71). These men were three of the biggest names in American architecture, and all had experience with complex projects in New York City. Bunshaft and Harrison were involved in planning Lincoln Center at the time and, together with Stone, had been members of a board of design charged with organizing the 1964 World’s Fair until resigning after Robert Moses, New York City park commissioner and construction coordinator, rejected their circular, single-building proposal. Whether these men knew that they would be eliminated as potential designers by acting in this advisory capacity is unknown—perhaps each thought he might be gaining the inside track through such duty. With their input, Adler generated a proposal for an East Side site that looked very similar to the United Nations Plaza, with four main structures atop a five-story base. The seventy-two-story World Trade Mart was the tallest, followed by a thirty-story World Commerce Exchange and an eighteen-story Trade Center Gateway. A circular Securities Exchange completed the group. The three office buildings were commonplace, rectangular-slab Manhattan office towers resting on pilotis, and the plan was derivative of Harrison’s and Bunshaft’s work and som’s plan from the previous year. After its public unveiling in early 1961, the World Trade Center project stalled for months due to a political dispute between New Jersey and New York. Near the end of the year the Port Authority asked Adler to move the project to the Hudson River side of Manhattan. By the following spring the Port Authority presented another model for public review. Adler

191

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 191

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:35 PM

rearranged his earlier project for the new location but made no major alterations to the buildings. Still not satisfied, the Port Authority asked for more development and brought its high-powered architectural advisory committee back into the process. The events of the next few months are unclear but important. According to Adler, the “genius committee” of Harrison, Bunshaft, and Stone bypassed him and advanced their own proposal. A former Port Authority employee claimed that the three architectural stars were certain they would be awarded the commission over Adler and thus demanded an extraordinary fee. Richard Sullivan, director of the World Trade Center project for the Port Authority, said that the three architects were asked to take over the design but their negotiations deteriorated. Whatever happened behind the scenes, by late spring 1962 neither Adler nor the advisory committee remained in the picture. A new architect would have to be found.23 Following a brief period of evaluation the Port Authority began to invite architects to apply for the job. Its initial list targeted architects and firms who might be interested in and suitable for such a project. Because the Port Authority archives were destroyed with the Twin Towers in 2001, it is difficult to identify all of these architects, but notable names were certainly involved. Eero Saarinen might have been a natural choice for such a bold venture, but his untimely death in 1961 eliminated that possibility. There is evidence that Pietro Belluschi declined an invitation. I. M. Pei accepted his but later withdrew. And Minoru Yamasaki also was on the list. In the years following the World Trade Center construction, Yamasaki relished telling the story of receiving his inquiry letter from Sullivan. He admitted to being thrilled by the prospect of designing such an obviously important building but was amused by a typographical error that estimated the total cost at $280 million—he believed that an extra zero had been mistakenly added, since a project of that scale was almost unimaginable. After his associates had a good laugh over the mistake, they encouraged Yamasaki to contact Sullivan to determine the true cost. He was shocked to discover that the figure was correct. Although the Port Authority had not yet revealed its plans to make this the world’s tallest building, anyone could discern that this was to be a monumental endeavor. At this point Yamasaki faced a career-defining dilemma: to pursue a commission in the center of the architectural world that was clearly too large for his firm to handle alone and far beyond the size of anything he had ever attempted or to remain true to his philosophy of humanist design and human scale and decline the offer. In his writings or interviews he never described the struggle that this choice must have engendered; we have no way of knowing why he decided to abandon his deeply held commitment to serenity, surprise, and delight for a project of this magnitude.24 Yamasaki’s inclusion in the list of invited architects was no doubt due to the influence of Guy Tozzoli, director of the Port Authority’s world trade department. The Port Authority had been working with Robert Moses on the forthcoming New York World’s Fair. In this capacity Moses had sent Tozzoli to Seattle to evaluate the Century 21 Exposition, and there Tozzoli allegedly fell in love with Yamasaki’s Science Pavilion. His authority was such that when a two-hundred-page internal report appeared in June, it named mya as one of seven finalists for the World Trade Center, along with Carson, Lundin & Shaw; Welton Becket & Associates; Walter Gropius and tac; Philip Johnson; Kahn & Jacobs; and Kelly & Gruzen. Four of these competitors were based in New York (Carson, Lundin & Shaw, Johnson, Kahn & Jacobs, and Kelly & Gruzen), while tac was a Boston firm, Yamasaki was in Detroit, and Beckett & Associates was based in

192

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 192

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:35 PM

Los Angeles. The list was notable for the celebrity architects it did not include. Mies was the most obvious omission; apparently the nominating committee worried about his age and health. They had similar concerns about Gropius, but he had a proven firm behind him for support and a team ethos. Marcel Breuer, Louis Kahn, and Paul Rudolph were other preeminent names that could have brought publicity and architectural finesse to the undertaking. The former two architects had never built a skyscraper, however, and Rudolph favored concrete structures, which might have been seen as incompatible with the reigning Manhattan aesthetic and too expensive.25 The finalists had varying degrees of involvement with tall buildings. The Carson and Kahn firms had considerable experience with Manhattan office tower design and construction. Johnson was designing his first skyscraper, the fourteen-story Kline Biological Tower at Yale University (1965). Kelly & Gruzen’s twelve-story U.S. Mission to the United Nations (1961) and the taller Chatham Green Apartments (1961) were both in the city. In Boston tac was working on the John F. Kennedy Federal Building (1961–66), and Gropius had recently codesigned Manhattan’s controversial Pan Am Building (1958–63) with Belluschi. Becket & Associates had undertaken many large building projects and designed what may have been the first circular skyscraper, Hollywood’s iconic Capitol Records Building (1955–56). In this company, Yamasaki’s lack of skyscraper experience might have been considered a hindrance, but none in the group had ever tackled a structure so complicated as the one envisioned by the Port Authority, and most of their work—like Yamasaki’s—was in the lower twenty-story range. All were thus equally inexperienced for such a vast and complicated project. The Port Authority’s final jury evaluated the candidates in terms of their creative talent and consistent ability to generate outstanding designs, the office organization, their capability to collaborate, their record of staying within budgets, and client recommendations. The contenders’ likelihood that they would devote “full attention” to the endeavor was another vital consideration. During the summer Sullivan and Malcolm Levy of the Port Authority interviewed each architect while a team of Port Authority architects and engineers visited their buildings and talked to former clients. The candidates also submitted a letter describing their credentials and explaining their approach. Yamasaki’s letter carefully described his office makeup and process, outlining the procedure he would use in designing the Trade Center and confirming his firm’s ability to devote full attention to the job by September 1. In the first paragraph, after thanking Sullivan for the opportunity, he described himself as “thrilled by the possibilities inherent in the project because of your wonderful aspirations for it, the symbolic challenge, and its great scope.” It was toward the end, however, after dispensing with the necessities, that Yamasaki applied his unique philosophy to the commission to produce an enticing vision for the World Trade Center: For your project, to me, the basic problem beyond the solving of the functional relationships of space is to find a beautiful solution of form and silhouette which fits well into Lower Manhattan and gives the World Trade Center the symbolic importance which it deserves and must have. In my opinion, this should not be an over-all form which melts into the multi-towered landscape of Lower Manhattan, but it should be unique, have excitement of its own, and yet be respectful to the general area. The great scope of your project demands finding a way to scale it to the human being so that, rather than be an overpowering

193

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 193

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:35 PM

group of buildings, it will be inviting, friendly, and humane. Its great spaces need the excitement and delight of change of pace, of surprise, of interest, to avoid the danger of an overwhelming multiplicity of repeated modules. To be symbolic of its great purpose, of the working together in trade of the Nations of the World, it should have a sense of dignity and pride, and still stand for the humanity and democratic purposes in which we in the United States believe.26

The passage touched on his most cherished architectural ideals: surprise, delight, humanism, and democracy. The only word missing from his standard rhetoric was “serenity,” perhaps as a result of understanding that this concept would be difficult to foster in such huge buildings full of so many people. During the design process, however, Yamasaki would describe the proposed plaza as a refuge against the crowded streets of Lower Manhattan—in other words, as a serene space, comparable to the Science Pavilion courtyard. Such language went a long way toward convincing the committee that Yamasaki was the man for the job. The Port Authority liked his description so much that it repeated the paragraph quoted above in the press release announcing his selection. Just as important as his philosophy, however, was Yamasaki’s technical acumen. The evaluators admired his understanding of structural and mechanical engineering principles and how that knowledge led him to become “an outstanding leader in the integrated approach.” The architect’s combination of creative talent and humanistic principles tipped the balance in his favor, as did the committee’s belief that he would be personally involved in the project.27 Besides Yamasaki, the committee seems to have considered only Gropius/tac for the job. None of the other firms displayed the requisite “imagination” and “creative ability.” The selection committee’s final report chastised Johnson as lacking the “creative talent that would produce a W.T.C of historical significance” and as being incapable of generating “outstanding architectural work.” It felt Gropius could do both and was impressed by tac’s portfolio, but in the end anxieties about whether Gropius would devote himself to the Trade Center, the extent of tac’s participation, and, ultimately, Gropius’s age proved insurmountable. The committee had none of these concerns with Yamasaki. It also approved of his built work and was persuaded by the testimony of former clients.28 Because the job was too big for mya’s forty architects to handle alone, the Port Authority hired New York architectural firm Emery Roth & Sons to act as associates, doing the “production work” of generating sheaves of working drawings. Roth & Sons was a perfect choice; this was arguably the most successful skyscraper design firm in the world in terms of numbers of buildings and square footage erected. The firm’s simple glass and steel designs, often in ziggurat shape to follow the city’s zoning ordinances, dominated Madison and Park Avenues. As senior partner Richard Roth casually explained, “We seem to have the greatest number and volume of office building structures in the most dense center in the world—New York—and on the most obvious of the thoroughfares of that center.” Robert A. M. Stern estimated that Roth & Sons was responsible for an astonishing seventy office buildings in New York from 1950 to 1970 and half of the office space fabricated in the city in that period. They had worked with Belluschi and Gropius on the Pan Am Building and had many solo projects in design or under construction. The Roth firm tended to be loved by builders and developers but ignored by architectural tastemakers because its architects did not pretend to be artists: “Ours is not a field of architecture in which we create or try

194

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 194

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:35 PM

to create masterpieces,” said Roth. “The entire endeavor in our office is to create the best that can be produced within the restrictions that are placed upon us.” They proved extremely apt at knowing “what to design and specify that is appealing to the eye, sound for the building, and economical for the builder”; their no-nonsense, client-first attitude and extremely efficient organization made them favored Manhattan architects for decades.29 The third crucial partner in this endeavor would be the engineers. In his official entry letter, Yamasaki specifically requested Worthington, Skilling, Helle & Jackson, noting that they had “shown great imagination in being able to solve our design considerations with sound structure and sound economics.” However, this was too expensive a venture to be entrusted to a young engineering group with limited experience on the word of an equally inexperienced architect. And they were indeed a young group; John Skilling was forty, while Jack Christiansen and Leslie Robertson, who would lead the project and open a New York branch office, were merely thirty-five. So the Port Authority investigated the Skilling firm and about a half-dozen other engineering firms before eventually agreeing with Yamasaki. Skilling and Robertson could certainly have made the argument that they were on the leading edge of structural engineering for high-rise buildings given their work for ibm in Pittsburgh and Seattle. The firm’s compatibility with mya was obvious, and the engineers surely emphasized the harmonious relationship between their preoccupation with framed tube construction and Yamasaki’s aesthetic preferences for conspicuous vertical lines and narrow windows. In addition, the Port Authority’s team of architects and engineers—led by Malcolm Levy—would be intimately involved in the project, overseeing the work as a fourth key player.30 Design The World Trade Center’s parameters were set by the site and the Port Authority’s requirements. Its location was finally determined to be on the west side of Lower Manhattan, next to the Hudson River, on a roughly twelve-block square, sixteen acres in size. One of the job’s greatest challenges would be to incorporate the multiple transportation routes that converged there; three Manhattan subway lines and a railway to New Jersey all traveled through the site. In terms of the building, the program called for a remarkable ten million square feet. Beyond this information and a suggestion that he disregard Adler’s earlier efforts, Yamasaki received little guidance—he was free to create the project anew. Yamasaki worked closely with project manager Aaron Schreier to find an acceptable form for the extraordinary amount of office space. The thirty-one-year-old Schreier had been with him since graduating from the University of Michigan in 1956. They had met there when Yamasaki served as a guest juror for Schreier’s studio class and had been so impressed with the student’s designs that he offered him a job. Before the World Trade Center commission Schreier worked on the Michigan Consolidated Gas building and was supervising the nwnl team; he would go on to lead several large projects for the firm, eventually becoming vice president and principal before leaving in 1980. Together the architects experimented with building groupings of contrasting size, shape, and number, using a scale model of Lower Manhattan. It was the firm’s typical design procedure, heavily dependent on models—some almost seven feet tall—for three-dimensional visualizations of a building’s form and relation to its context (and later in the process its detailing). The different building shapes

195

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 195

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:35 PM

and configurations tested, despite their variability, all bore some relation to an open plaza, because Yamasaki was determined to make public space the heart of the design. By all accounts this process involved more than one hundred alternatives, each with its own model and plans (figure 6.16). One proposal even included a veritable forest of six structures of nearly identical height tightly packed into the space. Yamasaki admitted that the concept of two identical paired towers emerged around the fortieth variation, but he continued on to make sure that nothing had been missed. Such an account reinforced his reputation as a thorough and tireless worker, although some employees believed that most of these iterations were done for appearances, to convince the Port Authority that the architects considered every alternative.31 Two motivations guided Yamasaki in these manipulations. The first was his conviction that the gargantuan scale of any building(s) designed for ten million square feet could be humanized if done properly. At this point he was imagining towers of eighty to ninety stories, since the Port Authority did not initially reveal its desire for the world’s tallest buildings. Although this was extremely tall, he believed that people’s perceptual habits would nullify any sense of anxiety that might accompany one’s encounter with such immense structures. “I had long felt that it doesn’t really matter in Manhattan how high you go up; what really matters to people using buildings is their scale at or near the ground,” he said. His experiences with the Empire State Building convinced him that “one becomes as comfortable standing next to a 100-story building as one forty stories high; the width of the streets in the city tends to limit the vision of the passerby, and it is only the first-time visitor who cranes his neck to see the tops of the higher buildings.”32

196

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 196

6.16. World Trade Center massing models. Balthazar Korab, photographer.

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:35 PM

The notion of downplaying the buildings’ height by emphasizing the surrounding plaza aligned with Yamasaki’s second design impetus: to provide a quiet, self-enclosed public space at the base of these buildings amid the bustling city. He had always been interested in the landscapes around his buildings, and his most praised designs showcased courtyards. Rockefeller Center and the Piazza San Marco taught him the value of pedestrian-oriented spaces as separate worlds onto themselves. “Like many other important plazas of the world, [the plaza] is designed as an end in itself,” he wrote, “to set off the buildings facing it and to create an environment made totally for pedestrians and away from automobiles—an oasis, a paved garden where people can spend a few moments to relieve the tensions or monotonies of the usual working day.” This serene setting would be enhanced by the towers’ beauty, so that the buildings and plaza, acting harmoniously, could inspire “moments of pleasure” for occupants and passersby.33 These characteristics would have to be worked out in conjunction with the heroic task facing the Skilling engineers. Both they and Yamasaki agreed, for structural and aesthetic purposes, that a framed tube construction was the best choice for the towers’ extreme height. But dual buildings invited unexpected difficulties, mostly concerning wind forces and construction schedules. Yamasaki had decided on two square towers of extreme height placed in the southwest corner of the site. He staggered the towers for a more dynamic appearance. To him, this was a better solution than any other combination of smaller buildings, and a single building could not contain the required square footage. He accepted the complexities of twin towers, recognizing perhaps intuitively that two incredibly tall structures would make more of an impression than one. “Two just seemed right,” Schreier later said. “In terms of the distribution of the mass, in terms of the elegance of the shafts, in terms of the symbolism.” In an interview with Newsweek, Yamasaki defended the decision by referencing acclaimed twin-building precedents like Mies’s 860–80 Lake Shore Drive Apartments—the World Trade Center’s most obvious precursor— and Oscar Niemeyer’s wafer-thin slabs for the Secretariat at Brasilia, Brazil (1958).34 mya and Skilling’s engineers spent 1963 working out the details of the towers, a group of lower buildings, and the plaza, while also figuring out how to furnish an adequate foundation for the extremely heavy loads of these massive buildings. With the towers tucked into the southwest corner and a ring of smaller structures forming a boundary line on three sides, the architects had five acres of open space available. They also had to determine the relations among buildings, plaza, and subterranean transit lines. Yamasaki liked to cite the Piazza San Marco as a favorite public space and an inspiration for the Trade Center. Despite such regard, he may not have been aware of just how liberally his creation borrowed from the piazza: almost all of its most prominent architectural features can likewise be found in Venice. These include the tall, freestanding tower overlooking smaller buildings lining a broad, open plaza; the distinct vertical emphasis of that tower, highlighted by unbroken vertical lines; an arcade of delicate pointed arches on an exceptional building; the enclosed nature of the plaza, heightened by a single entry in an unbroken perimeter of structures; and the round-arched arcades of the secondary structures, contrasting with the pointed arches of the focus building. He freely admitted his affection for both the piazza and its Doge’s Palace, and even recognized the parti as early as the London Embassy project, when he wrote, “Historically, there is much and good architectural precedence of

197

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 197

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:35 PM

buildings which dominate the Squares on which they stand. The cathedral and tower in Piazza San Marco, the Palazzo della Signoria in Florence, and the cathedral in Milan are but a few of [the] fine examples from our architectural past.” Almost a decade later, he could apply these principles for the first time.35 Time Perhaps the most telling evidence that Yamasaki had ascended to a higher level of public exposure with the World Trade Center commission came in early January 1963, when he gained the prestigious honor of a cover story in Time. This put him in select company, becoming only the eleventh architecture-related cover subject in the magazine’s forty-year history and joining such illustrious predecessors as Wright, Neutra, Harrison, Saarinen, Stone, and Le Corbusier (figure 6.17). The featured story, entitled “The Road to Xanadu,” introduced Yamasaki’s work to readers as “a declaration of independence from the machine-made monotony of so much of modern architecture.” After a brief introductory section wherein he was described (stereotypically) as a “wiry, 132-lb. Nisei . . . the most courteous of men, often humble to a fault,” the piece briefly outlined Yamasaki’s humanistic philosophy and the importance he placed on decoration while describing his exemplary rise from poverty and discrimination to the pinnacle of his profession. But this was not entirely a vanity article; the author included a section on other architects’ responses to his work, including unflattering comments from Scully (McGregor as a “twittering aviary”), Johnson, Bunshaft (“Yamasaki’s as much an architect as I am Napoleon. He was an architect, but now he’s nothing but a decorator”), and Pei. Closing on a hopeful note, the author reminded readers that Yamasaki “has turned office buildings, schools, churches and banks into pleasure palaces that are marvelously generous in spirit,” which bode well for the Trade Center, implying that it, too, would “be built with the ultimate degree of loving care.”36

6.17. Yamasaki on the cover of Time, January 1963.

198

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 198

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:35 PM

First Version The public would not have the opportunity to make such a determination for more than a year, since the first version of the project was not unveiled until early February 1964. Accompanying the initial World Trade Center scheme was a utopian pronouncement from Yamasaki describing the project as “a living symbol of man’s dedication to world peace . . . a living representation of man’s belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his beliefs in the cooperation of men, and through this cooperation his ability to find greatness.” To accomplish this noble task, he paired two mammoth towers joining shorter buildings to encircle a large plaza (figure 6.18). This format, including the two towers’ square plans, slender profiles, and location, stayed relatively the same as the team continued to experiment with the lower buildings and open spaces (figure 6.19).37 The plaza’s earliest incarnations already tied it closely to the “enclosed world” concept he admired at Rockefeller Center—here created by an unbroken ring of structures and one main entrance, on the east side of the property along Church Street. The five-acre plaza would occupy a substantial portion of the site. Yamasaki employed his familiar repertoire of trees, flowers, and water in an attempt to fashion a serene courtyard that balanced the towers’ scale. In keeping with his wishes, the proposed square would be a world apart, lifted above sidewalk level and almost completely enclosed. The squareshaped plaza included a wide moat crossed by a handful of bridges. This idea of a tall tower and smaller buildings “sitting” in water previously appeared in the unbuilt complex for the New Haven Railroad. The pools of water would offer pleasant reflections of the arcaded lower floors, improve acoustics, and add a welcome touch of nature in an otherwise hard-surfaced environment. With this basic arrangement in place, Yamasaki investigated configurations of natural features. Photographs of an early model show jagged clumps of trees symmetrically arranged across a marble expanse and a Science Pavilion–like ensemble of attenuated arches

US CUSTOMS BUILDING US Customs Building NORTHEAST BUILDING Northeast PLAZA Plaza Building

NORTH TOWER North Tower

FIVE PLAZA FiveACRE Acre Plaza

SOUTH South TOWER Tower

150

0

199

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 199

Feet FT.

North N

SITE SITE PLAN PLAN

SoutheastPLAZA Plaza Building SOUTHEAST BUILDING

6.18. World Trade Center site plan as built.

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:35 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 200

29/7/2017 3:35 PM

standing over the moat-crossing bridge at the main entry point. Another model showed a tall, open-framed sculpture rising to a point more than 100 feet above the entry bridge with no visible trees in the space. In a third version, no sculpture was visible and the plaza was subdivided into a nine-square checkerboard with the four corner spaces occupied by symmetrical ranks of trees (figure 6.20). The lower buildings were subjected to similar manipulations during this process, mainly involving their facades and the presence or absence of internal courtyards. Their basic arrangement remained relatively unchanged, but their faces varied drastically, sometimes resembling an extension of the towers’ lower levels with tall, pointed arches and molded arabesques, and other times appearing as mostly solid with continuous vertical slits for windows, overhanging cornice lines, and flattened arch arcades. Most of the early models depicted, enclosed within these lower buildings, tiny courtyards that in some cases even sprouted small strands of trees. Yamasaki wanted these lower buildings to have a two-story galleria or arcade bordering the plaza, allowing visitors and users to stroll completely around the space behind glass walls and next to the moat, passing restaurants, cafés, and shops (figure 6.21). A second-floor level would house exhibit areas to display goods from around the world. If the plaza’s outdoor component could be a place of serenity, the covered passage around its outer ring would stimulate interaction and delight. The towers also underwent adjustments in these early models; most were focused on the bottom floors where the building met the plaza. Choosing a framed tube structure meant that patterns of vertical lines would necessarily dominate all four sides of the buildings. The difficulty came in determining how those vertical lines would be carried to the ground. Most tall buildings since the late nineteenth

< 6.19. World Trade Center model with connected buildings (first version, 1964). Balthazar Korab, photographer. < 6.20. World Trade Center plaza model (1964). Balthazar Korab, photographer. 6.21. Galleria proposal, World Trade Center. Drawing by Carlos Diniz.

201

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 201

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

century had been visually divided into three distinctive horizontal layers, a formula popularized by Louis Sullivan: a distinct base level, a middle section (usually the same window pattern repeated for every floor), and something attractive at the top. When combined with vertical accents, this formula generated buildings that emphasized their height and led viewers’ eyes upward to grasp the sheer magnitude of the accomplishment. A skyscraper, Sullivan said famously, “must be very inch a proud and soaring thing, rising in sheer exultation that from bottom to top is a unit without a single dissenting line.” Yamasaki clearly wanted to follow Sullivan’s advice. But with the popularity of modernism this formula had been increasingly altered and then neglected, partly in response to a new aesthetic preference for glass curtain walls over masonry cladding. The first element to disappear in the postwar era was the attractive terminus; the outstanding examples of this new generation of skyscrapers, like the U.N. Building, Lever House, and the Seagram Building, had flat roofs that distinguished them from their predecessors. And the distinct base, which was often designed visually to register its status as the building’s foundation, had been manipulated: modernist designers interested in revealing structure often removed the curtain wall on the lower levels to reveal the building’s structural frame.38 Yamasaki had to solve the problem of how to arrange the multiple vertical supports in a manner that allowed for proper openings without compromising the structural system. The World Trade Center would be in the vanguard of a group of skyscrapers with uninterrupted vertical lines that began at the sidewalk and ended at the roof. But whereas two high-profile Manhattan buildings—Saarinen’s CBS headquarters (1960–65) and Stone’s General Motors Building (1963–68)—had intercolumniations wide enough to insert doors, the World Trade Center did not. The supports were going to be placed a mere 40 inches apart, so that if Yamasaki carried them straight down to the plaza they would interfere with pedestrians’ access. In the

Proposed

6.22. World Trade Center proposed facade (above) and as built (below).

202

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 202

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

ibm Building he had used a more traditional approach, channeling the gravity loads from the closely spaced steel tubes to a series of arches that opened at the building’s base. Given the World Trade Center’s greater size and weight, however, this solution seemed impractical. So Yamasaki and the engineers invented a system whereby the multiple vertical supports of the upper stories merged at the third floor. In early models these first few stories were visually busy, filled with combinations of pointed arches, intertwined lines, and lacy details; in other words, they reverberated with traces of his 1950s work (and in so doing mimicked some of Sullivan’s elaborate ornamental designs). They also matched the height of the lower buildings (figure 6.22). Over time, as the realities of cost and physics became more apparent, Yamasaki and Schreier simplified these complex patterns. As built, each identical face of the North and South Towers featured nineteen columns rising from the plaza to the top of the lobby, 80 feet from the ground, where each column then branched into a trident of three supports, creating fifty-seven vertical fins to carry the buildings’ weight. A horizontal spandrel linked the larger columns at the mezzanine level. The result was an open and airy building base, distinguished from the great mass of the facade by a different rhythm of the same materials (figure 6.23). The towers’ distinctive arches, though admittedly inspired by Yamasaki’s love for the Doge’s Palace, in fact were not Gothic, Arabic, Moorish, or borrowed from any other source—despite the descriptions that continue to this day. Instead, they evolved from aesthetic adaptations to the structural system. As mentioned above, he was abandoning lacy arches and decorative effects by this time, and his post–World Trade Center work would continue to pare buildings down to their structure. In such gestures

6.23. Facade, World Trade Center.

203

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 203

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

he was motivated by his favorite architectural quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson (“Beauty rests on necessities. The line of beauty is the result of perfect economy . . . There is not a particle to spare in natural structures”)—which he would cite in response to critics of the Twin Towers after their construction. Yamasaki did what he could to lessen the numbing monotony of more than a hundred stories of vertical pinstripes. Each face was framed by solid, chamfered corners and a fascia at the top. Although darkened floor spandrels helped them recede optically into the background, distinctive horizontal bands on the building revealed themselves depending on the lighting conditions and angle of view. In the first models these bands fashioned arches to match those at the building’s top and bottom, but the arches were removed during the simplification process. The existing bands corresponded to the mechanical systems on floors 7 and 8, 41 and 42, 75 and 76, and 108 and 109. Also visible through the screen of vertical supports were sky lobbies on floors 44 and 78. These sky lobbies were changing stations for the innovative system of express and local elevators created for the towers and as well as mini–shopping malls housing food and retail vendors. This allowed workers on the highest floors to avoid traveling all the way down to the plaza for lunch or a break. Another band of mechanical equipment crowned the buildings. These horizontal accents, which appeared ghostlike behind the shimmering aluminum facades, divided the towers into three distinct zones. Yet the vertical stripes emphatically overwhelmed the horizontal bands in the Twin Towers in a way that must have made Yamasaki, who had been disappointed when a comparable effect failed at Michigan Consolidated Gas, very satisfied. To reduce further the repetitiveness and visually unite the upper and lower facades, the vertical supports flared into tridents again at floor 110 before rejoining at the fascia, forming a staccato rhythm of elongated hexagons—similar to the Gas Company windows—across the crest of each building. Narrow windows—by now a Yamasaki trademark—satisfied his search for openings that were aesthetically pleasing, economical, and able to assuage those with a fear of heights. He justified his tendency toward psychological enclosure in his skyscrapers, saying, “I believe that a building should be designed so that its occupants are very aware that they are actually within a structure enjoying its protection, rather than attempting to attain the sense of being outdoors by making the building all glass.” The towers would be about 30 percent glass, which by his calculations was just the right amount to make visitors feel safe and secure while still having a pleasurable view out (figure 6.24).39 The towers’ marble-covered lobbies would be vast, multilevel spaces 70 feet tall (figure 6.25). Visitors walking in from the plaza outside would enter on a mezzanine level and then take an escalator down one floor to the elevator banks (which opened to the sidewalk on one side of each tower). A second mezzanine, located above, was for displaying goods. Most visitors, however, approached the World Trade Center from below. An unseen world existed beneath the plaza, populated by subway lines, regional train stations, and retail and food stores. Yamasaki created a subterranean concourse containing an urban shopping mall and a transportation center. When the model was first shown to the public, after over a year of steady work, Yamasaki believed that it would “reflect the qualities of life which [man] so passionately seeks of truth and serenity, of hope and joy for all men, qualities integral to the kind of democracy for which he aspires.” Although such talk of humanity and aspiration revealed Yamasaki’s philosophical beliefs, it also was intended to

204

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 204

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

mitigate the fears of those concerned by the towers’ gigantic size. By this time, the Port Authority had revealed to Yamasaki its desire to make the World Trade Center towers the world’s tallest and ordered him to raise the buildings to 110 stories each, or an amazing 1,350 feet. Each floor would contain an acre of usable space, 10 million square feet in total. Many New Yorkers were shocked to learn that the towers would surpass the beloved Empire State Building in height.40 Despite the center’s astounding size, the architectural press’s initial response to Yamasaki’s model was favorable. Huxtable praised the building in two articles appearing shortly after the publicity event. The first described Yamasaki as “among the country’s leading creative designers” and the World Trade Center as “the best new building project that New York has seen in a long time.” In the second article she contrasted the World Trade Center with a proposal for a film and television center in midtown called “Film City.” Castigating Film City for being “jazz” instead of architecture, Huxtable complimented

6.24. Windows on the World restaurant, World Trade Center. Marvin Newman, photographer. 6.25. Mezzanine and lobby, World Trade Center.

205

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 205

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

Yamasaki for the World Trade Center’s “superior level of structural and esthetic design,” representing “an imaginative search for new and better solutions.” In the end, she argued that the World Trade Center proved that “a first-rate talent given the creative green light and proper technical collaboration . . . will produce a first-rate design.”41 Second Version As the project evolved from early design to the preconstruction phase, Yamasaki tinkered with his models, in part because of pressure from the Port Authority to cut costs while increasing the building’s size. Legal disputes with neighbors and political battles among the city and the states of New York and New Jersey stalled progress for a considerable time as Yamasaki struggled to implement the necessary changes. For example, the Port Authority vetoed a second mezzanine in the lobby, but the most drastic changes involved the plaza. The gallerias and reflecting pools were eliminated, which removed the opportunity for a ring of amenities around the open space; instead, Port Authority representatives told Yamasaki to move the shops and restaurants to the underground concourse (figure 6.26). He also took steps to demarcate the lower buildings from the towers by separating them, removing their arcades, and changing their color to a darker tone, so that the visual unity among all the buildings disappeared.

6.26. World Trade Center plaza model (1966).

206

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 206

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

The redesigned plaza would lose much of its greenery and most of its character. Faced with five acres of hard surface and no encircling moat, Yamasaki decided to put a fountain near the center, aligned with the axis of the North Tower (figure 6.27). Scattered pieces of sculpture would populate the expanse along with small thickets of trees, mostly positioned near the buildings. Although much of the plaza had originally been planned for trees and water, these components were significantly reduced in both size and effect in the built version. The denuded space that remained hardly seemed capable of encouraging serenity and delight. Why did Yamasaki drain the spirit from the part of the project that exemplified the essence of his architecture? Accounts of the design process by former employees indicate that he was under great stress and was coerced by Port Authority officials, including Mal Levy and Guy Tozzoli, into making changes that he often did not support. The whittling away of the plaza’s “humanizing” elements was one such alteration. It appears that the Port Authority, in its obsession with height, hired Yamasaki for his unique vision of architecture and then refused to let him realize that vision. And yet, in later interviews Yamasaki justified the plaza alterations as facilitating better views of the Twin Towers. Perhaps he, too, became fixated on height. Anthony W. Robins, one of the few historians to discuss the Trade Center with

6.27. World Trade Center model (second version, 1966).

207

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 207

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

Yamasaki, wrote that the architect began to believe that the towers were more important than the plaza. He told Robins that the “pools were impractical. I wanted more space for people.” In 1974, he told another interviewer, “I was afraid to build 110 stories, but it was the only way I could get the five acre plaza which I wanted so badly.” He elaborated: “We intend to put benches and parks but no trees because trees are at the periphery where we have indentations in the low buildings so that you would keep the plaza open and clear so that you could see the towers. Because if you put trees in front of the towers, then you won’t see the towers.” In the earliest versions, however, trees had been prominently placed throughout the plaza, including in its center. Did Yamasaki truly believe in these modifications, or was he putting a positive spin on a painful defeat? Unfortunately, the historical record is mute.42 Critical Shift By the time ground was broken for construction in August 1966, Yamasaki’s revised design had been absorbed by the press and public, and a torrent of criticism began to flow. In contrast to the high praise directed at the first model, the second incarnation stirred critics’ ire. The assault began slowly. In the spring, Desmond Smith titled his piece in the Nation “Manhattan’s Tower of Babel”—a distinctly negative analogy, even if the article spotlighted the neighborhood impact and not Yamasaki’s design. Architectural Forum’s “Gargantua-bythe-Sea” similarly focused on the World Trade Center’s broader urban issues but found room for a quick jab at its architecture and “its indifference to both city scale and skyline.”43 Much of this early opposition was a response to the intimidating size and cost of the project and its effect on the Lower West Side. The historic preservation movement in the United States was then in its nascent stage, and those who sought to protect the existing buildings in the area faced a difficult task. But opponents were able to slow down the Trade Center’s progress nonetheless. In 1963 the Downtown West Small Business Survival Committee, a group of business owners facing displacement, filed a lawsuit disputing the legislation authorizing the World Trade Center. It won the first round, but the decision was overturned by a higher state court, and when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case, the dispute was over. The Committee for a Reasonable Trade Center, led by the Empire State Building’s principal owner, twice sued unsuccessfully for a smaller building. And a change in the city’s political leadership brought further problems when John Lindsay succeeded Robert F. Wagner as mayor and questioned the project. Numerous other litigations continued into the 1970s. Although much of the growing public dissatisfaction with the World Trade Center stemmed from its size, perceived negative impact on the neighborhood, or usurping of the beloved Empire State Building’s status as the tallest and most recognizable symbol in the city, there were those who attacked it on a purely architectural basis. Curiously, most of these critiques were not published until after the second model was unveiled in May 1966. Although the towers remained the same height in this new version, with slight visual adjustments, Yamasaki’s manipulations of the plaza must have induced critics to see the project differently. The response was brutal. The Washington Post’s Wolf von Eckardt, who had deemed Yamasaki’s inaugural World Trade Center design “a magnificent work of architecture and urban design” and “a stunning tour de force,” now called it the “World’s Tallest Fiasco” and its designer an “architectural kitsch-monger.” Von Eckardt asserted that his reaction to seeing the

208

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 208

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

latest Trade Center model was “shock—viscerally felt shock” at their “utterly inhuman scale,” when in fact he had seen the first model (of the same size) and registered no such response. No longer magnificent, this “fearful instrument of urbicide” would be “one of the ugliest buildings in the world.” Von Eckardt decried the towers as “arrogant twins . . . artless and dumb, without any relationship to anything, not even to each other,” and, in a judgment that surely stung Yamasaki, cited them for lacking the graceful silhouettes of public favorites like the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings. Although he believed that Yamasaki’s adjustments to the plaza design were an improvement, in the end the “gigantism” and “utterly inhuman” scale not only doomed the project but also set a dangerous precedent for the future.44 Huxtable Another critical assault, and the one that seems to have hurt Yamasaki the most, came from Ada Louise Huxtable. Before this commission she had championed Yamasaki’s unique approach and design tendencies, although her support was always qualified. And for the first few years she promoted the World Trade Center as a viable alternative to skyscraper design and a boost to Lower Manhattan. But over time she veered into sharp critique and then into outright condemnation, and her opinions helped establish the World Trade Center’s negative image in the architectural world. Yamasaki’s responses to this sequence of events revealed much about his confidence—or lack thereof—in his work. The architect and the critic were aware of each other and in contact since at least 1960, when Huxtable wrote an admiring letter to Yamasaki. At the time she was a contributing editor for Progressive Architecture and Art in America, before becoming the New York Times’s first architectural critic, a position she would occupy from 1963 to 1987. She published a summary article in Art in America in 1960 in which she identified a distinct strain of romanticism in much of the prominent American work, and she cited Yamasaki as a leader of this new direction, along with Johnson, Rudolph, Saarinen, and Stone. His recent designs variously embodied for Huxtable all three subsets of the growing romantic trend: “Romantic Classicism” (pavilion or palazzo types, classical enframement, arcades and colonnades); “Structural Rationalism” (“exotic” structural systems supporting classical formality); and “Decorative Romanticism” (purely decorative effects free of structural justification). The review interpreted these romantic tendencies as a proof of the healthy creative freedom spawned by postwar modernism. After the Port Authority announced Yamasaki as the architect for the Trade Center, Huxtable published a pair of focused articles to introduce him to the New York audience; these writings, described above, also established both her admiration for and her reservations about his architecture. This ambivalence was absent in the early stages of the World Trade Center as she positioned herself as a champion of the project. Her initial Times reviews were unequivocally favorable. But something happened to change her opinion. In 1966 Huxtable began to express strong doubts. Construction had not yet begun, and although Yamasaki had revised his original design, the basic elements were still in place, and the revisions did not affect the appearance or location of the Twin Towers. Huxtable now saw problems, however. While making sure to point out that the project’s “pluses outweigh its minuses” and “its potential is greater than its threat,” she was uncomfortable with the towers’ look and scale. Labeling the contrast between the buildings’ staggering size and delicate detail “more disturbing than reassuring,” she wrote the oft-quoted phrase that

209

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 209

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

identified a major flaw with Yamasaki’s design: “Here we have the world’s daintiest architecture for the world’s biggest buildings.” She ended her assessment with a line intended to represent the Port Authority’s economic gamble in undertaking such massive construction and its potential effect on future skyscraper design but that unfortunately would be misinterpreted after the tragic events of 2001: “The Trade Center towers could be the start of a new skyscraper age or the biggest tombstones in the world.”45 Huxtable’s reversal happened as other writers began to criticize the Trade Center, but her barbs must have hurt Yamasaki the most. From this point on she never changed her opinion that the towers were overscaled and overly decorative. As the Twin Towers rose she continued her assault. “In New York, the towers of the mammoth World Trade Center rise aggressively over everything else, gleaming like new-minted money—the architecture of power,” she wrote in 1971, a few months before the topping-out ceremony. After the dedication ceremony in 1973, she published a scathing commentary in the Times. Now that the Trade Center was finished, her doubts and fears from seeing the project in drawing and model phases were confirmed. Her analysis was based on a belief that architecture must be evaluated according to three categories: engineering, design, and planning. Yamasaki’s World Trade Center failed in all three. Once again focusing on the incompatibility between scale and detail, she called the towers “the daintiest big buildings in the world” and disparaged the decorative facade’s delicacy. The “almost miniature” design module was too small, she said, forcing narrow windows that destroyed the panoramic views available only from such tall structures. And Yamasaki’s attempt to humanize the buildings with this module was not only unsuccessful but misguided. “The most beautiful skyscrapers are not only big, they are bold; that is the essence and logic of their structural and visual reality,” Huxtable wrote. “They are bone-beautiful and the best wear skins that express that fact with the strength and subtlety of great art. [The towers] are big buildings but they are not great architecture.” In her final jibe, she dismissed the Trade Center as “the ultimate Disneyland fairytale blockbuster. It is General Motors gothic.”46 In a testament to his personal insecurity and perhaps his private misgivings about the project, Yamasaki chose to respond to Huxtable rather than letting the matter play out in the court of public opinion. Over the next few days he wrote and revised (in at least four drafts) a lengthy rebuttal that included six pages of detailed explanation, opening with his favorite quotation from Emerson and broken down into subjects headed “Structure,” “Glass,” “Lobbies,” “Travel Experience [commuters],” “The Foundations,” and “Economics.” He obviously believed that Huxtable simply misunderstood his motives and decisions and that a thorough explanation would allow her to grasp the appropriateness of both. Huxtable replied but refused to back down; they were engaged in “an honest parting of the ways,” she said. She thanked him for his letter, gently reminding him that she was well aware of the engineering issues involved in design and construction, which she felt he handled in “extremely impressive” fashion. The Twin Towers’ appearance, however, was problematic. “I suppose that it is design approach, or interpretation of structure, that is the issue,” she said, “and that, admittedly, can be a very subjective matter.”47 Yamasaki sent copies of his letter to Port Authority executives, and they offered their support. Executive Director Austin Tobin deemed it “a masterpiece” before implying that Huxtable’s about-face had conspiratorial roots, asserting that she changed her mind “after

210

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 210

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

she had been advised by the powers at the Times that praise of the Trade Center, even of its aesthetics, was not in accordance with the editorial or even the so called news columns of the Times.” In a reply to Tobin, Yamasaki reiterated his conviction that Huxtable failed to comprehend his design intent: “I think if Ada Louise had thoroughly understood the project with all its ramifications, she would feel that it is a significant advance in the art of building high buildings.”48 Huxtable was unmoved by Yamasaki’s explanations and never wavered from her critique. In subsequent years, she chastised him for “making some of the biggest buildings in the world ordinary and inconsequential,” and described the Twin Towers as “consummately uninspiring.” Her lengthy article on the history and current state of skyscrapers, based on a series of lectures at the University of California at Berkeley and expanded into the book The Tall Building Artistically Considered, ignored the World Trade Center. Yamasaki would not give up, however. In 1975 he sent Huxtable a newspaper clipping on an urban renewal proposal in Detroit (with which he was unaffiliated) under the pretext of explaining its shortcomings, but his real motive was to revisit the Twin Towers. In a bizarre shift of focus, he closed his argument with a heartfelt plea: “In any case, I am curious to know how you can attack my work so violently in some of your recent reviews when there are projects such as this one which, in my belief, do not enhance the city in any way.” Another letter from the same time, responding to Huxtable’s vicious assault on his Rainier Bank in Seattle (described below), revealed his lingering pain. “There are truly so many dreadful buildings being built today that I honestly cannot understand why you choose to attack my work; I stand my ground and try to design elegant buildings which are the essence of my background,” he said. “I honestly believe you are the best architecture critic now, and I am bewildered at this emotional attitude you have taken toward me and my work.” Still hoping to persuade her, almost a decade after her initial censure, he invited Huxtable to a dinner being held in his honor for the opening of a retrospective show at a suburban Detroit gallery, so that she could examine his recent work and gain a broader perspective. She did not attend the dinner. Huxtable brought the extended debate to a close with a brief handwritten note on a personal card. “For one thing I was not aware that I was attacking your work. The World Trade Center really seems detached from you now, personally—as a New York architect—& with hindsight I am increasingly dubious about it & its impact on New York,” she wrote. And then, perhaps in a moment of small reconciliation, she ended by telling Yamasaki, “The fault is not yours, it is the Port Authority’s. . . . Beyond that I call them as I can, when & as possible. . . . At any rate—don’t ever consider it personal—our cause is the same & I admire your objectives, always.”49 Although Yamasaki failed to change Huxtable’s mind about the World Trade Center, years later she seemed to have softened her view slightly. In a perceptive and poignant epitaph for the buildings, written in the week following the 9/11 tragedy, she offered this retrospective evaluation: The Trade Center towers were never beautiful buildings; they achieved landmark status only because of their size. There is nothing compelling about replacing them for their architectural distinction; they had none. The architect, Minoru Yamasaki, a Japanese American, was a talented and gentle man best known for introducing an innovative kind of concrete construction, who did far better buildings

211

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 211

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

elsewhere. His delicate, expressive style was essentially defeated by the enormous scale of the towers—perhaps there was a lesson about monumental civic architecture in their aesthetic failure, one that we failed to understand or acknowledge.50

Construction That lesson would lie somewhere in the distant future, however, when construction on the towers began in the summer of 1966 with the excavation of an enormous pit. Preparation of the site took two years before the first building—the North Tower—could be started. The major problem was that the Lower West Side of Manhattan, unlike much of the rest of the island, was originally part of the Hudson River, and so the ground was marshy and bedrock was deep below the surface. All tall buildings need to be anchored to bedrock, and the size and weight of the Twin Towers made this doubly important. In order to reach that stable foundation, approximately 70 feet down, the river needed to be held back. Digging a vast hole and continuously pumping out water would not work. The Port Authority engineers’ solution to this dilemma borrowed from a technique originally used for subway construction: they would resist the river by counteracting it with a semiliquid mixture of bentonite and water called “slurry.” A trench was dug around the site to establish its outline, and as excavations began, the water and soil that were pulled out were instantly replaced by the slurry, which kept pressure on the walls to prevent collapse. When the 500,000-square-foot hole (known as “the bathtub”) reached bedrock, it was completely filled with slurry. A steel reinforcing cage was then placed into the hole and cement pumped in; the cement displaced the slurry, and all the while the sides of the massive trench remained firm. Of course these initial steps were not that simple since the excavation uncovered miles of pipes, wires, and a Port Authority–Trans Hudson train line that all had to be carefully considered. In the summer of 1968 construction of the towers themselves began (figure 6.28). The numbers involved with the project were staggering: more than two hundred elevators, forty-three thousand windows, two hundred thousand tons of structural steel, six acres of marble, 1,520 miles of wire, and two hundred thousand lighting fixtures were required. The buildings were each 209-foot squares, and together they contained 10 million square feet of rentable space, including an acre on each floor. They would hold fifty thousand people on completion and required a construction team of more than three thousand workers per day at their peak.51 The science behind the buildings’ structure would be the same as in the ibm Building—it was a framed tube, with the exterior walls consisting of closely spaced steel columns and short spandrel panels binding tightly to carry almost the entire weight of each building as well as the lateral wind loads. On each floor, giant trusses attached these columns to a series of steel core columns in the building’s center; the concrete floor was laid on top (figure 6.29). The columns were then covered with prefabricated, hashtag-shaped components 10 feet wide and either 24 feet or 36 feet tall; each segment weighed twenty-two tons. This was similar to the system Yamasaki first used at the Wayne State Education Building. The component pieces were made of aluminum and shaped as if aerodynamic. When connected they formed the outer wall surface that protected the actual structural framework. Their placement 40 inches apart left space for a narrow 22-inch-wide window between the columns. Apparently there was friction between Yamasaki on one side and the Port Authority on the

212

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 212

6.28. World Trade Center under construction. 6.29. Structural diagram showing interior core columns and exterior supports, World Trade Center.

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 213

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

other when it came to these windows; the Port Authority saw them as a hindrance and wanted wider spans for better views, while the design team explained their necessity to the structural and aesthetic vision. Views were secondary, however, to the nature of the interior space, and in that sense the framed tube method proved itself once more, allowing each floor in the Twin Towers to be open and free of columns. The World Trade Center’s extraordinary challenges led to several innovations by the design team, including extensive reliance on ibm computers to analyze data and model wind behavior; the use of motion simulators to determine human responses to the motioninduced swaying that was inevitable in buildings of this size; and the invention of a system akin to automobile shock absorbers to help combat excessive winds. Following the Trade Center, Skilling, Helle, Christiansen & Robertson (they had changed their name again in 1967) was celebrated in the engineering world and Skilling, Christiansen, and Robertson became heroic figures, in sharp contrast to the way Yamasaki’s contribution was overshadowed by the widespread uproar over the project’s gargantuan size. The engineers emerged from the World Trade Center experience with a far better reputation than they had going in; the same cannot be said for Yamasaki. Aftermath On April 4, 1973—more than three years after the first tenant moved into the North Tower, the Port Authority held a dedication ceremony. It was not the spectacle that might have been expected for the world’s tallest buildings. The ceremony was held in the North Tower lobby owing to a steady rain, with New York and New Jersey governors Nelson Rockefeller and William T. Cahill in attendance. A message from President Richard M. Nixon was read to t he audience; U.S. Labor Secretary Peter J. Brennan, a former union leader who was supposed to deliver Nixon’s words and receive an award, refused to cross striking workers’ picket lines and did not appear. Almost one month later to the day, construction on the Sears Tower in Chicago topped out at 1,451 feet, ending the World Trade Center’s brief reign as world’s tallest. Yamasaki’s remarks at the dedication were in the same vein as those he made to accompany the unveiling of the first model almost a decade earlier, describing the Trade Center as “a living symbol of man’s dedication to world peace” and emphasizing its humanistic attributes. In a subsequently written twenty-seven-page manuscript that was his most comprehensive defense of the project, Yamasaki expressed satisfaction in its architectural success. To him, the Twin Towers were the ultimate testimony to his humanist philosophy in addition to being an amazing technological feat. “I am happy I was able to design these very large buildings which have the scale relationship to man so necessary to him; they are intended to give him a soaring feeling, imparting pride and a sense of nobility in his environment.” This statement would strike many as ironic. From an architect who wrote and lectured about the “morality” of modern architecture, meaning an orientation that pursued warmth, richness, serenity and tranquility, and delight—an architecture that satisfies human and societal needs rather than exuding monumental grandeur and inspiring awe—the World Trade Center was disappointing, its scale simply too colossal. Unfortunately, the client’s insistence on making the world’s tallest building and the site’s limited size ensured that the only plausible architectural solution was monumental in a manner never before seen.52

214

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 214

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

6.30. Plaza, World Trade Center, with Fritz Koenig’s Sphere (center) and James Rosati’s Ideogram (top right). Balthazar Korab, photographer.

From a critical perspective the World Trade Center was an easy target, given the towers’ excessive size and bombastic pretensions. From a technological and developmental point of view, however, the project was a triumph—the buildings worked. After the initial acrimony faded, the Twin Towers became one of the most prized addresses in Manhattan. By the end of 1978 almost 90 percent of its office space was rented and the remainder was under negotiation. According to the Engineering News Record, “Not one of the predicted dire consequences of its construction, from the desertion and abandonment of many other downtown office buildings to the overload and collapse of the transit system, has taken place.” The plaza, however, was a different story (figure 6.30). For much of its history it seemed mostly barren, and only during special events did substantial crowds gather there. The plaza failed as an urban gathering place because Yamasaki, despite his protestations to the contrary, abandoned his humanist principles and instead designed a vast empty space to match the size of the Twin Towers. Stripped of its crucial softening or scale-reducing elements, the plaza became an oversized, hard, unnatural place. For an architect who rose to prominence by denouncing modernism’s cold, functionalist heritage and embracing a more sensitive architecture of “serenity and delight,” the plaza was an unfortunate volte-face.53 Raising the plaza above street level created another problem. Yamasaki believed that lifting it on a platform and shielding it with low-rise buildings would enforce a needed separation between the busy streetscape and his tranquil oasis. The serene courtyard concept had worked well in some of his previous commissions, but unlike the World Trade Center plaza, these spaces usually had been made with porous boundaries in less dense quasi-suburban or collegiate landscapes, so that the courtyards retained visual connections with their surroundings. The elevated, enclosed World Trade Center space

215

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 215

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

became too secretive and disassociated from its context. The tactic worked in a rarefied environment like that of the U.S. Science Pavilion at the World’s Fair, but it failed on the streetscape of Lower Manhattan. Moreover, Yamasaki designed the Twin Towers to be entered beneath the plaza, via one of three subway lines or the Trans-Hudson rail line, and through a subterranean concourse filled with shops and restaurants. So most people working in the Trade Center had no reason to use the plaza, and there was never enough random or tourist foot traffic to make it a lively gathering site. In the end, the plaza succeeded only as an urban clearing for viewing the Twin Towers in their entirety. The World Trade Center never became the beloved landmark Yamasaki hoped that it would be. Although an attractive address for business entities, New York metro residents never warmed to it, and the Twin Towers were some of the most despised architectural creations in Manhattan. Their design process revealed a fundamental insecurity in Yamasaki’s character that he had actually identified years earlier. At the time, he implied that a connection to his Japanese heritage eluded him, but subsequent events proved that the void in his life had more to do with self-confidence than background. He had compromised his core principles with the World Trade Center, resulting in a technological marvel that failed aesthetically and a flawed relation among the buildings and their plaza. After the World Trade Center experience, his design sensibility never completely recovered.

216

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 216

TALL BUILDINGS

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

CHAPTER 7

THE LATE WORKS

The World Trade Center opened to an architectural world in flux, shaped by influences from both outside and inside the profession. At the time of the dedication, the United States was months into what would become one of the worst stock market declines in the nation’s history. The combination of this loss of wealth and an oil embargo enacted by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (opec) that year triggered an economic recession that brought an end to the postwar boom economy, which had lasted nearly thirty years. The World Trade Center serves as a convenient dividing point in Minoru Yamasaki’s career. A strong argument can be made that until 1966 he had enjoyed a continuous professional ascension, receiving consistent praise, extensive coverage of his projects in major architectural journals, and a steady stream of increasingly important commissions. After the criticism aimed at the World Trade Center proposal that year, however, the accolades became less frequent, his work (besides the World Trade Center) was rarely publicized, and significant commissions for prominent clients dwindled. His designs of the seventies and eighties never achieved the same level of energy and sense of experimentation that had characterized his most successful work. When he died in 1986, Yamasaki was largely unknown to the general public, and within architectural circles he had become notorious as the designer of two of the most ill-fated architectural projects of the postwar period (Pruitt-Igoe and the World Trade Center), as well as a figure of ridicule for his earlier dalliances with ornamentation. Skyscraper Architect Although the critics’ response to the World Trade Center was disappointing, the commission established Yamasaki as a skyscraper architect. The many tall office buildings that he designed after the midsixties would almost all be obvious progeny of the Twin Towers: square or rectangular forms with a blank fascia at the top and some interesting pattern of supports at the bottom—although he used arches sparingly after the midsixties—all subject to an overpowering vertical striation; structurally, most continued to employ some version of the framed tube system. This formula was almost certainly related to Yamasaki’s World Trade Center experience. Around the time of its dedication, he confided to a correspondent that the “violently emotional” criticism of the towers strengthened his belief that “a

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 217

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

high-rise building is primarily a structure which should be done as simply as possible and in a thoroughly studied way.” The tall buildings designed by his firm in the final decade of Yamasaki’s life confirmed that approach, with few exceptions.1 Colorado National Bank and Montgomery Ward Headquarters Only a handful of mya’s constructed towers deviated from the World Trade Center prototype before the eighties, including two of the first group of skyscrapers designed after disparagement of the Twin Towers commenced. One of them—the Colorado National Bank (1969–74)— was the closest thing to a stereotypical glass box skyscraper that Yamasaki would ever design. The original commission, from Western International Hotels, was for a combination office building and hotel in downtown Denver on property owned by the Colorado National Bank. After a series of studies proved unsuccessful, the bank asked Yamasaki to use the lot to create an office tower. The bank’s 1915 Neoclassical Revival building already occupied one corner of the site. Yamasaki chose to develop the tower as a contrast to its older neighbor—a reverse of the tactic he used a decade earlier when he endeavored to harmonize the Michigan Consolidated Gas Company with Detroit’s city government building next door. In this case, perhaps because the structures would share the same block, he borrowed the older building’s marble facing—but little else. Two key attributes would distinguish the twenty-six-story Colorado National Bank from other Yamasaki skyscrapers: the simplified structural system and the amount of glass on its facade (figure 7.1). The first distinction evolved from his previous explorations of framed

7.1. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Colorado National Bank (now U.S. Bank Tower, Denver, 1969–74). Balthazar Korab, photographer.

218

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 218

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

tube construction. The bank tower used the same type of exterior supports as the ibm Building and World Trade Center, but now the system was pared to a bare minimum—just twelve giant columns, four on each long side and two on the short ends, carried the building’s loads. They ran unimpeded from the ground to the roofline, catching viewers’ attention through their size, their bright marble covering, which contrasted with the darkened glass walls behind them, and their irregular spacing. This visible skeleton preserved the barrier-free interior spaces that building owners so desired but also permitted Yamasaki to be more forthright in expressing the tower’s construction. While laypersons may not have understood that the World Trade Center’s aluminum skin was actually structural, in the bank building there could be no confusion over how the tower was put together. “I am convinced that it is almost impossible to construct an honest building, particularly a contemporary one, without stating its structure plainly and demonstrating its relationship to the building’s purpose,” he wrote in his autobiography. Structural rationalism was a central tenet of modern architecture to Yamasaki and others of his generation, and he prized it, particularly in taller buildings where the designer’s palette of visual effects was more limited than in smaller structures. In the Colorado National Bank, minimizing the frame went beyond anything he had done up to then or would do in the future.2 The laconic structure was not the only unusual aspect of the building. The amount of glass also was unprecedented in Yamasaki’s output. As a result of the shift from framing with numerous small supports to twelve large ones, the facades did not need to be broken up into the staccato rhythm of closely spaced mullions that characterized mya’s tall office buildings of the previous years. Yamasaki capitalized on this opportunity and deviated from his earlier practice by minimizing the curtain wall’s verticality. Thin mullions rose from the building’s base to its top, but their effect was muted by matching their color to the bronze-tinted glass and bronze-colored aluminum spandrels, and the windows were wider than Yamasaki had used previously. The wall’s dark color served as a background for the marblefaced steel columns, such that the differentiation between windows and spandrels seemed to disappear from a distance. But it also meant that apart from the unorthodox structural columns, the tower read as another generic glass box. And this was unexpected from an architect who detested mirror glass buildings and believed that the optimum amount of glass in a tall building was about 30 percent— as in the World Trade Center—which provided a compelling view from the interior while still counteracting any possible acrophobic feelings for those inside.3 Another mya skyscraper designed at the same time exhibited further unorthodox choices. The venerable Chicago mail-order and department store retailer Montgomery Ward, seeking a new headquarters building, turned to Yamasaki in 1969. The local press congratulated the company for reinforcing its ties to Chicago’s roots by remaining in the city rather than joining the corporate exodus to the suburbs, but the retailer’s proposed property on the Near North Side, next to Ward’s existing administrative buildings, was controversial: the building would be next to the notorious Cabrini-Green complex, a product of Chicago’s immense investment in public housing and local symbol of its failure, legendary for its high crime rates. The Ward tower would end up as the only built component of a larger scheme; Yamasaki’s fifteen-year master plan for the twenty-five-acre site imagined a new corporate headquarters, another tower of about the same height (scheduled for the eighties), and four parking garages. In keeping with his fundamental philosophy, but also no doubt as a

219

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 219

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

reflection of this suboptimal location, Yamasaki described the project as “creating a green oasis . . . a garden in what is now an older part of Chicago.”4 The Montgomery Ward Building was conceived as a “double-core” structure of about 500,000 square feet and twenty-seven stories, meaning that it deviated from Yamasaki’s other towers by splintering the mechanical-circulation core that usually occupied the building’s center and relocating the elevators and utilities behind reinforced concrete walls at opposite ends of its rectangular bulk (figure 7.2). This was not a radical gesture—plenty of buildings around the country used the same visual formula, and Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates—Saarinen’s successor firm—had recently received much attention for their Knights of Columbus Headquarters (New Haven, Conn., 1965–69) with its conspicuous brick-faced corner towers. The outcome of Yamasaki’s flirtation with this concept was a plain, I-shaped, slab office building that resembled an apartment building. Smooth, travertine-clad end walls contrasted with the curtain-walled central section. These glass walls looked almost like a step backward into an older aesthetic: the rhythm and colors of the window panels, spandrels, and thin mullions would have looked at home on Park Avenue a decade earlier. Indeed, the visual pattern of windows and spandrels and their flatness was reminiscent of Yamasaki’s Federal Reserve Bank Annex in Detroit. Even more than its Colorado National Bank counterpart, the Montgomery Ward Building’s gridded wall was stripped of his trademark touches, including the “aspiring verticality” and the three-dimensional depth he cherished. Likewise, he abandoned the framed tube system; the building was a true curtain wall structure, with the building’s load partly carried on a double

7.2. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Montgomery Ward Headquarters (now The Montgomery, Chicago, 1969–74). Balthazar Korab, photographer.

220

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 220

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

row of interior columns that marched across each floor. As if to emphasize the building’s regressive character even more, or perhaps to honor Mies van der Rohe in Mies’s adopted city, the Montgomery Ward Building mullions were made of attached I-beams in the manner of the German architect’s 860–80 Lake Shore Drive Apartments and others (Mies died the year of Yamasaki’s commission). Because these were among the first tall buildings mya designed after the World Trade Center began to draw criticism, it is easy to read their nonconformity to previous designs either as bold gestures in new directions or as a retreat from the aesthetic language and creative ideas that made Yamasaki famous. One must also keep in mind that although construction had begun on both of the Twin Towers, the Trade Center project still demanded a heavy investment of time from the firm, which had taken on other new commissions with barely an increase in staff. It is nearly impossible to imagine that they were not stretched too thin. Between the 1966 unveiling of the second World Trade Center model and the beginning of design of the Colorado National Bank and Montgomery Ward Building three years later, mya worked on the following large-scale commitments in addition to a steady stream of smaller individual buildings: an office building for the Department of Defense (1966–67, unbuilt); a master plan for Yamasaki’s city of Troy, Michigan (1966, unbuilt); a 1,000-foot open framework “Tower of Freedom” for the aborted Interama Exposition in Miami (1966, unbuilt); a master plan for the Medical College of Ohio at Toledo; a master plan for a commercial development in Montreal (1969); and what Yamasaki described as a “New Town” residential development in partnership with Chrysler in Troy (1968, unbuilt), among other things. And this was all happening as the firm continued to invest time in master plans for the University of Saskatchewan, a new campus for Chrysler’s research and design departments, and an office-retail complex in Orange, California, known as “The City”—all of which dated back to the early sixties. For an office staff that never grew above one hundred, this situation must have been overwhelming. Indeed, the complexity and scale of the World Trade Center must have been a tremendous burden for a man who suffered from a perfectionism most likely fueled by a lack of self-confidence. Former employees and colleagues described how hard Yamasaki pushed himself and how he tried to oversee almost every aspect of design, down to the smallest hinge or doorknob. Henry Guthard depicted Yamasaki as extremely confident when presenting his work but very insecure otherwise, echoing George Nelson, who told a writer more than fifty years earlier, “Yama has never lacked for professional confidence . . . but there was a remembered inferiority that had to be purged.” Guthard has said: “Yama was the hope of his family. It was a responsibility that he had and that bore heavily on the shoulders of a little guy growing up. He knew and believed and wanted to satisfy the requirements of helping the family. He felt enormous guilt. He also had enormous insecurity. So everything gained a dimension of need, of need to be as perfect as possible, and he carried that into his architecture. . . . This attention to detail became so important to him that it almost overwhelmed him.” Yamasaki’s penchant for self-criticism—rare for an architect of his status—probably reflected a lack of confidence as well. This quality made him stand out among prominent midcentury architects; it is difficult to imagine Wright or Mies recounting “mistakes” or “errors,” or admitting to designing buildings that were “just plain bad.”5 The combination of these simultaneous projects and the ongoing strain of designing the world’s tallest building in the bright spotlight

221

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 221

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

of New York City meant that Yamasaki could not possibly have devoted his attention to any of these conflicting demands for long. And it further meant that his health suffered. Years of a herculean workload brought on by a desire to keep his firm small and an obsession with details had drained him of energy; heavy drinking, a messy personal life, and ongoing stomach illnesses must have exacerbated the stress. The accumulated tension manifested itself in debilitating stomach pain. Yamasaki was hospitalized for many months in both 1965 and 1968; during one of these stints he became addicted to morphine, according to his autobiography. And the stress also revealed itself in his personal behavior. Minoru and Teri divorced in 1961 despite three children and twenty years of marriage. In the chaos that followed, Yamasaki subsequently went through two brief marriages before reuniting with Teri eight years later. To deal with the stresses, Yamasaki increasingly turned to alcohol for relief. Former employees attest to his fondness for martinis, and it seems that by the midsixties his drinking had become problematic. Aaron Schreier, mya’s project manager for the World Trade Center, recalled unusually long lunches during this period when Yamasaki would drink until intoxicated. “Why are we spending so much time doing this?” Schreier wondered.6 Rainier Bank Building mya’s skyscrapers of the sixties and seventies do not support the interpretation of the Colorado National Bank and Montgomery Ward Buildings as bold new gestures; instead, they appear as anomalies. The other office towers generated by the firm followed the precedent established by the ibm Building and the World Trade Center, often with little variation. Skyscrapers of twenty or more stories in places like Buffalo, New York (M&T Bank, 1963–67), Richmond, Virginia (Federal Reserve Bank, 1971–78), Tulsa (Bank of Oklahoma, 1972–77), and Madrid, Spain (Torre Picasso, 1975–88) shared square or rectangular shapes, framed tube construction, and striated facades and chamfered corners (figures 7.3–7.6). The earlier works tended to meet the ground with various-sized arches, while the seventies designs usually stood on visible columns. The Century Plaza Towers (Los Angeles, 1968–75), constructed as part of the same development that began with Yamasaki’s Century Plaza Hotel (1961–66), varied the formula slightly, aping the World Trade Center with two identical, forty-fourstory buildings; but this time Yamasaki made them into triangles, oriented so that their apexes almost touched (figures 7.7, 7.8). Structurally they also differed, with each tower held up by only three massive columns, located in the corners of each triangle, and a concrete central core. Like the Twin Towers, their duality created a powerful piece of sleek minimalist sculpture, although the effect has since been lost with the erection of other sizable buildings nearby. Yamasaki explained the triangles as an attempt to provide attractive shapes to harmonize with the hotel’s gentle curve and to offset the rectilinear structures in the area, but he was no doubt also aware of other architects’ recent efforts to break away from the right-angled skyscraper that was becoming so ubiquitous in American cities. This was an era that saw the construction of eccentric tower forms such as Bertrand Goldberg’s circular and scalloped Marina Towers (Chicago, 1959–67), Schipporeit & Heinrich’s Y-shaped Lake Point Tower (Chicago, 1965–68), the pyramidal Transamerica Building by William L. Pereira & Associates (San Francisco, 1969–72), and Harrison, Abramovitz & Abbe’s triangular U.S. Steel Headquarters (Pittsburgh, 1967–71). Similarly, architects manipulated the skyscraper’s traditional rectilinear shape: some bound multiple tall, thin rectangular forms together

222

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 222

7.3. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, M & T Bank (now One M&T Plaza, Buffalo, New York, 1963–67). Balthazar Korab, photographer. 7.4. Lobby, M & T Bank. Balthazar Korab, photographer.

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 223

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

7.5. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Federal Reserve Bank (Richmond, Virginia, 1971–78). 7.6. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Torre Picasso (Madrid, Spain, 1975–88). > 7.7. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Century Plaza Hotel (Los Angeles, 1961–66). > 7.8. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Century Plaza Towers (Los Angeles, 1968–75). Robert C. Cleveland, photographer.

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 224

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 225

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

(som’s Sears Tower in Chicago) while others carved notches into the skyscraper’s sheer walls (I. M. Pei’s 1966–76 Hancock Tower in Boston) or removed one or more of its corners at the base (Edward Larrabee Barnes’s ibm Building in New York, 1973–83). For Pennzoil Place in Houston (1976), Philip Johnson (and John Burgee) sliced off the building’s flat top and doubled it, creating a twinned structure that may have been a discrete response to the World Trade Center by a designer Yamasaki defeated to win that commission.7 In spite of their unusual shape, the Century Plaza Towers were not the strangest of Yamasaki’s skyscraper designs of his late career. That title would be reserved for the Rainier Bank Building in Seattle (1972–77). The design and reception of this tower-on-a-pedestal oddity says much about Yamasaki’s mindset in the midseventies and his reputation after the opening of the World Trade Center (figure 7.9). The commission had its roots in Yamasaki’s relationship with Unico, dating back to the ibm Building. Unico continued to develop the University of Washington’s Metropolitan Tract in Seattle’s downtown core according to Naramore, Bain, Brady & Johanson’s master plan. Meanwhile, the Seattle-based National Bank of Commerce asked mya to prepare schematic studies for a tower building. Eventually the two projects merged, and a site was selected diagonally across University Street from ibm. Already standing on the property was the White-Henry-Stuart Building, a huge early twentieth-century block

7.9. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Rainier Bank Tower (Seattle, 1972–77). Balthazar Korab, photographer.

226

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 226

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

consisting of three attached structures; it was one of only a handful of original buildings remaining in the Metropolitan Tract. The public announcement of the “Commerce House” project, as the Rainier Bank Building was initially named, launched a series of protests and drew attacks from local architects and students, residents, and arts organizations. The opposition was two-pronged: on one hand, the destruction of the White-Henry-Stuart Building was seen as damaging to the pedestrian streetscape of the area and to the city’s historical memory; on the other, adversaries denounced Yamasaki’s proposed tower for its ungainly appearance. The first criticism was less important to him. A devout modernist, he was no proponent of historic preservation. To Yamasaki, nostalgia or the desire to retain history was not enough justification to save architecturally “uninspiring” buildings that impeded progress. So it was no surprise when he demonstrated no sympathy for the Seattle protests. “The controversy over what I think would be a vast improvement of the White-Henry-Stuart Building site as it relates to 5th Avenue I must say surprised me completely,” he wrote to the University of Washington’s board of regents. “As for saving the White-Henry-Stuart Building for historical purposes, that would be a useless gesture, because it has neither graceful proportions nor elegant materials. . . . This building seems to be just one of those buildings that fills a block.”8 The second part of the assault on the newly renamed Rainier Bank Building was more personal in that it struck at the building’s design. And it was an easy target. After initial schemes with a rectangular slab on arches spanning Fifth Avenue, Yamasaki and Skilling’s engineering firm—now called Skilling, Helle, Christiansen & Robertson—had the outlandish notion of taking one of their framed tube buildings and lifting it off the ground on a concrete pedestal. The tower portion consisted of a twenty-nine-story square block with chamfered corners and a flat roof. The building evoked “aspiring verticality” through the now-familiar combination of shiny aluminum mullions and recessed, dark-colored spandrels (figure 7.10). Framed tube construction once again provided unobstructed interior spaces. But all of this was placed atop a curving, eleven-story stem of poured concrete that supported the tower and contained the building’s mechanical services. This meant that the 140-foot-wide tower met the ground with a base only 68 feet square. Around the building, taking advantage of the extra space gained by the unconventional proposal, Yamasaki located smaller structures filled with shops and restaurants; the roofs of these secondary buildings were intended to be landscaped with trees, reflecting ponds, and a Japanese teahouse. The World Trade Center critiques had not diminished Yamasaki’s fondness for urban plazas and their relation to tall buildings, and his evolving thoughts on these matters seem to have influenced the Rainier Bank concept. In his letters and writings regarding the building, he always explained its unusual form as a product of his desire to increase usable space at its base and, hence, more green space for the city. Secondary benefits included relocating the mechanical equipment, which had previously been relegated to the top floors, into the pedestal; reduced construction costs; and an enhanced ability to withstand seismic forces, according to the engineers. In addition, the scheme allowed the owners to charge higher rents, since even the lowest occupied floor (the twelfth) would have an elevated, picturesque view of Seattle. However, the plaza area was crowded, almost too full of buildings and trees—the exact opposite of the World Trade Center. Contrary to Yamasaki’s talk of open spaces, or any other benefits, the ultimate goal of this building was to be seen. Those paying

227

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 227

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

close attention could discern this desire in the architect’s words; on many occasions he described how the design allowed the building to “come right down to the ground, uncluttered by shops and newsstands, which tend to diminish the dignity of the building.” The full effect of this unorthodox structure could only be grasped if it was visible.9 The Rainier Bank Building was surely more than just an altruistic gesture to improve Seattle citizens’ quality of life. Alternative designs could have achieved this goal with a less flamboyant building. The Ford Foundation Headquarters (1963–67) by Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo & Associates demonstrated how a tall building on a tight urban lot could manufacture public space by pulling it inside the building; its 160-foot-tall atrium was a lush oasis of greenery and water, separated from the bustling surrounding city by transparent walls. Just a few years later, Edward Larrabee Barnes’s ibm Building in New York City opened a corner of space beneath the building in a less substantial but similarly successful manner. Yamasaki’s real purpose with the Rainier Bank Building seems to have been to reestablish his credentials as a creative architect. Ten years had passed since his cover story in Time, and since then none of his buildings other than the World Trade Center had received significant coverage from the

7.10. Rainier Bank Tower.

228

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 228

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

architectural press. His status as a critical darling, one of the most publicized and popular architects of the fifties, had been lost. If the Rainier Bank Building was Yamasaki’s attempt to restore his reputation, it failed. Those few commentators who paid attention to the building attacked it savagely, seeing through the novelty and grasping its essential desperation. Huxtable led the way in a scathing review that deemed the building “a dreadful mistake esthetically, with a cornball try for novelty”; it was “strictly deadpan dreadful— gimmicks masquerading as graces.” The tower represented “scalelessness, discontinuity, inhumanity and crimes against urban nature.” “Some buildings are built,” she claimed, “Others, such as this, are perpetrated.” Her younger colleague at the New York Times, Paul Goldberger, added perceptive critiques that were more reasoned. Writing from Seattle, Goldberger focused on the experience of the building (Huxtable had written her article before construction was completed), finding that it failed from the perspective of the average person on the street. “The shape of the Rainier Square base is not visually pleasing or even amusing; it is in fact rather terrifying, since it is hard not to feel a considerable nervousness at the sight of a 40-story skyscraper looming overhead on a concrete pedestal that touches the ground only in the center,” he wrote. The tower’s “utterly disturbing quality” doomed it to ultimate failure. He also saw through Yamasaki’s justifications, arguing that its “looming, threatening shape” rendered the argument for more open space absurd. Rainier Bank was “a self-aggrandizing narcissistic flamboyance, not an entertaining one,” said Goldberger, “and it is ironic indeed that the whole thing should be presented in the rhetoric of ‘planning for people.’”10 Archival materials are unclear on whether Yamasaki or the engineers first thought of the pedestal or whether it ensued from mutual brainstorming, but the outcome was indeed unique, if not entirely comforting. Its closest relatives were the two towers constructed from Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs: the Johnson Wax Research Tower (1943–50) and the Price Tower (1952–56). But these buildings, unlike the Rainier Bank, were inspired by nature, with a concrete core buried deep into the ground for support (like a tree trunk) giving rise to cantilevered individual floors (like branches). They were exceptional but not threatening, and their forms arose from Wright’s rational attempt to harmonize the natural and man-made worlds. No similar inspiration motivated Yamasaki’s creation. The early seventies were years of great experimentation in skyscrapers, but as Goldberger pointed out, many of Yamasaki’s colleagues “save their fun and games for the top where flamboyance is logical, and they present a more sober and responsible face to the city at street level.” The decision to make the building into a display of structural bravado was certainly in keeping with Yamasaki’s lifelong interest in the marriage of architecture and engineering. But it also can be interpreted in another way: as the product of an architect lacking confidence and resorting to tricks. He had begun to compromise his central principles in the World Trade Center, and with the Rainier Bank Building, those principles were nowhere in sight; instead of encouraging pleasant emotions, the best this odd structure could do was arouse curiosity, and it was more likely to inspire uneasiness.11 Horace Mann Insurance Company Building The formulaic nature of most of Yamasaki’s post–World Trade Center skyscrapers exposed the overall conservatism of his late work. On rare occasions he generated responses for clients that showed an inkling of the creativity of earlier designs, such as the proposed

229

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 229

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

complex for the Department of Defense nicknamed the “Little Pentagon” (figure 7.11). The U.S. Navy Bureau of Yards and Docks sought a building to consolidate numerous offices and selected a location in Washington, D.C., on land jointly owned by the Bolling Air Force Base and the Anacostia Naval Station across the Potomac River from Washington National Airport. Yamasaki collaborated with Emery Roth & Sons to produce a scheme for almost 4 million square feet of offices and housing, divided into three crescent-shaped buildings in a pinwheel arrangement around a circular central garden. Described in office correspondence as the “10,000 Man Defense Building,” the project failed to receive congressional funding. Although its concentric circle conception was indeed novel in Yamasaki’s repertoire, the buildings themselves were reworked versions of the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles.12 Stripped of the idiosyncratic touches that gave his best work personality, the bulk of mya’s public and commerical designs in the seventies and early eighties lacked the zest of previous designs. This is perhaps exemplified by the Horace Mann Insurance Company Building (1968–72), a nominal project Yamasaki thought so highly of that he included it in two lists of his best buildings compiled a decade apart (figure 7.12). The building was commissioned by the Horace Mann Insurance Company as a new headquarters, and its construction was intended to be part of an urban renewal campaign for Springfield, Illinois. The site was a nine-acre block in a “depressed area” on the northeast edge of the capital city’s business district, just a block from the old statehouse and Abraham Lincoln’s former law office. mya would be joined by Skilling, Helle, Christiansen & Robertson as structural engineers and Ford & Earl Design Associates for the interiors, with Sasaki, Dawson, DeMay Associates developing the landscape plan, meaning that the project would reunite the team that designed the nwnl Building in Minneapolis a few years earlier. mya’s design for Horace Mann was straightforward. Although the structural challenges involved with the six-story building were minimal, the Skilling firm stayed with the framed tube system. Beginning with supports in the four corners, forty-two-foot structural bays were created—six on each long side and three on the short sides. Like the Colorado National Bank, the curtain wall’s colors were muted for contrast, its bronze-colored glass, mullions, and spandrels disappearing into the background. The top floor windows were untinted and set back slightly from the lower floor’s wall surface to make the broadly overhanging roof appear to float above the building. The structure contained approximately 175,000 usable square feet, divided

7.11. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Department of Defense Building (1966–67; unbuilt). > 7.12. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Horace Mann Insurance Company (Springfield, Illinois, 1968–73). HedrichBlessing, photographers.

230

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 230

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 231

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

into a basement, a small lobby, four floors of offices, and a sixth floor with corporate offices, a cafeteria, an employees’ lounge, executive dining rooms, and general offices. The staid office building was less appealing than the Sasaki firm’s landscape, which incorporated small mounds, an amoeba-shaped pond, numerous trees of different varieties, and curving paths; certainly there was not the same harmony between structure and surroundings that characterized the Kobe Consulate or the McGregor Center. The building’s manner was overly formal, enhanced by the templelike appearance, dual monumental entries, and placement in a park, isolated from the rest of Springfield. In Yamasaki’s terms, Horace Mann might have been serene, but it evoked no surprise or delight. Its conservative nature can be seen in details like the structural columns. In Yamasaki’s best column-dominated designs the supports always had a graceful curvature, visually softening their lines and hinting at the structural forces involved. But the Horace Mann Building’s columns were plain and straight, notched corners notwithstanding, with no hint of bases or capitals. In the end the building looked like an abstraction of a Yamasaki design, or a pale imitation. It included the proper parts—centralized location on a landscaped site, distance from neighboring buildings, visible structure, and fine detailing—but lacked spirit. The Horace Mann Building displayed the essence of Yamasaki’s late commercial and public designs with its slightly distinctive but generally prosaic nature, lack of ornamentation, and simplified components. He had removed arches from his vocabulary—whether for decoration or support, either pointed or rounded—except for the work he would complete in Saudi Arabia described below. He avoided colonnades or freestanding supports in the majority of his work. As mainstream Western architecture grew more open to historical quotations, Yamasaki actually retreated from the past and the approach that

7.13. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Chrysler Financial Corporation Building (Troy, Michigan, 1973–75). Balthazar Korab, photographer.

232

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 232

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

made him popular, distilling his designs to their structural essence in a manner that tried to embody Emerson’s notion that “the line of beauty is the result of perfect economy.” “For the last fifteen to twenty years I have adhered to the idea of using the least possible amounts of structural materials to attain the desired strength and stability without compromising either aesthetics or function,” he said. Perhaps as a consequence of this decision, delight is difficult to find in the works of his late career (figures 7.13–7.15).13 Personal Works During the long gestation and birth of the World Trade Center, Yamasaki designed two personal buildings—an office for mya and a home for himself—that stood out as different from his other contemporary projects. These two structures reached back into the Miesian past he had abandoned nearly a decade earlier. By 1964, Yamasaki had been a partner in an architectural office for fifteen years, and for that entire time his practice had operated out of Detroit-area buildings designed by other architects. lyh worked in spaces rented in a building overlooking Grand Circus Park in downtown Detroit. When the firm split from Hellmuth and became yla, the architects moved out to the suburbs, occupying rooms along the main street in Royal Oak. Another move to Birmingham brought

7.14. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Steinman College Center, Franklin and Marshall College (Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1968–76). 7.15. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Brookfield Office Building (Farmington Hills, Michigan, 1984–86).

233

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 233

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

Yamasaki closer to his home in Troy. Finally, as the firm was unveiling the World Trade Center model to the public, Yamasaki began planning for a custom-built office on a five-acre lot just a few blocks from his residence (figure 7.16). The mya Building was one of the most minimal designs that Yamasaki ever created. Its floor plan featured a small, square block housing the entry and lobby, conference rooms, and Yamasaki’s suite; it was connected to a rectangular drafting room with small offices, storage, and the model shop (figures 7.17, 7.18). The entire building laid low, its single story shielded in various places by raised berms and liberal trees and bushes. It was modestly constructed, with sectioned precast concrete walls and a dark steel coping. Except for the vertical joints between panels there was no indication of structure.14 Yamasaki drafted a close relative of the mya office for his own home. When he arrived in Detroit in 1945, discrimination had limited his choice of residence. After being unable to find a house to purchase in the upscale suburbs where the other architects of his stature lived, he finally acquired an early nineteenth-century farmhouse in an unincorporated area outside of Troy, about twenty miles from downtown Detroit. His remodeling efforts, particularly the insertion of a modern living room, had been the subject of one of the first major journal articles to cover his solo work (figure 7.19). In the early 1970s, Yamasaki sold his land and farmhouse to developers and purchased a lot in neighboring Bloomfield Township, not far from Cranbrook. On a steeply sloping site on Crest Lake, about two acres in size, he created his first house in several years.15 Yamasaki used an L-shaped plan for the two-level house; from the air, it resembled a square with the southwest quadrant removed for a courtyard (figure 7.20). From the street, the house seemed unassuming and private. A driveway paralleling the street slipped behind a landscape berm that partly obscured public views (figure 7.21). Between the drive and the house low bushes defined a small entry court. Visitors took a short curved path between Japanese

234

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 234

7.16. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Yamasaki and Associates Office (Troy, Michigan, 1964–67; demolished). Hedrich-Blessing, photographers. > 7.17. Plan, Yamasaki and Associates Office. > 7.18. Drafting room, Yamasaki and Associates Office. > 7.19. Minoru Yamasaki, Yamasaki house remodeling (Troy, Michigan, 1951; demolished).

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

Design DESIGN

Drafting DRAFTING

MODEL Model Shop SHOP

Lounge LOUNGE

Lobby LOBBY

FIRST FLOOR FIRST FLOOR

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 235

Yamasaki YAMASAKI.

0

20

Feet FT.

NoNr th

Conf. CONF.

29/7/2017 3:36 PM

Music Room

MUSIC ROOM

Down

Garage

GARAGE

Bath

BATH

Foyer

FOYER

Bath

BATH

Living Room

LIVING ROOM

Bedroom

BEDROOM

Dining Room

Bedroom

DINING ROOM

BEDROOM

Kitchen

KITCHEN

Breakfast

BREAKFAST

Down

FIRST FLOOR FIRST FLOOR

0

20

FT. Feet

North

NORTH

Up

BATH Bath

Bath

BATH

FURNACE ROOM Furnace Room

Bedroom

BEDROOM

Bedroom

BEDROOM

FIRST FLOOR FIRST FLOOR

38788C-Yamasaki v04.indd 236

MULTI-PURPOSE

ROOM Room Multi-Purpose

0

Bedroom

BEDROOM

20

FT. Feet

NORTH

North

18/8/2017 10:55 AM

< 7.20. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Yamasaki house, first- and second-floor plans (Bloomfield Township, Michigan, 1971–72). 7.21. Yamasaki house.

maples to arrive at a flat-roofed, one-story structure with solid brick end walls flanking a central section of glass. The house gave no indication of its great size (almost 7,000 square feet) and bilevel plan. Entry was at the north-south leg near the elbow joint into a cross-axial hallway and directly facing the rear of a large fireplace that divided the entrance from the living room on the other side. This living room was the heart of the house (figure 7.22). An open space bounded by only one solid wall, its orientation to the east looked down to Crest Lake through floor-to-ceiling glass. The dining room, to one side, was separated only by a Bertoia sound sculpture. Ceilings, walls, floors, and carpets throughout the house were white or off-white, providing a serene background for the teak and light maple doors and cabinets. The section containing the living room also held two bedrooms and bathrooms. Below it, using the hillside slope, Yamasaki placed a basement level with three more bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchenette, and a multipurpose room. All of the rooms in this lower portion, facing the slope and lake, were glazed. The house’s other leg, perpendicular to the living area, had no corresponding basement. It contained a garage and a music room for Teri. Yamasaki’s house was designed with few materials and a limited palette of colors, evoking the simple elegance of the some of his older work. It was an aesthetic sibling to the mya Building, except that the office’s concrete panel walls were replaced with brick in the house. The house’s regressive nature was unusual given the direction of his work at the time, but his thoughts on the building were never recorded; he ended A Life in Architecture with photographs of the house but included no commentary, and it was never published. Compared to his successful early fifties trio of the Baker, Goldstein, and Barron Houses, one can see that he did not merely revive their main characteristics—the entry promenade, the large, skylit foyer, the sunken living room. None of these were present in his own house. Instead, it is best to consider it as a final attempt at the Miesian-Japanese synthesis he had been idealizing since the midfifties: a visual language borrowed from Mies imbued with a Japanese sensibility.

237

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 237

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:37 PM

Saudi Arabia Although Yamasaki’s designs in the seventies and early eighties tended to be more sedate than the buildings of his earlier career, he did revisit the aesthetic exuberance of the past in a handful of commissions from the Saudi Arabian government. This Saudi work kept mya busy at a time when other American firms collapsed under the weight of an economic recession. Artistically, it gave Yamasaki an opportunity to revisit some of the best aspects of his past, in a part of the world where the clients had a deep respect for his work and where decoration had not become passé, as it had in the United States. A series of events in the midseventies stimulated an economic decline that greatly affected the practice of architecture. When the United States supported Israel in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, opec— which consisted predominantly of Arab countries—retaliated by declaring an oil embargo on those Western nations that had sided with Israel. The five-month boycott drove the price of oil far higher than previous record levels, and it continued to rise even after the embargo ended. Accompanying changes in global monetary policy led to an international economic recession, causing inflation, unemployment, and severe declines in stock and bond markets. In the United States, this occurred simultaneously with President Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal and subsequent resignation and the fall of Saigon, ending the divisive Vietnam War. All of these events conspired to end the economic boom that had begun after World War II and carried America to its position of worldwide economic and military leadership. The recession of the seventies would prove to be the country’s worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Architectural firms were particularly affected. Those designers fortunate enough to remain employed in the depressed economy found less money available for projects, and clients increasingly demanded energy-efficient measures—necessitated by the energy crisis—such as better

238

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 238

7.22. Living room, Yamasaki house.

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:37 PM

heating and air-conditioning systems and specially treated glass. Many smaller firms closed, and unemployment among architects remained high throughout the decade. In the Middle East, however, the situation in opec countries like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Kuwait was exactly the opposite—the embargo had expanded their economies, and these countries rushed to modernize a part of the world that to that point had lagged behind the West in infrastructure development. The flood of oil revenues prompted leaders of these nations to commission new towns, industrial complexes, military facilities, airports, luxury hotels, and office buildings, and they turned to foreign architects and engineers to implement their programs. Some firms, like mya and Caudill, Rowlett & Scott, had established reputations there because of previous projects, whereas others, such as som and hok, made their initial inroads; soon architects from around the globe would be competing for work in the Middle East.16 Yamasaki was arguably the highest-profile Western architect in the Middle East when the opec embargo began because of his Dhahran Air Terminal, which was venerated in Saudi Arabia. So when a representative of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (sama—the nation’s central bank) contacted Yamasaki with a commission for a group of projects in Riyadh, the nation’s capital, and he replied that current commitments were enough to keep him busy for the next three years, sama was willing to wait. When the Middle Eastern countries turned to Western architects to modernize their cities, the aesthetic nature of that work was far from established. Westerners widely believed that the Arab nations had failed to develop an indigenous architectural character. Questions therefore arose as to whether foreign architects should mimic Islamic traditions in these designs or instead rely on the universality of high modernism. A further complication was that the clients seemed more interested in catching up to the modern architecture of other nations than in embodying their heritage. The technological and material expertise brought by designers such as Yamasaki or Gropius thus had significance beyond any stylistic attraction. The result was a gamut of projects ranging from literal interpretations of Islamic decorative patterns and building forms to those that made no reference whatsoever to the region’s cultural history.17 Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency Headquarters The first of Yamasaki’s Saudi designs to be constructed was a new headquarters for sama (figure 7.23). In its overall composition it borrowed greatly from the Horace Mann Building. But the sama Headquarters revealed a completely different floor plan and means of construction. Yamasaki returned to his favorite fifties era parti: a symmetrical building split by an atrium opening up to a skylight. In this case the atrium became an air-conditioned interior courtyard— or “an oasis,” as he deemed it—since the climate demanded indoor gathering places. Because the building’s occupants required protection from the desert’s bright and constant sunlight, the exterior would be largely wall surface with few openings; this made for an introverted design, which Yamasaki had not attempted in some time. He was familiar with the Saudi government and the complexities of desert construction from his Dhahran Air Terminal experience, although the situation had improved since that time. He also felt that he was attuned to the Saudi decorative mentality—not just the type of decoration they enjoyed, but also the amount and location. As a government office building in a monarchial society, and as the embodiment of the Saudi banking system, the sama Headquarters needed to express its significance. Its site would help impart that

239

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 239

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:37 PM

quality; the building would be freestanding on its own block, the kind of site that Yamasaki favored. The combination of a client not averse to ornamentation and a high-profile government building seemed to have revitalized Yamasaki—the sama Headquarters was livelier than his contemporary designs, and it freed him to engage notions of serenity, surprise, and delight more extensively than his recent American work. As constructed, a rhythm of large, precast concrete walls covered with marble panels alternating with thin, deeply set vertical window strips dominated the building’s exterior. The first-floor public spaces and conference rooms had pointed-arch windows covered with delicate metal screens by Lee DuSell. Yamasaki narrowed the openings to keep sunlight from entering. A top-floor clerestory window extended over most of the wall beneath a broad overhang. While most of the building gleamed white in the bright sunshine, a dark-colored niche occupied the facade’s central bay, its form perhaps referencing the mihrab in a mosque. The centralized placement and concave shape of the entry was rare for Yamasaki (he preferred appended entrances slightly off-center in otherwise symmetrical facades). For contrast, to cover the niche DuSell made bronze-colored metal screens shaped into intricate geometric patterns of diamonds, polygons, circles, and ovals that appeared equally inspired by Islamic art and Louis Sullivan. Visitors moving into the building stepped through a central arch, through the vestibule, and then down a few steps into a grand enclosed courtyard (figure 7.24). The space was vast, 138 feet by 158 feet and 100 feet high according to Yamasaki, and completely open, since the elevators were moved beyond its perimeter. Like the exterior, the courtyard gleamed white from marble and travertine surfaces (figure 7.25). The floor was divided informally into quadrants,

240

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 240

7.23. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency Headquarters (Riyadh, 1973–85). Balthazar Korab, photographer.

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:37 PM

one containing the escalator leading down to basement levels, another with a carpeted conversation area with seating and small tables, a third consisting of a reflecting pool irregularly spotted with circular flower planters, and the last left open for circulation and casual interactions. The pool and plants enhanced the oasis theme, along with the ring of twenty-three glittering, abstracted torchlike light fixtures on steel poles placed around the floor level’s perimeter. A plain white reception desk sat demurely just off the geographic center of the space. All of this was surrounded by a striking decorative cage with a first-floor arcade of triangular arches that varied the World Trade Center structural trident; each floor-level column sprouted into three vertical members, with every other member shared with the next trident. The vertical strips then ran unbroken up to the sixth floor. By setting the pale-hued horizontal floor slabs back behind the screen, Yamasaki achieved the verticality he preferred in tall buildings—and that similarly dominated the building’s exterior. Above the courtyard a flat, plain ceiling with a wide skylight border delivered most of the illumination, enhanced by a small circular opening. The courtyard’s size was its most salient feature. Air conditioning made the space even more attractive. Yamasaki attempted to counteract what he felt was a claustrophobic feeling evoked by many Saudi buildings caused by dark interiors and a lack of openness. “The atrium space is wider than most streets,” he wrote.18 The sama commission included more than just a new headquarters building; mya also designed a pair of matching ten-story office structures for the agency (figure 7.26). The design of these Lilliputian Twin Towers similarly was guided by a desire to block sunlight. The square concrete buildings featured the pronounced vertical striation of Yamasaki’s late skyscrapers and heightened it through thickened vertical supports, which along with the thin strips of windows gave

7.24. First-floor plan, Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency.

241

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 241

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:37 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 242

31/7/2017 10:23 AM

these buildings a serrated quality that sunlight exaggerated. Like the Richmond Federal Reserve Bank Building, the sama offices’ four faces were framed by thickened corners and a top-floor fascia, but unlike it, the twin structures sat directly on the ground, and their fascia were embellished with arabesque intertwined arches in the manner of the Dhahran Air Terminal, recalling similar ornamentation at the U.S. Science Pavilion and DeRoy Auditorium. Eastern Province Airport As the sama buildings were taking shape, the Saudi Ministry of Defense and Aviation asked mya to expand the Dhahran Air Terminal. After studying possible alterations to the existing terminal, Yamasaki reasoned that it would make more sense to construct a new regional airport serving Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province. The government authorities agreed and gave the firm permission to conduct studies. This venture produced the Eastern Province Airport (now King Fahd International Airport, Dammam), designed in conjunction with Boeing Aerosystems International. The new airport would be part of a broader Saudi campaign to improve the country’s aviation facilities. These airports were vital symbols of Saudi Arabia’s modernization, serving a social function beyond their role in airline travel; a former Yamasaki employee termed this generation of Saudi airports “entertainment centers”

< 7.25. Atrium, Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency. Balthazar Korab, photographer. 7.26. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency Offices (Riyadh, 1970s). Balthazar Korab, photographer.

243

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 243

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:37 PM

because of the remote character of much of the country at that time. som was already designing the King Abdul Aziz International Airport in Jeddah, and hok would soon be hired to create the King Kahlid International Airport in Riyadh.19 Although it had been more than a decade since the Dhahran Air Terminal opened, mya had remained involved in aviation architecture: it had designed two terminals for Eastern Airlines, one constructed at Logan Airport in Boston and one unbuilt proposal for LaGuardia Airport (1967) in New York. The Eastern Province Airport would be the firm’s first comprehensive airport design since the Lambert–St. Louis Airport, however, and its scheme had much in common with the Dhahran terminal (figure 7.27). Both were conceived with automobile circulation as a prime consideration, leading to a bifurcated form with domestic and international terminal buildings separated by a driveway that looped around so that entry and exit were from the same road. In each airport the central strip of land within this loop and between the terminals was covered with trees and plantings. The Dhahran design had simply extended the structural concrete trees over this space, but for Eastern Province something new was attempted—two arched shells evolved from the Lambert–St. Louis Airport. Photographs of models made for the project show at least two variations on these shells, but in both they were groin vaults in the manner of Lambert but with sharper ridgelines and slightly pointed, shallower arches, open in at least two directions and in one version resting on tall columns. While the airport was still in the early phases of design Yamasaki described the immense shells as having spans of 360 feet, each pair covering the driveway and entrance areas. “With their large scale and long-distance visibility, the great shells of the terminal will be the focus for the entire eastern region of Saudi Arabia,” he said. These characteristics were meaningful; because arriving airplanes would be traveling over vast empty expanses of desert or sea, he imagined the airport as “a symbolic gateway to the entire eastern region of Saudi Arabia” that would “represent the greatness and progressive aspirations to which the leaders of Saudi Arabia are so devoted.”20 The design process for the airport was completed by 1977, but the project lay dormant until the early eighties, when the Saudi government asked mya and the Saudi Arabian Bechtel Company to prepare revisions. Construction began thereafter, and when the airport opened in 1999, with design attributed to Yamasaki’s successor firm, it bore

7.27. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Eastern Province Airport (Dammam, Saudi Arabia, 1975–99).

244

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 244

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:37 PM

little resemblance to the early models; the dual terminals, looping drive, and monumental vaults were gone, replaced by side-by-side terminals that looked much like the Eastern Airlines Terminal at Logan Airport revisited, now with a circular mosque as the architectural focal point. Another Saudi commission constructed before Yamasaki’s death was the Royal Reception Pavilion at the King Abdul Aziz Airport in Jeddah (figure 7.28). All Saudi airports were required to include a separate pavilion for use by the royal family and to host state events. In addition to the reception hall, the complex included a parade ground and reviewing stand and secondary spaces for administrative offices, press rooms, and separate lounges for men and women. mya included a grand, axial approach drive lined with palms, fitting the building’s royal purpose, which led visitors to the front door and looped back out around a long, rectangular reflecting pool. The hall itself was an unadorned square shape with identical monumental five-arched openings on the front and rear and a plain copper pavilion roof. Inside the reception hall the vast, empty, carpeted central room with a tent-shaped ceiling, outlined with pin lights, and a decorated skylight, evoked the Saudis’ nomadic past. The Saudi buildings represented a return to Yamasaki’s more decorative and structurally expressive tendencies and a realignment in the office’s geographical focus. In the seventies, mya’s international commissions doubled; between 1970 and Yamasaki’s death in 1986, one third of the office’s projects were intended for locations outside the United States. In addition to Saudi Arabia, the firm was hired for

7.28. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Royal Reception Pavilion, Jeddah International Airport (Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, 1974–79). Balthazar Korab, photographer.

245

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 245

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:37 PM

projects in Canada, Europe, Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Africa (few of these, however, were realized). This influx of international work not only kept mya running through the recession and beyond but forced Yamasaki to expand its size, something he was loathe to do. A 1974 article cited fifty-nine employees in the firm; a few years later—largely due to the Saudi assignments—that number had grown to eighty. Fluctuating commissions remained a source of anxiety for the firm despite the overseas opportunities and eventually led to an upheaval. As noted previously, loyalty was common at mya, where many architects stayed on for decades. But a minor crisis occurred in 1980 when six crucial employees left to start their own office, called Prevost, Treacy, Schreier, Pudists, Turner & Ernst. All except Thomas Ernst were members of mya’s board of directors and had been with the firm for twenty years or more; Aaron Schreier and Dan Treacy went back to the yla days in 1956. The defection of these top-level men hurt the firm and undoubtedly caused Yamasaki much consternation. According to Modris “Mike” Pudists (who returned after a year), a lack of work in the office had incited the separation.21 Religious Buildings Other than the Saudi jobs, the most impressive designs of Yamasaki’s post–World Trade Center career were religious buildings. The Temple Beth El synagogue (1968–74) and the Shinji Shumeikai’s Meishusama Hall (1978–83), while comparable in form and expressionistic tendencies, revealed a side of Yamasaki’s architectural personality that was rarely seen. These buildings followed the earlier North Shore Congregation Synagogue in being more poetic than his typical work, and they continued his inclination toward simple forms, symmetry, unitary interior spaces, and visible structure doubling as a decorative element. Both the Temple Beth El and the Meishusama Hall emerged from the same source: the First Methodist Church of Warren, Michigan (figure 7.29). In this, one of Yamasaki’s earliest religious designs, a steeply pitched, tent-shaped roof had been enlarged to become an entire building. The roof came down to less than 5 feet from the ground, tapering inward to a bottom pan that rested on triangular braces spaced 10 feet apart. The all-encompassing roof covered a small, lozenge-shaped nave space less than 70 feet from end to end (figure 7.30). This structural choice yielded a continuous band of light around the building’s bottom, interrupted only by thin supports. Seeking to fulfill the congregation’s desire for a space “for serenity and meditation” that would “hold their interest inwards,” however, Yamasaki restricted the view out of this windowed base; because of its low height, one’s sight lines were already limited when standing, and when sitting, congregation members would see a sunken garden in the foreground and behind it a patterned brick wall blocking any scenes of the neighborhood. Controlled outlooks paired with natural elements for contemplation were integral elements of Japanese tea house architecture and may have been on the architect’s mind—the church was designed shortly after Yamasaki’s fateful world tour. A less exotic influence may have been the many A-frame churches sprouting across the American suburbs, documented by the article “The Tent Form— A Village Gothic for Today,” published just months before YLH received this commission.22 Temple Beth El Yamasaki had repeated the Warren Methodist church’s parti with more flair in the North Shore Congregation Synagogue by converting

246

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 246

> 7.29. Yamasaki, Leinweber & Associates, First Methodist Church (Warren, Michigan, 1955–60). > 7.30. Interior, First Methodist Church.

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:37 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 247

29/7/2017 3:37 PM

the building’s open base into a sequence of exotically arched windows. For his other synagogue design, the Temple Beth El in the Detroit suburbs, he borrowed even more literally from the Warren precedent. Temple Beth El was the oldest Jewish congregation in Michigan, with roots back to 1850, and it had previously occupied two structures designed by esteemed Detroit architect Albert Kahn, a congregation member. The group’s postwar migration—a journey enacted by other Jews throughout the country—can be geographically traced through these buildings. Their first synagogue was a Pantheon-inspired domed structure about a mile from Detroit’s downtown core along its main street; the second, featuring a strong Ionic colonnade reminiscent of Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s Altes Museum, was approximately three miles farther out but also on Woodward Avenue. By the late sixties, responding to a suburban exodus, the building needed to be closer to its members, so the leaders selected a wooded spot in West Bloomfield, fourteen miles northwest of Detroit. Like the North Shore Synagogue commission, the Temple Beth El required mya to provide more than just a worship space: administrative offices, a library and archive, a smaller chapel, and a school also were necessary. Yamasaki chose the same basic layout as at North Shore, with administrative and sanctuary spaces perpendicular to each other and the school off to one side. As the complex’s spiritual center, the sanctuary demanded greater visibility than the surrounding buildings in order to stand out in the lightly wooded site (figure 7.31). In keeping with the lack of traditions in Jewish synagogue designs, the temple’s building committee gave Yamasaki no aesthetic or functional requirements other than advice to keep the sanctuary as far from the road as possible and to avoid a rectangular space. An early model,

248

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 248

7.31. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Temple Beth El (Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, 1968–74). Balthazar Korab, photographer. > 7.32. Sanctuary, Temple Beth El. Balthazar Korab, photographer.

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:37 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 249

29/7/2017 3:37 PM

however, depicted a rectangular sanctuary with a widely overhanging flat roof, but at some point Yamasaki switched to a steeply pitched, tapered tent shape over an oval plan. When he presented his idea to the committee, Yamasaki emphasized the tent’s importance to Jewish religious history, noting that the first synagogues were actually tents, as described in the Torah. Continuing to explore architecture derived from structure and technology, Yamasaki ran into problems figuring out how to keep the masive roof upright. Its form would be similar to that of the Warren Methodist Church, but the structure needed to be drastically different. Numerous proposals to frame the building across the short axis proved unsuccessful until Skilling’s engineers conceived a solution more along the lines of an actual tent. Two giant poured-in-place concrete bents would mirror each other, with inward-leaning vertical supports at either end of an oval; the bimah could be placed between the columns at one end, the entrance to the sanctuary at the other. A gap between the curved, paired ridge beams above allowed a skylight to occupy the space between them. An oval concrete ring set just above human height acted as the foundation for the roof structure and helped tie the columns together; below this ring, with the exception of supports placed at the cross-axis points and the entrance and bimah ends, the walls were all glass. The system produced an unusual effect wherein the enormous roof appeared to float in the air. Catenary steel cables hung from the ridge beams and tied to the concrete ring, with concrete panels laid on top, completed the structure. These panels were covered with lead-coated copper on the outside, while inside the white-painted concrete billowed like a windblown tent. The outcome of these manipulations was an interior space that strikingly blended Jewish symbolism, the aspirational quality Yamasaki sought for all tall and religious buildings, and a prominent and unconventional structural system (figure 7.32). The tent concept, which could seem heavy and overbearing from the exterior, worked better on the inside. The space had a surprisingly emotional quality despite its uncomplicated shape and minimalist ambiance, partly evoked by Yamasaki’s ability to design large spaces that did not overpower their occupants. The roof was the key to the design in a manner that had not been true of his work in some time. He had done a number of evocative “roof buildings” earlier in the fifties, where the roof was the focal point, the determining factor in the bulding’s form, or both.

7.33. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, West Gymnasium, Carleton College (Northfield, Minnesota, 1961–64).

250

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 250

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:37 PM

The Lambert–St. Louis Airport, the aci Headquarters, and even arguably the North Shore Synagogue fall into this category. While one might be tempted to attribute Yamasaki’s fascination with dominant roofs to his love of Japanese architecture, this curiosity was already visible before his trip abroad. But his shift to larger buildings, particularly skyscrapers, saw him move away from roof buildings, such that his last noteworthy effort in that vein had been years earlier at the West Gymnasium at Carleton College (1961–64; figure 7.33). The Temple Beth El sanctuary’s skylight was 70 feet from the floor, and its concrete tent form enclosed space for one thousand permanent seats on a slightly inclined floor and another eight hundred temporary chairs on the elevated platforms encircling the benches. The interior was simplified to eliminate distractions and highlight the view to the outside. Colors were kept to a minimum: shades of white in the skylight, ceiling, and marble facing of the raised platform; bright red carpeting; and brown wood tones in the benches, lecterns and slatted wall behind the bimah, all offset by the golden hues of Tony Rosenthal’s brass Ark and menorah. Acoustically, however, the space was less than ideal, particularly on normal service days, when the excessive crowds of the High Holy Days had dwindled to a smaller band of worshippers. Meishusama Hall Yamasaki’s last noteworthy design was an unlikely one: a religious building in a forest on a Japanese mountain. It came into being at some point in the late seventies when Yamasaki was approached by Mihoko Koyama, heiress to a textile fortune and one of the wealthiest women in Japan, about designing a religious structure for the Shinji Shumeikai, a new religious movement she had founded based on the ideas of spiritual philosopher Mokichi Okada. The group was aesthetically oriented and dedicated to collecting, preserving, and publicly exhibiting art. Members of the movement owned property in the Shigaraki Mountains northeast of Kyoto and hoped to construct a spiritual center and headquarters there. Subsequently, the Shinji Shumeikai would further develop the area with two designs by I. M. Pei: a bell tower (1990) and the Miho Museum (1993–97), which held the group’s extensive art collection. Yamasaki’s structure would be their first, and his task would be to create Meishusama Hall, the main assembly building named after Okada. For the first time in a long career, Yamasaki had the opportunity to design a building in a spectacular natural setting (figure 7.34). He borrowed liberally from the Temple Beth El with a few modifications. Working in association with his cousin Tadayoshi Ito (a Tokyo architect) and Japanese engineering legend Yoshikatsu Tsuboi, he adapted the “roof building” concept to keep the verticality and tapering profile of the Temple Beth El but reshaped its oval into a rectangular building, which introduced four corners to the roof. This design move allowed the building to repeat the synagogue’s lissome curves while opening its entire crown to a skylight. Meishusama Hall would be Yamasaki’s last true expression of Emerson’s call to minimal beauty. Its structure was clear enough that a layperson could understand how the building was put together, yet elegant enough be delightful, while also being slightly daring in an engineering sense. The temple’s roof bore some resemblance to traditional Japanese minka farmhouses, of which he may or may not have been aware, but the way Yamasaki subtly framed the roof’s four sides with slivers of light to emphasize their distinction from the structural columns was reminiscent of his North Shore Synagogue. The building began with a rectangular plan, a single unified space almost 290 feet long and

251

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 251

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:37 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 252

29/7/2017 3:37 PM

190 feet wide, that rose up to a luminous ceiling with star-shaped grilles, 140 feet above the floor. To achieve this sweeping space, Yamasaki and Tsuboi concocted four enormous catenary curved buttresses of reinforced concrete that supported a box girder frame with diagonal grid roof; on top of this rectangle was the skylight system, and hung from it were steel catenary cables over which the roof panels were laid. The copper panels eventually would give the temple a distinctive green color, harmonizing with the surrounding forest landscape. The ceiling’s interior surface was made from precast concrete panels painted white to provide an unbroken reflective surface. Deceptively simple, this massive roof was actually an extraordinary engineering feat and a testament to Tsuboi’s talents. The program did not require a complex floor plan (figure 7.35). Visitors entered the temple at the rear of the rectangular, five-thousand-seat sanctuary. At the opposite end, raised on the platform that also surrounded the seats, was an unadorned altar backed by an expansive metallic screen wall; both were designed by DuSell. Behind the screen a passage led to the small, octagonal Shinden, or “house of God.” This structure, inaccessible to most members, housed the group’s most sacred artifact, a scroll written by Okada. It included gold sculptures created by New York artist Richard Lippold. Architect and client both sought to relate Meishusama Hall to its natural surroundings. Shinji Shumeikai’s promotional materials implied that the temple’s shape replicated the sacred Mount Fuji but did not elaborate any particular connection. Yamasaki was more specific in attribution, writing after the temple was finished: “As we experimented on many schemes for its form, we came more and more firmly to believe that the building must harmonize and not contrast with the surrounding mountains.” Whether he responded to the opportunity is debatable. His temple was an intriguing but colossal object placed in the center of an immense marble-surfaced plaza that required the flattening of a mountaintop. Its dissimilarity with Pei’s Miho Museum, which nestled quietly among the trees on another mountain less than a mile to the east, was profound. Yamasaki’s building stood aloof from its surroundings, offering spectacular views of the landscape but little else, while Pei’s museum literally kept a low profile, intermingled with the forest, with most of its spaces concealed below the ground.23

7.34. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Meishusama Hall (Shiga Prefecture, Japan, 1978–83). 7.35. Interior, Meishusama Hall.

Pruitt-Igoe Again The increase in international work helped mya financially, but this boost was offset by decreasing domestic commissions. By the late seventies Yamasaki had fallen out of the limelight. None of his foreign designs would be published in American architecture journals. A review of the office’s project list reveals that in Yamasaki’s last years, nearly a quarter of the firm’s commissions were for three locations: Hawaii, Seattle, and Yamasaki’s home city of Troy. The few buildings that eventually were constructed in these places were difficult to distinguish as Yamasaki’s, indicating his diminishing role in the design process. mya’s work gradually lost the distinctive personality that characterized its best buildings of the fifties and sixties. The downward turn of Yamasaki’s reputation gained momentum in the seventies after the public demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe apartment complex. The apartments came to symbolize an assortment of misguided postwar endeavors, including low-income high-rise apartments, federally sponsored public housing, and even the modern movement in architecture as a whole. Its critics capitalized on the complex’s deplorable state to vilify the responsible politicians as unfeeling bureaucrats concerned only with the bottom line and to

253

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 253

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

portray Yamasaki as an inept designer who should have foreseen that Pruitt-Igoe’s environment would breed discontent and disorder. That the apartment complex failed was unarguable. But it failed for many reasons, including the same managerial indifference to tenants’ needs that had forced Yamasaki to compromise most of his goals for the project. This lack of attention continued unabated in subsequent years, and the buildings became dilapidated, crime-ridden, and largely unoccupied while the remaining tenants’ constant pleas for help went unheeded. Just over a decade after they opened, the apartment buildings were castigated for their sorry state in an Architectural Record article entitled “The Case History of a Failure.” The author repeated Yamasaki’s original objections to many of the pha’s cost-cutting decisions and quoted him as saying, “I suppose we should have quit the job. It’s a job I wish I hadn’t done.” Soon thereafter sociologist Lee Rainwater published accounts of tenants’ miserable lives inside Pruitt-Igoe and political scientist Eugene J. Meehan wrote about the complex as a representative of a flawed governmental housing policy. Such accounts, which demonstrated that the design of the apartment buildings was neither the sole nor the salient cause of the complex’s problems, were countered by that of Oscar Newman, whose book Defensible Space: Crime Prevention through Urban Design— though not naming Yamasaki specifically—placed the blame for the apartments’ high crime and rampant vandalism squarely on its architectural design. As urbanists, architects, and critics directed more attention to these housing complexes, Pruitt-Igoe continued to deteriorate. Only a few hundred residents remained in largely abandoned towers that had been designed for more than ten thousand occupants. In 1971 state and federal authorities decided that the complex was beyond saving and began making plans for its demolition, which took place over a four-year period.24 On April 22, 1972, a section of Pruitt-Igoe was demolished; images of the event were widely circulated (and televised). Subsequently critics circulated these images as powerful reminders of public housing’s limitations and modern architecture’s complicity in its demise. Foremost among the propagators of this myth was Charles Jencks, who would become known for his voluminous writings on postmodern architecture. More than anyone else, Jencks popularized the notion of Pruitt-Igoe’s destruction as the death of the modernistutopian dream and the beginning of a new age for architecture. He implicated Yamasaki in the complex’s failure, encouraging less knowledgeable or attentive readers to naively attribute the project’s lack of success solely to Yamasaki’s design.25 In recent years a full-fledged revisionist history has evolved to counter “the Pruitt-Igoe myth,” shifting the blame from the architects onto governmental public housing initiatives and support for urban renewal. Specifically addressing Chicago’s experiment with low-income housing towers, which merely amplified other American cities’ experiences with such housing, D. Bradford Hunt reminded readers that “while Corbusian ideas swayed planners at many housing authorities and while the . . . high-rises did function poorly because of a host of design choices, blaming architects for public housing’s failure exaggerates their importance. . . . Architects operated within planning assumptions and policy restrictions that tightly constrained design possibilities.” Today Yamasaki is viewed as a scapegoat by most informed members of the architectural and urban studies communities, someone whose quixotic fight against bureaucratic powers revealed the architect’s impotence in the face of larger social forces. He had been upfront about his opposition to the forest of towers from the beginning. In a speech to the National Association of

254

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 254

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

Housing Officials he admitted the superiority of low-rise, low-density structures and announced, “If I had no economic or social limitations, I’d solve all my problems with one-story buildings.” Pragmatically, however, he recognized that that was not possible in the real world. In the end, though, Yamasaki did not have to take the Pruitt-Igoe job or continue with it when it became obvious that he would have to make extreme compromises. Not only did this pattern of passive acceptance of inadequate or unfair treatment reflect his Nisei upbringing, it was repeated—with equally failing results—in the other commission that secured his legacy in American architecture, the World Trade Center.26 Before the negative facets of Pruitt-Igoe’s subsequent history began to dominate media coverage, Yamasaki emerged from the experience as an important voice in the national debate over high-rise public housing. But on a personal level Pruitt-Igoe’s design process left a bitter taste in his mouth, and not just because of his fights with the pha. Over time he would become progressively self-critical over Pruitt-Igoe’s design; later he would express doubt about the very idea of communal living. In a speech at the Architectural League of New York, Yamasaki regretted the “deplorable mistakes” made at PruittIgoe. “Under the pressure of public housing economics and bureaucracy and with an overfascination for a particular site pattern and a novel architectural device, I lost sight of the total purpose, that of building a community,” he said. “We have designed a housing project not a community, which is tragically insensitive to the humanist aspects of security and serenity and have multiplied tragedy because of the great number of buildings and extent of site.”27 By the late fifties Yamasaki often mentioned Pruitt-Igoe in his stump speech on his philosophy of architecture, and by then he revealed his disillusionment with high-rise housing as a whole: “The tragedy of housing thousands in exactly look alike cells, may be necessary as an interim measure. I doubt it, but it certainly does not foster our ideals of human dignity and individualism.” His actions supported his opinions. After Pruitt-Igoe, Yamasaki was involved in only one other public housing project, a much-praised scheme for a section of downtown Detroit codesigned with Oscar Stonorov and Karl Van Leuven (for Victor Gruen); by 1955 he had stopped designing low-rent public housing altogether.28 A remarkable early Internet discussion among Yamasaki, South African political activist Steve Biko, American political scientist Francis Fukuyama, and Egyptian economist Samir Amin conducted in 1976 revealed that his attitude had not changed in the interim. When the conversation turned to human discord, Yamasaki asked his colleagues, “But can people really live together peacefully?” In the absence of a response, he answered himself, negatively: “Whether legal or illegal people seem to want to be apart. . . . In spite of my vision for how architecture could genuinely improve the lives of people it seems that certain real social and economic conditions make this impossible.” In private correspondence from the same period he was harsher in his summary of the Pruitt-Igoe experience: “I am perfectly willing to admit that of the buildings we have been involved with over the years, I hate this one the most. There are a few others, but I don’t hate them; I just dislike them.”29 A Changing Profession At the time, Pruitt-Igoe’s destruction emboldened a younger generation of architects to lash out at modernism’s failure to achieve its utopian social goals. For the older true believers like Yamasaki, disasters such as Pruitt-Igoe were catastrophic setbacks. “Social ills can’t be cured by nice buildings,” he said, expressing an attitude

255

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 255

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

contravening his younger, more optimistic self. As modernism’s utopian impulses weakened and dissatisfaction with the limitations of an architecture preoccupied with functional and structural issues grew, similarly disenchanted architects tended to take divergent paths: one that led toward an inclusive assimilation of historical elements or another that ended with an autonomous architecture which excluded outside influences to focus on formal manipulations. Both approaches were influenced by a common perception that modern architecture was impotent, having failed to create the utopian world promised by its founders. And both groups became obsessed with architecture’s semantic meanings, as ideas from French structuralism and linguistic theory were tested in the architectural realm. Yamasaki was unwilling to follow either course. He had been decreasing his use of historical forms since the midsixties to the point where only a few ground-level arches on his taller buildings remained. The eclectic, literal, or ironic use of history demonstrated by prominent postmodernists such as Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown did not interest him. Instead he had preferred to use premodern historical remnants like arches in a functional manner—in other words, he did not always begin with a general desire to incorporate historical references and then determine where to insert them but usually adopted arches as suitable for a project only if they proved structurally efficient and aesthetically pleasing. Similarly, the retreat into autonomous formal exercises practiced by architects like Peter Eisenman and John Hejduk, which winnowed architecture to the point where it banished concerns about structural honesty or users’ psychological experiences—not to mention programmatic practicalities—was equally unappealing. Semiotic interpretations of architecture as a system of messages akin to other languages, influential for both the inclusive historicists and the exclusive formalists, were alien to Yamasaki and others of his generation.30 As architecture moved in unfamiliar directions, Yamasaki was left with the honest revelation of structure and his fervent belief in the humanistic triad of serenity, surprise, and delight—at a time when none were considered particularly important. For example, when the 1977 MoMA exhibition of École des Beaux-Arts architecture proved unexpectedly successful, some younger architects worried that it might rekindle inconvenient decorative tendencies of the previous decades. Theorist George Baird, a leader of the burgeoning semantic movement, joked: “I have fears of possible—and perhaps equally likely—unfortunate impacts of the exhibition. I fear that we may well hear a Yamasaki of the 1980s speak of a new ‘architecture of delight.’” Yamasaki’s buildings seemed frivolous, naive, and disconnected to these designers, whose investigation of architecture’s historical legacy was conducted in a manner different than that to which he was accustomed. Ironically, the leading figures of postmodernism rejected his work. Venturi singled out Yamasaki in his seminal book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, deriding his “architecture of symmetrical picturesqueness” whose unnecessarily intricate exteriors masked uncomplicated floor plans, while Robert A. M. Stern accused Yamasaki of creating “confections of the decorated box school of design.” What these commentators failed to recognize—or accept— was that without trailblazers like Yamasaki leading the way in the fifties, their investigations of modernism’s proper relation to its historical past would have been more difficult, if not impossible, to conduct. Midcentury architects like Yamasaki and Johnson had rebelled against their predecessors, rejecting the early modernists’ antihistorical bias and initiating a rapprochement with history that paved the way for a more complex relation in the ensuing decades. Rather than acknowledging these architects for their achievements

256

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 256

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

in reinvigorating history and reviving ornamentation, however, the younger group vilified them.31 Much of the character of Yamasaki’s work was lost as he and the architectural profession moved from planar surfaces, thinness, and light, attenuated components to an emphasis on mass and solidity in the sixties; in Rudolph’s terms, from “goldfish bowls” to “caves.” Despite his enthusiasm for precast concrete and attraction to textured surfaces, Yamasaki never warmed to Brutalist size and mass like Rudolph or Breuer. “Though my architecture is often called too delicate, I cannot envision buildings which are too heavy and brutal just for sensational effect as being particularly enjoyable for people to experience each day,” he said. Nor was he preoccupied with manipulating form, whether unique or Platonic, for emotional or intellectual purposes. Until the end, he believed that form must arise from “a valid structural reason, rather than from an impulsive, emotional reason.” With few exceptions his buildings were simple enclosed rectangles or squares with uncomplicated massing: he did not favor articulated buildings, irrational projections or shapes, or mixtures of materials. And it should be obvious to the reader by now that Yamasaki was no spatial innovator. Throughout his career his buildings demonstrated a consistent absence of spatial variety. He favored logically composed arrangements with a collection of square or rectangular-shaped rooms organized about a central axis. Unlike architects such as Wright or Neutra, Yamasaki’s design approach lacked the notion of space as flowing from room to room. He did not cantilever spaces or integrate them in innovative ways. Even the atrium buildings that he favored in the fifties were simply conceived.32 A Life in Architecture By the late seventies Yamasaki was moving into the final phase of his life. As physical problems affected his productivity and his architectural reputation diminished, he attempted to shape his legacy through an autobiographical account of his life and explanations of his favorite buildings (figure 7.36). Yamasaki actually began writing early in his architectural career and never stopped. He worked hard at this craft, as revealed by the numerous surviving drafts of articles, speeches, and even letters in the archives, and he obviously enjoyed writing, although he often denigrated his abilities. So drafting an account of his life was not an altogether absurd idea. And this would not be Yamasaki’s first effort to tell his life story, nor his first book project. In 1954 he had begun an autobiography, entitled “Bread of Rice Grains,” of which only two pages remain in the archives. A few years later he made an outline and a set of notes for a book called “Of Sticks and Stones” but again stopped before progressing any further. The University of Washington Press inquired about creating “a shortish essay-type book” explaining his philosophy of architecture through his work in 1968. Almost a year afterward, Yamasaki continued to revise the list of buildings to be included and their descriptions. But for some reason the project stopped.33 In the 1970s he initiated another book. This time the title was “About Architecture,” and Yamasaki composed forty-five typewritten pages of autobiographical material and architectural philosophy. Again nothing came of this individual effort, but “About Architecture” would provide the foundation for his next and final attempt, which was eventually published as the book A Life in Architecture. It is informative to compare the drafts for these two manuscripts, as well as the buildings they included (along with the aborted 1968 project),

257

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 257

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

to see how Yamasaki’s thinking about the best way to present his himself and designs changed over time.34 A Life was published in 1979 by John Weatherhill, a Japanese company. Aaron Schreier had helped edit the final manuscript. The book contained two distinct parts. It began with a twenty-page autobiography followed by an eight-page essay entitled “The Aesthetics and Practice of Architecture.” Then Yamasaki described twenty-nine of his favorite buildings in texts ranging from a few paragraphs to a seven-page history of the World Trade Center. The lone exception was Yamasaki’s own house, which was offered without commentary. Each entry included photographs of the completed structure or model and a floor or site plan. The book ended curiously with an image of a decades-old watercolor painted by the author.35 In the autobiographical section Yamasaki was selective with his reminiscences. The autobiographical essay focused on his life before becoming a partner in hyl/lyh and was dominated by a lengthy description of his experiences in the Alaskan canning industry during his college summers. The work was difficult and the conditions were extreme, and Yamasaki took these jobs only to save money for school. But the obvious relish with which he recounted these grueling days, as well as the length of the story—roughly one quarter of the full text and half of the entire account of his prearchitectural life—indicated that it was both a formative episode and a point of pride in his life. It fit into the book’s overarching narrative, which presented Yamasaki as a fighter who overcame many obstacles to achieve great success. “About Architecture” appears to have been the first draft of A Life. In the published book Yamasaki subtly revised this draft and included anecdotes to give the narrative a more personal touch. He removed language regarding Lionel Pries, his architecture school mentor; changed his self-description from “Japanese” to “of Japanese descent”; and added sections on Mies van der Rohe. A Life was more fawning in his admiration of Mies, and he now described his early architectural designs as “shallow imitations of the buildings of Mies.” Perhaps the strangest alterations were the new paragraphs at the beginning and end of the “About Architecture” text. The first, placed at the opening of the manuscript, was disconnected from Yamasaki’s life story and seemed to have little to do with his architectural philosophy: “Whenever we as people are in natural surroundings, whether forest, plains, by the water whether ocean, lake or river or even beside a small stream, we are conscious of our untouched (by man) surroundings with a sense of peace and beauty. It is for this reason we must keep trying to escape our urban surroundings a much as possible; our vacations are spent generally trying to find the most beautiful place within reason economically and time-wise.” The second addition, at the end of the document, took the form of an apology for the designs that had made him famous: “Fortunately, we had overcome the temptation to overdecorate buildings caused by my admiration for buildings of the past and the possibility of incorporating this ornamentation through the device of precasting concrete,” he wrote. “Though momentarily I had strayed off on a decorative kick, I have now for the last fifteen years adhered to the idea of using the least amount of material possible and still attain the stability and strength, without compromising either aesthetics or function.”36 This first new paragraph’s nature orientation was bizarre; Yamasaki could never be described as an architect of nature, since he did not favor natural materials or settings, and his inclusion of plazas and courtyards almost always subjected nature to his demands by forcing it into geometrical patterns and symmetrical forms.

258

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 258

7.36. Minoru Yamasaki.

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 259

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

He used trees, plants, grass, and water as means to enhance the serenity or delight of a compostion rather than as ends in themselves. Whether he viewed himself as an architect of nature or intended this passage to be somehow related to growing up in Seattle is unclear, but such an uncharacteristic statement was intriguing. It may have been stimulated by his work on Meishusama Hall in Japan’s striking Shigaraki Mountains, which began the year Yamasaki wrote this draft. The second supplement was easier to understand. Yamasaki had always critiqued his work in print. But the apologetic tenor of this writing reveals his rehabilitative intent. He assured readers that his “decorative kick” was in the distant past. However, by this time the decorative revival of the late fifties and early sixties was long over, as the profession’s theoretical focus moved on to new realms of discourse on semantics and language, and the proper reintegration of history. By this time, critics were more apt to ignore Yamasaki than condemn him. In this context Yamasaki’s apology appears unnecessary; that he felt compelled to make it indicates a lingering wound. Yamasaki edited these odd sections out of the final book. His architectural musings, presented in a separate essay, added nothing new in terms of his philosophy of design, but the points of emphases are revealing. Although the writing meandered more than his previous texts, it revisited many of his standard concerns and rhetorical tools, including the role of delight (using the decades-old Japanese restaurant story), the importance of history, and the joy of surprise remained in place. The essay’s main thrust, however, uncharacteristically centered on structure. Yamasaki may have written it for a specific audience. A reorientation had occurred in the architectural world by the late seventies, making Yamasaki’s core philosophy of serenity, surprise, and delight seem old-fashioned and out of touch; architects had moved on to more serious pursuits. He must have realized that his old language would be inappropriate, and so he adjusted his approach, falling back on stock modernist maxims about the inherent beauty of structural rationalism. His choices might also have been influenced by his current public image as a skyscraper designer, with his best smaller-scale works of the pre–World Trade Center era now relics of a more exuberant past. The bulk of A Life contained descriptions and images of the buildings that Yamasaki believed were his best designs from the previous twenty-five years. He split them almost evenly around the convenient fulcrum of the World Trade Center, although a great many came from the intense creative period of 1958–62. Yamasaki’s tastes can be seen to shift when comparing the list of buildings for his proposed University of Washington book with those contained in A Life a decade later. While certain buildings such as the McGregor Center, the Dhahran Air Terminal, the North Shore Congregation Synagogue, and the World Trade Center are obviously included in both proposals, there were disparities, notably involving work from the early fifties. In 1968, his list of best designs included nine structures from this era, including the Baker and Barron houses, the aci Headquarters, and the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts Building. The 1979 autobiography kept only three: McGregor, Lambert–St. Louis Airport, and the Reynolds Sales Office. As might be expected from an architect who had fallen from the limelight but wished to be seen as relevant, A Life dwelled on recent work, and a third of the buildings presented were less than a decade old, including three (the Eastern Province Airport, the sama Building, and Meishusama Hall) that had not yet been constructed. The only house shown was Yamasaki’s; there were no schools or unbuilt projects. Perhaps most interesting of all was the absence of the Kobe

260

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 260

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

Consulate from both lists. Did the building’s absence relate to the complex and ongoing ambivalence he felt toward his Japanese heritage? Or, despite the proliferation of historical references in Western architecture as postmodernism was forming into a coherent set of ideas, did he feel that the consulate was too derivative or imitative? Minoru Yamasaki secured a place in postwar architectural history through designs that captured the exuberant optimism of late fifties– early sixties America by merging technological proficiency and smooth elegance with exotic (and hybrid) influences from distant lands; clients, the public, and other architects responded favorably to the results. His best buildings were enticing, photogenic, and very different from the mainstream, and his otherness—as an architect with a foreign name from far outside the East Coast architecture establishment—proved attractive. He demonstrated great facility with structural solutions, partnering with talented engineers who shared his interest in creative solutions and designs that foregrounded structural elements, particularly when they served dually as support and decoration. His emphasis on peaceful and pleasurable buildings and plazas resonated with architects around the country who imitated his fountains and columns. Unfortunately his most famous creation, the World Trade Center, was his least representative work, straying from the core principles that brought him acclaim by abandoning the human scale and delicate details that energized his earlier designs. As the architectural world splintered into myriad directions and new theoretical approaches proliferated in the seventies, Yamasaki resisted the profession’s dominant tendencies by producing work that was less experimental, less challenging, and often less visually interesting. In an age of socially conscious architecture, he refused to participate, stung by the Pruitt-Igoe experience. He clung tightly to the modernist triad of functional efficiency, structural expression, and technological advancement. Over time there were fewer distinctive designs; the buildings became more generic, the skyscrapers predictably formulaic. The projects generated by mya over the last decade of Yamasaki’s life give the impression that the work had lost its spark: the designs were competent but no longer excellent. The intangible quality that inspired buildings like the Lambert–St. Louis Airport, the McGregor Center, or the North Shore Congregation Synagogue is harder to distinguish. Certainly the departure of six key architects had a drastic effect on the firm’s inner workings and production. But given what we know about Yamasaki’s managerial style, the trend toward conservatism had to be his idea. Yamasaki took fewer chances in his late work, which is unfortunate given the promise and creativity shown in his best designs. Minoru Yamasaki died of cancer in February 1986 after decades of physical suffering. His health had been problematic for more than thirty years, requiring numerous operations for stomach-related issues, and his increasingly heavy drinking likely exacerbated the situation. After his death, respectful but brief notices appeared in the main architectural journals and the New York Times. Despite his faded reputation, these notices tended to be fair in evaluating his life’s work. All mentioned the World Trade Center, and most cited Pruitt-Igoe. Daralice Boyd’s obituary in Progressive Architecture was the most favorable of the group; she described the buildings from his zenith in the late fifties and early sixties as “examples of a viable alternative to both canonical Modernism, which Yamasaki and others had come to regard as monotonous and oppressive, and to the new Brutalism.” In her final sentence, Boyd aptly summarized his legacy:

261

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 261

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

“Although Yamasaki’s romantic Gothicizing details now seem dated, his emphasis on structure as the source of aesthetic experience has gained new credence among contemporary architects and the criticisms of Modernism as monotonous and dehumanizing are echoed in Post-Modern tracts.”37

262

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 262

THE LATE WORKS

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

CONCLUSION

The time is right to reevaluate Minoru Yamasaki’s work and its place in the history of twentieth-century architecture. The climate has never been better for open-minded reviews of those architects who were left behind or cast aside by successors uncomfortable with Edward Durell Stone’s sensuousness, Yamasaki’s gracefulness, or Philip Johnson’s playfulness, or considered them irrelevant to more serious-minded pursuits. Excellent monographs have been published on Stone, Johnson, and Paul Rudolph, while other standout architects of Yamasaki’s postwar heyday—som, Saarinen, Bunshaft, Kahn, Breuer, Harrison, and others—all have been the subject of at least one study. Thanks to Timothy Rohan’s excellent book on Rudolph, we have a better understanding of what became of the architect after he fell out of the limelight. In short, he continued working, supporting himself through commissions outside the United States. In this way, Rudolph and Yamasaki mirror each other in the late phase of their respective careers. But not completely: Rudolph continued to experiment until the end of his life, whereas Yamasaki did not. mya’s skyscraper designs of the late sixties through the early eighties tended to be formulaic, and the smaller-scale work straightforward, with simple structures plainly expressed. Except for the few religious buildings from this era, he never seemed to rekindle the structural dynamism that energized his most popular works; relatedly, despite his early adaptation of precast concrete and the variety of uses that he found for the material, his continued explorations of concrete—if there were any—ceased to produce provocative results. And Yamasaki’s disinterest in investigating concrete’s plasticity, unlike his friend Eero Saarinen, probably made it easier for subsequent generations to view his work as banal, in contrast to the designs from his heyday, which were considered trivial. Although none of these factors have any influence on an architect’s ability to satisfy a client and produce a pleasant, functioning design, neither do they capture the attention of the architectural media or the elite world of art and architecture clients. In other words, Yamasaki— for whatever reason—generated fewer creative designs in the last fifteen years of his career, and the architectural world largely forgot about him. I have suggested that the World Trade Center’s negative reception dealt a mortal blow to Yamasaki’s professional confidence, and I believe that the facts support this conclusion. But that does

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 263

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

not preclude the effects of other influences. Surely his health problems and complicated spousal relationships drew time and energy from his practice. Ironically, success also may have played a role in the less adventurous nature of his late work; his adamant refusal to become a “large” firm like those he despised from his early career undoubtedly made it difficult to keep pace with the steady stream of commissions that came into the office, including a number of very large-scale developments or planning projects (much of which was accomplished while the firm was engaged with the World Trade Center). Under such high-pressure circumstances the desire to experiment often is trumped by the demands of expediency. In addition to all of this, it is not impossible that Yamasaki simply restricted his explorations because he had already found successful solutions. The skyscrapers in particular seem to imply this; his standard formula for them changed little over a twenty-year period. Such a pragmatic approach would be Miesian in its essence. Yamasaki’s admiration for Mies was well known, and his idol was famous for his lack of adventurousness concerning structural and material vocabulary, once remarking: “Certainly it is [neither] necessary nor possible to invent a new kind of architecture every Monday morning.” And Yamasaki’s inclination to work through variations of a theme, as in the tent-roofed religious buildings, the early houses, and the modernized classical temples, reveal an architect comfortable with established prototypes. Yamasaki’s career should not be defined by the systemic failure of Pruitt-Igoe or the miscalculation of the World Trade Center, nor should it be judged by the prevalent criticisms of those projects. Instead Yamasaki should be respected for his seminal position in the crucial second generation of twentieth-century modern architecture. That group expanded the functional, structural, and technological concerns of the pioneer modernists in a variety of directions, devising approaches and techniques that ensured the continuing relevance of modern ideas and their public acceptance. Although he remained steadfast to the basic tenets of structural rationalism and functional utility, his openness to historical elements and his concentration on people’s sensory and emotional experiences was unique for the postwar era. His interests in the experience of architecture predated similar concerns that provided the impetus for the popularity of phenomenology. Jorge Otero-Pailos’s insightful study of the phenomenological movement in postwar architecture describes the roots of that orientation in the early sixties: “Out went the conviction that technology drove history, and in came the sense that architectural history was driven by the search for authentic, original human experiences. . . . [Jean Labatut, Charles Moore, Christian Norberg-Schulz, and Kenneth Frampton] replaced the belief that architecture would become more sophisticated as technology moved toward the future teleologically, with the notion that architecture would become more advanced as human experience returned to its origins ontologically.” In other words, phenomenology offered architects the chance to avoid semantic meanings or formalist composition exercises by focusing on human experience. Yamasaki may not have shared the phenomenologists’ disillusionment with technology, but he did support the development of architecture aimed at providing enjoyment for viewers and users. In his mature work he sought to arouse visceral responses like surprise or joy as well as more rational states like serenity or tranquillity—but all were emotional states nonetheless. He also wrote and spoke of beauty more frequently and in a different manner than his contemporaries. While they might extol

264

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 264

CONCLUSION

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

the attractiveness of fine (and finely detailed) materials or the allure of a well-defined steel structure, his was a more populist notion of beauty, as a building that on the whole (along with its surroundings) is visually pleasing and delightful. Yamasaki arguably anticipated some of the experiential concerns of the phenomenologists, albeit in a different way, in much the same manner that his use of historical forms for modern purposes preceded the postmodernist engagement with history.1 Yamasaki’s work struck a chord with the public and remains popular today, demonstrating that the humanistic principles he believed in were indeed valid. Even the World Trade Center has been reevaluated in light of the tragic events of September 11, 2001. Although residents of the New York City metropolitan region were initially wary of the Twin Towers, they became ever-present points of reference that grew to be accepted if not loved. In a 2007 aia survey of the American public’s favorite buildings, the World Trade Center ranked nineteenth— a sentimental choice for sure, but a small step toward greater admiration of Yamasaki’s architecture. The popularity of Robert Zemeckis’s film The Walk (2015), which lovingly re-created the Trade Center through computer-generated effects while telling the story of acrobat Philippe Petit’s infamous 1974 high-wire walk between the towers, had the further effect of reminding viewers of Yamasaki’s amazing achievement. Yamasaki’s work has become popular with historic preservationists. The publicity surrounding such events as the restoration of reflecting pools at the Northwestern National Life Insurance Building and the McGregor Center, as well as McGregor’s ascendance to National Historic Landmark status in 2015, is leading more people to take note of his work. A $2.5 billion restoration of the Century Plaza Hotel undoubtedly will attract significant attention. These projects demonstrate the value the public continues to see in his work, which is fitting for a designer who always sought to use architecture as a means to make people’s lives a little better.

265

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 265

CONCLUSION

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

1941): 73–77. For Parkchester, see

NOTES

19. On Rowland, see “Wirt Rowland Architect,” http://www.villageofclinton.org/

“Metropolitan’s Parkchester,” Architectural

community/wirt-rowland-architect.

Forum 71 (December 1939): 412–26. Ironically, Yamasaki claimed that he and

20. “State Office Center,” Architectural Forum 86 (February 1947): 78–87.

his brother tried to rent an apartment in Parkchester but were denied because of 9.

21. Yamasaki, Life, 22–23. Taro Yamasaki

discrimination.

would grow up to become an acclaimed

Yamasaki, Life, 20; Department of the

photojournalist, winning a Pulitzer Prize for

Navy Bureau of Yards and Docks, Building

feature photography in 1981 for his

the Navy’s Bases in World War II: History of

Detroit Free Press story on life inside Michigan’s Jackson Prison.

the Bureau of Yards and Docks and the Civil Engineer Corps, 1940–1946, vol. 1

22. Eero Saarinen to the National Council of

(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government

Architectural Registration Boards,

Printing Office, 1947), 261–90, available

November 18, 1955, box 3, folder 15,

online at http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/

MYP. On Yamasaki’s assertion that he was

USN/Building_Bases/bases-11.html.

the connection between Saarinen and

10. Undated typescript, box 22, folder 8, MYP.

Smith, Hinchman & Grylls, see Holleman

The photograph is available online at

and Gallagher, Smith, Hinchman & Grylls, 148.

https://calisphere.org/item/ark:/13030/ ft0m3n99qv/; “Japs Meet Delaney,

23. Partnership agreement, Girard &

CHAPTER 1. FOUNDATIONS

Protest ‘Ugly’ Remarks,” Brooklyn Daily

Yamasaki, May 2, 1949, box 3, folder 2,

1.

Eagle, April 30, 1944.

MYP. For Girard, see Todd Oldham and

Minoru Yamasaki, “Bread of Rice Grains,” undated ms., box 28, folder 18, Minoru

11. Yamasaki, Life, 21.

Yamasaki Papers, Archives of Labor and

12. Minoru Yamasaki, “A Life in Architecture,”

Urban Affairs, Wayne State University

draft, June 30, 1978, box 22, folder 9,

(hereafter MYP); Yamasaki, A Life in Architecture (New York: Weatherhill,

Kiera Coffee, Alexander Girard (New York: AMMO Books, 2011). 24. Russell Clanahan, “‘Gold Palace’ Nearing Completion,” Detroit Free Press, October

MYP.

23, 1951; “Modern Bank Annex Sets Five

13. “Postwar Project for a Converted

1979), 11; Yamasaki, untitled speech, box

Apartment in New York City,” Architectural

Examples for Downtown Building,”

3, folder 6, MYP; “The Road to Xanadu,”

Forum 81 (November 1944): 111–13.

Architectural Forum 100 (February 1954):

Time, January 18, 1963, 61.

130. The Forum article’s author praised

14. Yamasaki, Life, 22. On the office

2.

Yamasaki, Life, 11–12.

organization, see Raymond Loewy, Never

the design as a shining example of

3.

For details on Washington’s architecture

Leave Well Enough Alone (New York:

shariwaggi, an Indian word “describing the

program at this time, see Jeffrey Karl

Simon and Schuster, 1951), 151.

art of picturesque composition in

4.

15. Yamasaki to John Knox Shear, March 20,

Educator: From Arts and Crafts to Modern

1956, box 4, folder 16, MYP. On Haskell,

to enhance both.” The quotation is from

Architecture (Seattle: University of

see Gabrielle Esperdy, “Architecture and

Minoru Yamasaki, “About Architecture,”

Washington Press, 2007).

Popular Taste,” Places Journal, May 2015,

undated ms., box 22, folder 4, MYP.

Jeffrey Karl Ochsner, “Modern or

https://placesjournal.org/article/future-

Traditional? Lionel H. Pries and Architectural Education at the University

CHAPTER 2. EARLY WORK 1.

Little has been published on Hellmuth, and

Design of Modern Design (Cambridge,

nothing on Leinweber. For Hellmuth, see

Northwest Quarterly 96 (Summer 2005):

Mass.: MIT Press, 2000), 85, 30, 74,

Walter McQuade, Architecture in the Real

144; Yamasaki, Life, 13; Ochsner, Lionel H.

305n18.

World: The Work of HOK (New York: Harry

Yamasaki, Life, 17.

6. On Nisei migration, see Greg Robinson,

17. Thomas J. Holleman and James P. Gallagher, Smith, Hinchman & Grylls: 125

N. Abrams, 1984), 13–14. 2.

Minoru Yamasaki, “About Architecture,”

Years of Architecture and Engineering,

undated ms., box 22, folder 4, Minoru

After Camp: Portraits in Midcentury

1853–1978 (Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State

Yamasaki Papers, Archives of Labor and

Japanese American Life and Politics

University Press, 1978), 147.

Urban Affairs, Wayne State University

18. On Cranbrook’s and Detroit’s roles in the

(hereafter MYP); Yamasaki, A Life in

2012).

development of modern design, see

Architecture (New York: Weatherhill,

Francis Keally to New York State Board of

Robert Judson Clark and Andrea P. A.

Examiners and Registration of Architects,

Belloli, eds., Design in America: The

April 10, 1940, box 3, folder 5, MYP.

Cranbrook Vision, 1925–1950 (New York:

1977, in Thomas J. Holleman and James P.

Harry N. Abrams, 1983); and Amy L.

Gallagher, Smith, Hinchman & Grylls: 125

Organization,” Architectural Forum 52

Arnold and Brian D. Conway, eds.,

Years of Architecture and Engineering,

(June 1930): 772. On Smith, Hinchman’s

Michigan Modern: Design That Shaped

1853–1978 (Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State

organizational structure, see Henry H.

America (Layton, Utah: Gibbs-Smith,

Saylor, “The Firm of Shreve, Lamb &

2016).

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 7.

archive-architecture-and-popular-taste. 16. Stanley Abercrombie, George Nelson: The

of Washington, 1928–1942,” Pacific

Pries, 172. 5.

combining new architecture with old so as

Ochsner, Lionel H. Pries, Architect, Artist,

8. R. H. Shreve, “The Empire State Building

Harmon,” Architectural Record 90 (August

266

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 266

1979), 23. 3.

Interview with Minoru Yamasaki, April

University Press, 1978), 149n14. 4.

City Plan Commission of St. Louis, Comprehensive City Plan (St. Louis, Mo.:

NOTES TO PAGES 2–19

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

City Plan Commission of St. Louis, 1947),

Dimensions in Housing Design,” and Hunt,

5; “St. Louis Mayors,” St. Louis Public

Blueprint for Disaster, chap. 5.

Library. 5.

John E. Cowles, Airports: Design,

Public Housing?,” 229, and “Slum Surgery

Construction and Management (New York:

American public housing. Some of the

in St. Louis,” Architectural Forum 94 (April

McGraw-Hill, 1946), 203. Aesthetics are

more insightful studies include Eugene J.

1951): 131.

ignored in Walter Prokosch, “Airport

11. James Bailey, “The Case History of a

Design: Its Architectural Aspects,”

Policymaking: Programmed Failure in

Failure,” Architectural Record 123

Architectural Record 109 (January 1951):

Public Housing (Columbia: University of

(December 1965): 23. In comparison,

112–17; the Forum quotation is in “New

Missouri Press, 1979); D. Bradford Hunt,

Cochran Gardens—which did not suffer

Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of

the same subsequent demise as

Chicago Public Housing (Chicago:

Pruitt-Igoe—had a density of thirty-four

the Terminal: St. Louis’s Lambert Field,

University of Chicago Press, 2009);

units per acre.

1925–1974” (Ph.D. diss., Kansas State

Lawrence J. Vale, From Puritans to Projects: Public Housing and Public Neighbors (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009); and Nicholas

12. Miles L. Colean, “Working with Washington on Housing,” Architectural Record 108 (September 1950): 137. 13. Lawrence J. Vale, “Standardizing Public

Thinking on Airport Terminals,” 133. 21. Charles Clifton Bonwell, “Technology and

University, 1975), 109. 22. Hellmuth, Yamasaki and Leinweber, “Report to the Department of Public Utilities, City Airport Commission, and

Dagen Bloom, Fritz Umbach, and

Housing,” in Eran Ben-Joseph and Terry S.

Board of Public Service” (St. Louis, Mo.,

Lawrence J. Vale, eds., Public Housing

Szold, eds., Regulating Place: Standards

1952), 10. See also Joseph R.

Myths: Perception, Reality, and Social

and the Shaping of Urban America (New

Passonneau, ed., The Story of a Building:

Policy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University

York: Routledge, 2005), 83–85; Housing

The Nature of an Architect’s Work and His

Press, 2015). On St. Louis’s early housing

and Home Finance Agency, Public

Role in Society Traced in the Development

projects, see Joseph Heathcott, “‘In the

Housing Administration, Low Rent Public

of One Building (St. Louis, Mo.:

Nature of a Clinic’: The Design of Early

Housing: Planning, Design, and

Washington University School of

Public Housing in St. Louis,” Journal of the

Construction for Economy (Washington,

Society of Architectural Historians 70

D.C.: Public Housing Administration,

23. Passonneau, Story of a Building.

(March 2011): 82–103. The Darst

1950); “Two Housing Projects,”

24. See Eric M. Hines and David P. Billington,

quotation is from “Aldermanic Row Delays

Progressive Architecture 34 (December

“Anton Tedesko and the Introduction of

Inauguration; Darst Calls Slums City’s Big

1953): 65.

Thin Shell Concrete Roofs in the United

Problem,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 19,

14. “Slum Surgery in St. Louis,” 135.

1949.

15. Eugene J. Meehan, Public Housing

6. For Cochran Gardens, see “Multi-Family

Policy—Convention versus Reality (New

Housing,” Architectural Record 115 (June

Brunswick, N.J.: Center for Urban Policy

1954): 170–91; and “High Apartments or

Research, 1975), 36.

Low?” Architectural Forum 96 (January

16. On Jim Crow St. Louis, see Joseph

Architecture, [c. 1953]).

States,” Journal of Structural Engineering 130 (November 2004): 1639–50. 25. Lawrence Lessing, “The Rise of Shells,” Architectural Forum 109 (July 1958): 111. 26. Maria E. Moreyra Garlock and David P. Billington, Félix Candela: Engineer, Builder,

1952): 100–117.

Heathcott, “Black Archipelago: Politics

Structural Artist (New Haven: Yale

“Multi-Family Housing,” 185.

and Civic Life in the Jim Crow City,” Journal

University Press, 2008), 167n9.

of Social History 38 (Spring 2005):

Yamasaki’s original drawing showed the

705–36.

interior vaults more like pointed arches and

8. Minoru Yamasaki, “High Buildings for Public Housing?” Journal of Housing 9 (July 1952): 226–32, 246; Yamasaki, “High-Rise or Low-Rise in Public Housing?” Journal of the AIA 18 (August

9.

Horace K. Glidden, Hervey F. Law, and

There is a voluminous literature on

Meehan, The Quality of Federal

7.

10. See, e.g., Yamasaki, “High Buildings for

20. Heino, “Designing the Large Terminal,” 83;

17. “Airport Terminal Buildings,” Progressive Architecture 34 (May 1953): 70. 18. “New Thinking on Airport Terminals,”

the entire vault more fan-shaped than the finished building. 27. “Minoru Yamasaki lecture, 1959 Aug. 13,”

1952): 74–80; Yamasaki, “The Case for

Architectural Forum 97 (November 1952):

transcript, Smithsonian Archives of

the Multi-Story Building in Urban

130–43; Albert F. Heino, “Designing the

American Art, http://www.aaa.si.edu/

Housing,” undated ms., box 3, folder 7,

Large Terminal,” Architectural Record 97

collections/minoru-yamasaki-lec-

MYP.

(April 1945): 80, 82. The editors of

ture-10742. Interestingly, while the “great

“High Apartments or Low?”; Yamasaki,

Progressive Architecture, discussing the

room” concept of Yamasaki’s airport may

“High Buildings for Public Housing?” See

same options, refused to encourage one

have been inspired by Grand Central’s

also “Apartments (Building Types Study

system over the other. See “Airport

lobby, its vaulted forms more closely

#146),” Architectural Record 112

Terminal Buildings.”

resemble the Oyster Bar in the station’s

(February 1949): 109–23; “Apartments

19. Heino, “Designing the Large Terminal,” 82;

lower level. 28. Celia Bertoia, The Life and Work of Harry

(Building Types Study #165),”

“New Thinking on Airport Terminals”

Architectural Record 108 (September

Architectural Forum 97 (November 1952):

1950): 123–47; and Julian Whittlesey,

130, 133. The Progressive Architecture

“New Dimensions in Housing Design,”

editors described the airport similarly: “It

Progressive Architecture 32 (April 1951):

is basically a machine to facilitate the

Business and Government on View at

58; on the architecture of Chicago’s Public

transfer of passengers from the ground to

Museum,” press release, February 27,

Housing Authority, see Whittlesey, “New

the air and vice-versa.” “Airport Terminal

1957, https://www.moma.org/momaorg/

Bertoia: The Man, the Artist, the Visionary (Atglen, Pa.: Schiffer, 2015). 29. Museum of Modern Art, “Buildings for

Buildings,” 88.

267

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 267

NOTES TO PAGES 19–36

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

shared/pdfs/docs/press_archives/2159/

45. Interviews with former Yamasaki

12. A consulate is located outside the capital

employees and documents in the

city, whereas an embassy houses the

Yamasaki Papers confirm that he was

offices of the ambassador—the

Hundred Years of Architecture in America

frequently in ill-health even after the

president’s chief representative to the

(New York: Reinhold, 1957); “Notable

surgery and suffered from stomach

country—and is located in the capital.

Modern Buildings,” Life, June 3, 1957, 60.

problems for the rest of his life.

Jane C. Loeffler recounts the story of the

releases/MOMA_1957_0017.pdf. 30. Frederick Gutheim, 1857–1957: One

U.S. embassy building program in her

31. “Programming and Design of the U.S. Military Personnel Records Center,”

CHAPTER 3. A NEW DIRECTION

excellent book The Architecture of

Architectural Record 120 (August 1955):

1.

Russell Bourne, “American Architect

Diplomacy: Building America’s Embassies

Yamasaki,” Architectural Forum 109

(New York: Princeton University Press,

(August 1958): 166 (emphasis added).

1998). For more on Belluschi’s role and his

Minoru Yamasaki, “Toward an Architecture

promotion of Yamasaki, see Meredith L.

of Enjoyment,” Architectural Record 118

Clausen, Pietro Belluschi: Modern

(August 1955): 145–46.

American Architect (Cambridge, Mass.:

140–47. 32. “Addition: Elementary Classrooms for a Parochial School,” Progressive

2.

Architecture 35 (May 1954): 121–25. 33. Anne Getz Wormer, Century: The History of University Liggett School, 1878–1978

3.

See, e.g., Minoru Yamasaki, “A Humanist

MIT Press, 1994). 13. Journal articles on the project cite Takeshi

(Grosse Pointe Woods, Mich.: University

Architecture for America and Its Relation

Liggett School, 1981), 172.

to the Traditional Architecture of Japan,”

“Ken” Nakajima as landscape architect for

RIBA Journal 68 (January 1961): 94–99.

the Kobe consulate, but correspondence

Horiguchi was a pioneer in synthesizing

of 1957–58 in the Yamasaki Papers

traditional Japanese architecture with

indicates that Lawrence Halprin had some

34. Frank Lopez to Yamasaki, June 19, 1956, box 4, folder 17, MYP. 35. See Suzanne Burrey, “Noticed the New Haven?” Industrial Design 3 (February

modernist principles in the thirties and

1956): 69.

beyond.

36. “ACI 54th Annual Convention,” notes for

4.

Min Myungkee, “Japanese/American

hand in the garden design. 14. Louis Tendler, “Kobe Award Is Tribute to Detroiter,” Detroit News, April 26, 1954. 15. Araidashi (“to reveal something by

speech, February 1958, box 26, folder 12,

Architecture: A Century of Cultural

MYP.

Exchange” (Ph.D. diss., University of

washing the surface”) plaster is sometimes

Washington, 1999), 212. In 1955 the first

called “washout style.” “Tanoshii

popular books on Japanese architecture

Japanese,” http://www.tanoshiiJapanese.

37. Robert Sargent Shriver Jr. to Yamasaki, February 25 1960, box 8, folder 25, MYP. 38. “A House Hidden in the Woods,”

by Western authors appeared; in addition

Architectural Forum 95 (December 1951):

to Arthur Drexler, The Architecture of

101.

Japan (New York: Museum of Modern Art,

com. 16. Yamasaki, “Humanist Architecture,” 97; “A Handsome Outpost in Japan,” Architectural Forum 108 (February 1958): 72.

39. “House Hidden in the Woods,” 107, 105.

1955), see Robert Treat Paine and

40. Dan Urban Kiley and Jane Amidon, Dan

Alexander Soper, The Art and Architecture

17. “Handsome Outpost in Japan,” 70–75; “A

Kiley: The Complete Works of America’s

of Japan (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin

Compliment to Traditional Japanese

Master Landscape Architect (New York:

Books, 1955), and Norman F. Carver, Form

Architecture,” Architectural Record 123

Bulfinch, 1999), 206.

and Space of Japanese Architecture

(February 1958): 157–64. On the critical

(Tokyo: Shokokusha, 1955).

reception, see Sanae Nakatani,

See Shelia K. Johnson, The Japanese

“Blueprints for New Designs: Japanese

to William Houseman, September 30,

through American Eyes (Stanford, Calif.:

American Cultural Ambassadorship

1957, box 5, folder 15, MYP.

Stanford University Press, 1988).

during the Cold War,” Journal of Asian

41. Yamasaki to James S. Hornbeck, August 28 1956, box 4, folder 17, MYP; Yamasaki

42. Thomas H. Creighton and Katherine M.

5.

6. Bourne, “American Architect Yamasaki,”

Ford, Contemporary Houses Evaluated by

166; Ada Louise Huxtable, “Pools, Domes,

Their Owners (New York: Reinhold, 1961),

Yamasaki—Debate,” New York Times

131. 43. “An Architect Sums Up Three Japanese

7.

The lone exception—Anderson, Beckwith

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Beauty,” in The

& Haible—would later be offered an

Conduct of Life (Boston: Ticknor and

Press Roto Magazine, December 26,

Fields, 1860), 258–59. 8. “Transcript of Video-Tape Conference with

the clients of all three houses were serious

Mr. Minoru Yamasaki,” 1974, box 14, folder

art collectors.

16, Minoru Yamasaki Papers, Archives of

44. “A Conversation with Yamasaki,”

Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State

Architectural Forum 111 (July 1959): 118; “Yamasaki: Architect to the World,” Dodge

9.

Diplomacy, 200. 20. Minoru Yamasaki, “Where Do We Go from Monthly Bulletin (May 1955): 29;

148.

garages remodeled.” Yamasaki, Life, 25.

1956, 340; Loeffler, Architecture of

Here?” Michigan Society of Architects

He often explained the reason he had

calling and asking to have their kitchens or

London,” Architects’ Journal, April 12,

Cranston Jones, Architecture: Today and Tomorrow (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961),

because “I don’t want people driving by,

embassy in Taipei. 19. “Winning Design for American Embassy in

University (hereafter MYP).

Adventurer, September–October 1974, 5. never placed a sign on his office was

351–74. 18. Loeffler, Architecture of Diplomacy, 200.

Magazine, November 25, 1962, 150.

Ideas for Your Next House,” Detroit Free 1954. In addition to these shared traits,

American Studies 19 (October 2016):

10. “A Conversation with Yamasaki,” Architectural Forum 111 (July 1959): 118. 11. Minoru Yamasaki, “Untitled,” Dicta 2 (January 1963): 4; Yamasaki, “Humanist

Yamasaki, “Untitled,” 4. 21. Minoru Yamasaki, undated manuscript, box 4, folder 13, MYP. 22. The triangular spandrels covered triangular ducts for ventilation and electrical wiring.

Architecture,” 665.

268

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 268

NOTES TO PAGES 37–71

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

Education 13 (Autumn 1958): 48. On the

significance of their primary function, the

Architectural Forum 104 (April 1956): 141;

campus plan, see also “Conversation with

mannerism of his vocabulary is apparent.”

“Matrix: American Architecture in World

Yamasaki”; and Charles K. Hyde, “The

Jürgen Joedicke, Architecture since 1945

Perspective,” Architectural Review 121

Physical Development History of the

(New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969),

(May 1957): 39; Yamasaki to H. Busso von

Campus of Wayne State University,

Busse, March 7, 1956, box 3, folder 23,

Detroit, Michigan” (1993), Walter Reuther

MYP.

Library of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne

Reyner Banham not only to criticize the

State University Archives.

perceived overemphasis on form or

23. “New US Embassy for London,”

24. Minoru Yamasaki, A Life in Architecture (New York: Weatherhill, 1979), 24. 25. Yamasaki, Life, 26. On Meathe and

35. Hyde, “Physical Development History of the Campus,” 196.

decoration by these architects (and Eero Saarinen) but also to imply an aspect of

Kessler, see “Michigan Modern: Design

36. “Conversation with Yamasaki,” 116.

effeminacy for doing so (see discussion in

That Shaped America,” http://www.

37. See, e.g., “Two Sparkling Stones,”

chapter 5). See Reyner Banham,

michiganmodern.org/designers/

Architectural Forum 105 (July 1956):

“Monument with Frills,” New Statesman,

meathe-kessler-associates.

112–17; “Minoru Yamasaki,” Architectural

December 10, 1960, 918–20; Jordy,

26. Quotation from “McGregor Fund,” www.

Record 121 (May 1957): 167–82;

“Formal Image: USA,” 163. 42. Thomas H. Creighton, “The Sixties: A P/A

mcgregorfund.org. For information on the

“Yamasaki’s Serene Campus Center”;

McGregors, see Philip Parker Mason,

“Conversation with Yamasaki”; Cranston

Symposium on the State of Architecture:

Tracy W. McGregor: Humanitarian,

Jones, Architecture Today and Tomorrow

Part I,” Progressive Architecture 42 (March

Philanthropist, and Detroit Civic Leader

(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961); and

(Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University

“Architectural Details 4: Minoru Yamasaki,”

Press, 2008).

Architectural Record 136 (September

Yorker, October 11, 1947, 109; “What Is

1964): 169–84.

Happening to Modern Architecture?”

27. McGregor Fund materials indicate that Yamasaki’s project was originally titled the

38. “Yamasaki’s Serene Campus Center,” 79;

1961): 133. 43. Lewis Mumford, “The Skyline,” New

Museum of Modern Art Bulletin 15 (Spring 1948): 4.

“Tracy W. McGregor Community

Douglas Haskell, “Architecture and

Conference Center.” At some point before

Popular Taste,” Architectural Forum 109

construction was completed Tracy’s name

(August 1958): 107; “Building for

Sensualism II,” Progressive Architecture 40

was dropped and the building became a

Learning,” Time, November 17, 1958).

(October 1959): 187; see also “The New

memorial to both McGregors. McGregor

Writers like Robin Boyd and Edgar

Sensualism,” Progressive Architecture 40

Fund Minutes, November 8, 1954,

Kaufmann Jr. attempted to define

“McGregor Community Center,” folder 14,

appropriate uses for modern ornament,

McGregor Fund Archives.

either welcoming decoration back or

Architecture,” Harper’s (September

judging its revival inevitable. See Robin

1959): 48; Boyd, “Engineering

Detroit Free Press, April 16, 1972;

Boyd, “Decoration Rides Again,”

Excitement,” Architectural Review 124

“Yamasaki’s Serene Campus Center,”

Architectural Record 122 (September

(November 1958): 308; Boyd, “Has

Architectural Forum 109 (April 1958): 79.

1957): 183–86; Edgar Kaufmann Jr.,

Success Spoiled Modern Architecture?”

“Architectural Coxcombry or the Desire for

Architectural Forum 111 (July 1959):

28. William Birenbaum, “Designing Detroit,”

29. For examples of DuSell’s work, see www. dleedusell.com. 30. Lilian Jackson Braun, “Gateway to a

Ornament,” Perspecta 5 (1959): 4–15; and Douglas Haskell, “Ornament Rides

University,” Detroit Free Press, September

Again,” Architectural Forum 108 (April

28, 1958.

1958): 85–86.

31. Vincent J. Scully Jr., Modern Architecture:

39. Thomas H. Creighton, “The New

44. Thomas H. Creighton, “The New

(September 1959): 140–47. 45. Robin Boyd, “The Counter-Revolution in

98–103. 46. Robin Boyd, “The New Vision in Architecture,” Harper’s, July 1961, 81. 47. Mary Mix Foley, “The Debacle of Popular Taste,” Architectural Forum 106 (February

The Architecture of Democracy (New York:

Sensualism,” Progressive Architecture 40

1957): 244, 248. For a sense of the

George Braziller, 1961), 36; “Wayne

(September 1959): 145; William H. Jordy,

arguments surrounding populism and

Conference Building, Wayne State

“The Formal Image: USA,” Architectural

taste from this time, see Clement

University,” box 5, folder 16, MYP.

Review 127 (March 1960): 160; Vincent J.

Greenberg, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,”

Scully Jr., Modern Architecture: The

Partisan Review 6 (1939): 34–49; Russell

during the design process; an early model,

Architecture of Democracy (New York:

Lynes, “Highbrow, Lowbrow, Middlebrow,”

for example, depicted the exterior end

George Braziller, 1961), 36.

Harper’s, February 1949, 19–28; and

32. This correspondence became manifest

walls in black stone (probably marble) in

40. Colin Rowe, “Mannerism and Modern

Dwight Macdonald, “Masscult and

contrast to the lighter-colored interior.

Architecture,” Architectural Review 107

Midcult,” in Against the American Grain

Yamasaki to T. Mizunoe and Masakazu

(May 1950): 289–99; John Jacobus,

(New York: Random House, 1962). On

Koyama, October 10, 1956, box 4, folder

“Minoru Yamasaki,” in Encyclopedia of

populism and architecture at midcentury,

6, MYP.

Modern Architecture, ed. Gerd Hatje

see Alice T. Friedman, American Glamour

(London: Thames and Hudson, 1963),

and the Evolution of Modern Architecture

33. Harry Salsinger, “Civic Leaders Attend

(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010).

Wayne Center Rites,” Detroit News, May

309; Paul Rudolph, “What Is Quality?”

23, 1958; “Yamasaki’s Serene Campus

(1963), in Writings on Architecture (New

48. Peter Blake, God’s Own Junkyard: The

Center,” 80.

Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 95;

Planned Deterioration of America’s

“In exploiting recognized means of

Landscapes (New York: Holt, Rinehart and

[structural] expression and disavowing the

Winston, 1964), 142.

34. Minoru Yamasaki, “The Plan for Wayne University,” Journal of Architectural

269

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 269

148. 41. “Ballet School” was a term invented by

NOTES TO PAGES 71–87

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

49. Ada Louise Huxtable, “Pop Architecture:

Guthard, interview by author, November

Roofs,” Architectural Forum 102 (February

19, 2014.

Here to Stay,” New York Times, October 4,

1955): 156–57; George Winter and

1964.

Minglung Pei, “Hipped Plate Construction,”

24. “Architectural Details: Minoru Yamasaki,”

ACI Journal 43 (January 1947): 505–32.

Architectural Record 136 (September

50. Haskell, “Architecture and Popular Taste,”

1964): 169.

10. “P/A Design Awards Seminar III,”

106. 51. Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1966), 103. 52. John Jacobus, Twentieth-Century

Progressive Architecture 38 (August

25. Yamasaki to Richard Sullivan, June 29, 1962, reproduced in Anthony W. Robins,

1957): 145. 11. “P/A Design Awards Seminar III,” 147–48.

The World Trade Center, rev. ed. (New

12. Yamasaki to Burton Holmes and Barbara

York: Thompson and Columbus, 2011),

Architecture: The Middle Years, 1940–65

Melnick, June 23, 1960, box 8, folder 19,

(New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1966),

MYP; Cranston Jones, Architecture Today

153.

and Tomorrow (New York: McGraw-Hill,

83–86. 26. Morris Ketchum Jr. to Yamasaki, February 19, 1959, box 7, folder 23, MYP.

1961), 151.

CHAPTER 4. STAYING THE COURSE 1.

2. 3.

Review 121 (May 1957): 368; Minoru

(October 1958): 122; Edgar Kaufmann to

Brain: Neuroscience, Creativity, and

Yamasaki, “I Am for Delight in

Yamasaki, October 8, 1956, box 4, folder

Architecture (New York: John C. Wiley and

Architecture,” Progressive Architecture 40

6, MYP; “The Road to Xanadu,” Time,

Sons, 2011), chap. 6; Geoffrey Scott, The

(March 1959): 152.

January 18, 1963, 8; Yamasaki to Naomi

Architecture of Humanism (1914; reprint,

“Open-Face Privacy for a Clinic,”

Pascal, August 2, 1968, box 9, folder 24,

Architectural Forum 102 (June 1955): 136.

MYP.

“Text of Address by David P. Reynolds Headquarters Building,” box 20, folder 6,

5.

Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State

Archives of American Art, www.aaa.si.edu/

University (hereafter MYP).

collections/interviews /

Minoru Yamasaki, “Toward an Architecture for Enjoyment,” Architectural Record 118 (August 1955): 142–49.

3.

Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (London: Warburg Institute, University of London, 1949).

4.

minoru-yamasaki-interview-6235.

See, e.g., Paul Zucker, “The Humanistic Approach to Modern Architecture,”

Architecture in America: Honor Awards of

16. “Machine Made America,” 301.

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 2

the American Institute of Architects

17. “Individual Theories of Design,” AIA Journal

(Winter 1942–43): 21–26; Lewis

(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University

32 (August 1959): 59. For a brief history

Mumford, “Skyline,” New Yorker, October

Press, 1961), 54.

of precast concrete in the United States,

11, 1947, 106; Alvar Aalto, “The

Ada Louis Huxtable, “Pools, Domes,

see Sidney Freedman, “Architectural

Humanizing of Architecture,” Technology

Yamasaki—Debate,” New York Times

Precast Concrete,” in Twentieth-Century

Review 43 (November 1940): 14–16. See

Sunday Magazine, November 25, 1962,

Building Materials, ed. Thomas C. Jester

also Peter Blake, “Architecture and the

158; Hicks Stone, Edward Durell Stone: A

(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995). Conversation with Yamasaki,” Architectural

Jr., “The Precisionist Strain,” Art in America

Forum 111 (July 1959): 116.

Place to Live: The Crisis of the Cities (New York: Dell, 1967), 218–19.

Individual,” Architectural Forum 108 (June

18. “Oral History Interview with Yamasaki”; “A

(New York: Rizzoli, 2011); Vincent J. Scully 48 (Fall 1960): 52; Wolf von Eckardt, A

1958): 113–17. 5.

Toward a Redefinition of Style,” Perspecta:

19. “New Home for WSU College of Education,”

The Yale Architectural Journal 4 (1957):

Inside Wayne, March 1, 1961. 20. Harry Salsinger, “WSU ‘Palace’ Soon to

Vincent J. Scully Jr., “Modern Architecture:

83. 6. On postwar art and Cold War politics, see

House All of College of Education”;

Serge Guilbaut, How New York Stole the

Forum 104 (June 1956): 110.

Douglas Haskell, “Architecture and

Idea of Modern Art: Abstract

Yamasaki to Walter McQuade, May 8,

Popular Taste,” Architectural Forum 109

Expressionism, Freedom, and the Cold War

1956, box 4, folder 15, MYP.

(August 1958): 106; Roger Burchard and

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

6. “New Operations, New Face,” Architectural

8. “Some of the older forms such as Gothic

Albert Bush-Brown, The Architecture of

1985).

Arch, Roman Arch, or the Moslem Arch,

America: A Social and Cultural History

are really marvelous systems of

(Boston: Little, Brown, 1966): 416; “Oral

of State Bulletin (Washington, D.C.: Office

construction. They work much better in

History Interview with Yamasaki.”

of Public Communication, Bureau of Public

concrete and steel than they work in stone, obviously, because they didn’t have the materials, and are much stronger because

21. “Yamasaki: Architect to the World,” Dodge Adventurer, September–October 1974, 8. 22. Minoru Yamasaki, A Life in Architecture

concrete is much stronger than stone.”

(New York: Weatherhill, 1979), 26.

Meadowbrook interview, unedited

Wadowski died in 1969 at age forty-one.

transcript, 1974, box 14, folder 16, MYP. 9.

15. “Oral History Interview with Minoru

Harry Francis Mallgrave, The Architect’s

New York: W. W. Norton, 1969), 159, 174. 2.

Architecture,” 155. Yamasaki, August 1959,” Smithsonian

Cited in Wolf von Eckardt, ed., Mid-Century

1.

14. Yamasaki, “I Am for Delight in

Minoru Yamasaki Papers, Archives of

Son’s Untold Story of a Legendary Architect

7.

CHAPTER 5. MODERN HUMANISM

Potentials,” Progressive Architecture 39

Dedicating New Great Lakes Region

4.

13. “ACI Headquarters Exploits Concrete’s

“Machine Made America,” Architectural

23. John Gallagher, Yamasaki in Detroit: A

7.

U.S. Department of State, The Department

Affairs, 1956), 582. 8. Minoru Yamasaki, “I Am for Delight in Architecture,” Progressive Architecture 40 (March 1959): 155. 9. Minoru Yamasaki, “A Humanist Architecture,” Architect and Building News 218

“Steel-Saving School Has Zig-Zag Roof,”

Search for Serenity (Detroit, Mich.: Wayne

(November 1960): 665–66.

Architectural Forum 95 (August 1951):

State University Press, 2015), 29; Henry

10. Minoru Yamasaki, “The Morality of

132–33; “Folded Plate Shell Concrete

270

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 270

Modern Architecture,” March 14, 1956,

NOTES TO PAGES 88–126

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

box 26, folder 10, Minoru Yamasaki

20. Ada Louise Huxtable, “Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Buildings?” New York Times,

Progressive Architecture 44 (November

Affairs, Wayne State University (hereafter

May 29, 1966.

1963): 72.

MYP). 11. Ada Louise Huxtable, “He Adds Elegance to Modern Architecture,” New York Times Magazine, May 24, 1964, 18; she was

21. Paul Heyer, Architects on Architecture:

32. Henry Guthard, author interview,

New Directions in America (New York:

November 19, 2014. On North Shore, see

Walker, 1966), 190.

“Six New Projects by Yamasaki,”

22. Ada Louise Huxtable, “What Is Your

Architectural Record 130 (July 1961):

writing about Philip Johnson’s

Favorite Building?” New York Times

125–40, and “A Synagogue by Yamasaki,”

Congregation Kneses Tifereth synagogue.

Magazine, May 21, 1961.

Architectural Record 135 (September

12. Vincent Scully, “Archetype and Order in Recent American Architecture,” Art in America 42 (December 1954): 64; Scully, “The Precisionist Strain,” Art in America 48

23. “Translation of an Article by Yomiuri Shimbun, Evening Edition, January 10, 1969,” box 26, folder 22, MYP. 24. For the Medical Society building, see

1964): 191–96. 33. Minoru Yamasaki, A Life in Architecture (New York: Weatherhill, 1979), 81. 34. “Dominant Aspects of the Jewish

(Fall 1960): 46–53; Colin Rowe, “The

“Offices under a Vaulted Roof,” Progressive

Tradition,” undated ms., North Shore

Mathematics of the Ideal Villa” (1947), in

Architecture 43 (February 1962):

Synagogue Congregation Archives;

The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and

140–44.

“Minutes of the Architect Selection

Other Essays (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1982). 13. Jules Langsner, “Neo-Classicism?

25. For more detail on this history, see Robert

Committee Meeting Held at the Temple,

P. Grathwol and Donita M. Moorhus,

April 21, 1959,” North Shore Synagogue

Bricks, Sand, and Marble: U.S. Army Corps

Congregation Archives.

Ornamented Modern? The Quest for

of Engineers Construction in the

35. Percival Goodman, “A Guide for Planning

Ornament in American Architecture,”

Mediterranean and Middle East,

the Synagogue Building,” AIA Journal 37

Zodiac 4 (1959): 70.

1947–1991 (Washington, D.C.: Center of

14. William H. Jordy, “The Formal Image:

Military History and Corps of Engineers,

USA,” Architectural Review 127 (March

U.S. Army, 2009); Nate Herring, “A

1960): 157–65.

Lasting Legacy: The Dhahran Airfield and

(May 1962): 74. 36. For Halprin, see Lawrence Halprin, A Life Spent Changing Places (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). 37. “Fact Sheet, North Shore Congregation

15. “Lofty Portico—A Termination and a

Civil Air Terminal,” May 23, 2014, U.S.

Transition,” Architectural Record 138

Army Corps of Engineers, Middle East

(December 1965): 146–49; “A Place for

District, http://www.tam.usace.army.mil/

Pedestrians,” Time, January 22, 1965;

Media/NewsStories/tabid/12569/

“Northwestern National Life Insurance

Article/485031/a-lasting-legacy-the-

Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,

Company,” Interiors 125 (January 1966):

dhahran-airfield-and-civil-air-terminal.aspx.

(Baltimore: Penguin, 1963), 430. Andreas

96–103.

26. “Oral History Interview with Minoru

Israel,” undated (post-1972), North Shore Synagogue Congregation Archives. 38. Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Architecture:

Huyssen described how Western society

Yamasaki, August 1959,” Smithsonian

has associated “inferior” mass culture with

Archives of American Art, http://www.aaa.

women and “authentic” culture with men,

si.edu/collections/interviews/minoru-ya-

complicating the gender-culture-decora-

Move for Slated Yamasaki Edifice,”

masaki-interview-6235; “Minoru Yamasaki

tion relation even more. Huyssen, After the

Princetonian, September 28, 1962;

lecture, 1959 Aug. 13,” transcript,

Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture,

“Moving Woodrow Wilson Hall for Modern

Smithsonian Archives of American Art,

Postmodernism (Bloomington: Indiana

School,” Princetonian, May 31, 1962.

http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/

16. Yamasaki to Jean Labatut, May 8, 1957, box 5, folder 4, MYP. 17. John H. Glick, “Old Wilson Building to

18. On Robertson Hall, see “University Building by Minoru Yamasaki,” Arts and

minoru-yamasaki-lecture-10742. 27. Grathwol and Moorhus, Bricks, Sand, and

Architecture 80 (June 1963): 14–15, 30;

Marble, 165–66; Huxtable, “Pools,

“Structure Plays Leading Role in Latest

Domes, Yamasaki—Debate,” 150.

Yamasaki Designs,” Architectural Record

28. The Agha Khan, “Introduction of the Aga

University Press, 1986), chap. 3. 39. Reyner Banham, “Monument with Frills,” New Statesman, December 10, 1960, 920. 40. William H. Jordy, “The Mies-less Johnson,” Architectural Forum 11 (September 1959):

134 (December 1963): 103–10; and

Khan Award for Architecture,” (1979), in

115–17; Jordy, “Humanism in

“Formality and Colonnades for Princeton,”

Udo Kultermann, Contemporary

Contemporary Architecture: Tough- and

Architectural Record 138 (October 1965):

Architecture in the Arab States (New York:

Tender-Minded,” Journal of Architectural

140–43.

McGraw-Hill, 1999), 4n13.

Education 15 (Summer 1960): 7; Vincent

19. “Formality and Colonnades for Princeton,”

29. The terminal was covered in “Civil Air

J. Scully Jr., Modern Architecture: The

140; Huxtable, “Pools, Domes,

Terminal,” Architectural Record 125 (May

Architecture of Democracy (New York:

Yamasaki—Debate,” New York Times

1959): 183–88, and “Yamasaki’s

George Braziller, 1961), 36; Alan Temko,

Magazine, November 25, 1962, 37. In an

Dhahran Airport” Architectural Record

Eero Saarinen (New York: George

abrupt reversal, Huxtable would

133 (March 1963): 145–148; see also

Braziller, 1962), 33; John Jacobus,

pronounce the building one of the

“The Great Concrete Architects—Minoru

Twentieth-Century Architecture: The

“vacuous vulgarities” spoiling Princeton’s

Yamasaki,” Concrete Construction

Middle Years, 1940–65 (New York:

campus a decade later. Huxtable,

(September 1969): 337–41.

Frederick A. Praeger, 1966), 153, 208;

“Princeton Institute: At the Head of Its

30. Building committee minutes, April 21,

Class,” New York Times, September 22,

1959, North Shore Congregation

1972.

Archives.

271

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 271

31. “The Architecture of Synagogues,”

Papers, Archives of Labor and Urban

Wolf von Eckardt, A Place to Live: The Crisis of the Cities (New York: Dell, 1967),

NOTES TO PAGES 126–156

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

218–19; Huxtable, “Who’s Afraid of the

Buildings Are Useful, and That’s About

Big, Bad Buildings?”

All,” Detroit News, May 6, 1958; Yamasaki to M. Justin Herman, February 7, 1964,

41. Carter Wiseman, Twentieth-Century

Mich.: Meadow Brook Art Gallery and Oakland University, 1974). 2.

Yamasaki to Ralph T. McElvenny, January

American Architecture: The Buildings and

cited in Oda, “Remaking the ‘Gateway to

24, 1959, box 6, folder 22, MYP. Category

Their Makers (New York: W. W. Norton,

the Pacific,’” 173.

B (“interesting, but not essential”) included

2000), 186–87; Philip Nobel, Sixteen

54. Sanae Natakani, “Minoru Yamasaki,”

the Inland Steel (SOM, 1955–58) and

Acres: Architecture and the Outrageous

Densho Encyclopedia, http://encyclo-

Prudential Life Insurance Buildings (Naess

Struggle for the Future of Ground Zero

pedia.densho.org.

& Murphy, 1955) in Chicago, the Alcoa

(New York: Macmillan, 2005), 24; Hicks

55. Bourne, “American Architect Yamasaki,”

(Harrison & Abramovitz, 1950–52) and

Stone, Edward Durell Stone: A Son’s

166; Minoru Yamasaki, “Bread of Rice

Mellon U.S. Steel Buildings (Harrison &

Untold Story of a Legendary Architect (New

Grains,” undated ms., box 28, folder 18,

Abramovitz, 1951) in Pittsburgh, and

York: Random House, 2011), 280.

MYP.

Dallas’s Republic National Bank (Harrison

42. Scully, Modern Architecture, 36; “The

56. Oral history of Ben Honda, interviewed by

& Abramovitz, 1954). Thus almost half of

Road to Xanadu,” Time, January 18, 1963,

Betty J. Blum, 2001, Ernest R. Graham

the skyscrapers he recommended to

63. See also Jürgen Joedicke, Architecture

Study Center for Architectural Drawings,

McElvenny were designed by Harrison &

since 1945 (New York: Frederick A.

Department of Architecture, Art Institute

Abramovitz, the firm he had briefly worked

Praeger, 1969), 148, who claimed that

of Chicago, http://digital-libraries.saic.

Yamasaki was “losing his way in

edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/

mannerisms.”

caohp/id/6431/rec/1, pp. 16, 155.

the X-shaped towers intended for the

57. Yamasaki to Tad Hirota and Mas Satow,

Gratiot Redevelopment Project. See

43. Huxtable, “Pools, Domes, Yamasaki,”

April 2, 1974, box 13, folder 23, MYP.

36–37, 150, 152, 158; Huxtable, “Minoru Yamasaki’s Recent Buildings,” Art in

for in 1944. 3.

“Redevelopment f.o.b. Detroit,”

58. John Morris Dixon, “Star-chitects of the

Architectural Forum 102 (March 1955):

1950s,” Docomomo New York/Tri-State

America 50 (Winter 1962): 49.

The Linwood Arms model is very similar to

116–25.

44. Huxtable, “Pools, Domes, Yamasaki,” 152.

Newsletter (Winter 2007): 4–5. See, e.g.,

45. Huxtable, “Pools, Domes, Yamasaki,” 152,

Cranston Jones, “Views Compared by

Yamasaki, August 1959,” transcript,

Leading Architects,” Architectural Forum

Smithsonian Archives of American Art,

105 (September 1956): 146–49, 168,

http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/

Food Grains’: Cold War Visions and

172, 176; “The Sixties: A P/A Symposium

interviews/minoru-yamasaki-inter-

Agrarian Fantasies in Independent India,”

on the State of Architecture,” Progressive

view-6235; “Minoru Yamasaki lecture,

in Decolonization and the Cold War:

Architecture 42 (March 1961): 122–33;

1959 Aug. 13,” transcript, Smithsonian

Negotiating Independence, ed. Leslie

(April 1961): 164–69; (May 1961):

Archives of American Art, http://www.aaa.

James and Elizabeth Leake (London:

136–41; Ian McCallum, Architecture USA

si.edu/collections/

Bloomsbury, 2015); Minoru Yamasaki, A

(New York: Reinhold, 1959); Jones,

Life in Architecture, first draft revisions,

Architecture Today and Tomorrow (New

June 30, 1978, box 22, folder 9, MYP.

York: McGraw-Hill, 1961); “Serenity and

Architectural Forum 111 (July 1959): 111;

Delight,” Time, Sept. 14, 1959.

“Yamasaki’s New Expression of ‘Aspiring

158. 46. Benjamin Siegel, “’Fantastic Quantities of

47. Minoru Yamasaki, interview by Virginia Harriman, August 1959.

4.

“Oral History Interview with Minoru

minoru-yamasaki-lecture-10742. 5.

59. David C. Mearns to Yamasaki, September

“A Conversation with Yamasaki,”

Verticality,’” Architectural Record 128

8, 1959, box 7, folder 11, MYP. Yamasaki

(August 1960): 142; “Oral History

Architectural Record 127 (May 1960):

resigned from the president’s council

Interview with Minoru Yamasaki, August

176.

before its recommendations were

1959.” Some of Yamasaki’s former

published. Huxtable reported that his

employees question whether he actually

48. “Golden Architecture Steals Show,”

49. “Soaring Ribbed Vaults to Dominate Yamasaki’s Design for Seattle Fair,”

action was a protest “when the possibility

Architectural Record 128 (August 1960):

of locating the cultural center on the

147–48; “Seattle Votes for Architecture,”

avenue faded and an unbroken line of

Architectural Record 130 (August 1961):

government buildings with an FBI fortress

99–106.

at its center began to take over.” Ada

had acrophobia. 6. “Oral History Interview with Minoru Yamasaki, August 1959.” 7.

David B. Carlson, “Yamasaki’s First Tower,” Architectural Forum 118 (May 1963): 112.

50. Yamasaki, Life, 70.

Louise Huxtable, “From a Candy Box, a

8. “Minoru Yamasaki lecture, 1959 Aug. 13.”

51. Scully, Modern Architecture, 36.

Tardy and Unpleasant Surprise,” New York

9.

52. Meredith Akemi Oda, “Remaking the

Times, August 22, 1965.

and Racial Redevelopment in San

CHAPTER 6. TALL BUILDINGS

Francisco, 1945–1970” (Ph.D. diss.,

1.

53. “Six New Projects by Yamasaki,”

John J. Andrews, “In Detroit’s Newest Office Building . . . Coordinated

‘Gateway to the Pacific’: Urban, Economic,

University of Chicago, 2010), 165.

Carlson, “Yamasaki’s First Tower,” 101;

Minoru Yamasaki, “A Life in Architecture,”

Engineering Elements,” Illuminating Engineering 56 (August 1961): 507–10.

first draft revision, 1978, box 6, folder 22,

10. Carlson, “Yamasaki’s First Tower,” 101.

Minoru Yamasaki Papers, Archives of

11. “Oral History Interview with Minoru

Architectural Record 130 (July 1961): 139

Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State

Yamasaki, August 1959”; Andrews, “In

(emphasis added); “Japanese Temple-

University (hereafter MYP). The exhibition

Detroit’s Newest Office Building.” For an

Style Structures Not Planned for New SF

was at the Meadowbrook Gallery in

overview of night lighting in modern

Japanese Center,” Nichi Bei Times,

Rochester, Michigan (1974). Minoru

architecture, see Dietrich Neumann, ed.,

January 27, 1961; William W. Lutz, “Our

Yamasaki: A Retrospective (Rochester,

272

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 272

NOTES TO PAGES 156–179

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

Architecture of Night: The Illuminated

himself called them “real structural arches

that had no thought in them.” James Glanz

Building (Munich: Prestel, 2002).

that are taking the whole exterior load.”

and Eric Lipton, City in the Sky: The Rise

12. Charles Jencks, Modern Movements in

Oral history of Edward Charles Bassett,

and Fall of the World Trade Center (New

Architecture (New York: Anchor, 1973),

interviewed by Betty J. Blum, Ernest R.

194–95; Carlson, “Yamasaki’s First

Graham Study Center for Architectural

Tower,” 112; Ada Louise Huxtable, “Pools,

Drawings, Department of Architecture,

Domes, Yamasaki—Debate,” New York

Art Institute of Chicago, http://

Times Magazine, November 25, 1962,

digital-libraries.saic.edu/cdm/ref/

33. Yamasaki, Life, 114, 112.

collection/caohp/id/235.

34. James Glanz and Eric Lipton, “The Height

152, 158. In addition to those articles cited above, see “Yamasaki Designs Tall Office

20. “Structure Plays Leading Role in Latest

Building with Precast Concrete Skin,”

Yamasaki Designs,” Architectural Record

Architectural Record 126 (July 1959):

134 (December 1963): 104; “Bearing

12–13; “Yama’s Lancet Windows:

Wall Expressed in a Skyscraper,”

Fabrication and Installation,” Progressive

Architectural Record 137 (February

Architecture 43 (March 1962): 186–87;

1965): 125.

James S. Hornbeck, “Yamasaki’s First

21. For a comprehensive bibliography of

Center,” unpublished ms., March 9, 1977, box 27, folder 10, MYP.

of Ambition: Part Three,” New York Times Magazine, September 8, 2002; Glanz and Lipton, City in the Sky, 359. 35. Minoru Yamasaki, untitled manuscript (1956), box 4, folder 13, MYP. 36. “The Road to Xanadu,” Time, January 18, 1963, 63. The Time cover story remains a

Skyscraper,” Architectural Record 133

contemporary publications on the World

rare event for architects and related

(May 1963): 143–50; “One Woodward

Trade Center up to the late 1980s, see

designers; since Yamasaki’s appearance

Avenue, Michigan Consolidate Gas

Robert A. M. Stern, Thomas Mellins, and

only three more stories have appeared

Company,” Michigan Society of Architects

David Fishman, New York, 1960:

(William Pereira, 1963; Buckminster

Monthly 37 (May 1963): 17–24; Priscilla

Architecture and Urbanism between the

Fuller, 1964; and Philip Johnson, 1979).

Ginsburg, “Michigan Consolidated Gas

Second World War and the Bicentennial

On architects’ publicity in Time and

Company,” Interiors 122 (June 1963):

(New York: Monacelli, 1997), 1233–

Architectural Forum, see Sarah M. Dreller,

65–71; “Architectural Details: 4’. Minoru

1234n2. My history borrows heavily from

“Architectural Forum, 1932–64: A Time

Yamasaki,” Architectural Record 136

Anthony W. Robins, The World Trade

Inc. Experiment in American Architecture

(September 1964): 169–84.

Center, rev. ed. (New York: Thompson and

and Journalism” (Ph.D. diss., University of

13. Joel R. Kramer, “Why Does It Hurt to Look

Columbus, 2011).

Illinois at Chicago, 2015). 37. “Statement by Minoru Yamasaki of Minoru

at William James Hall? Visual Arts

22. Robins, World Trade Center, 15–17.

Magazine Says It’s Out of Place Here,”

23. Robins, World Trade Center, 25.

Yamasaki and Associates,” undated

Harvard Summer News, July 8, 1966; Fran

24. For Belluschi, see Meredith L. Clausen,

manuscript, in Robins, World Trade Center, 92–93.

P. Hosken, “Scale in Cambridge,” Arts and

The Pan Am Building and the Shattering of

Architecture 83 (October 1966): 7. Some

the Modernist Dream (Cambridge, Mass.:

national press was also critical; see Donald

MIT Press, 2005), 277; on Pei, see Robins,

Artistically Considered” (1896), in Louis

Canty, “The Universities: Tall New

World Trade Center, 26. Minoru Yamasaki,

Sullivan: The Public Papers, ed. Robert

Symbols of Their Significance,”

A Life in Architecture (New York:

Twombly (Chicago: University of Chicago

Architectural Forum 120 (June 1964):

Weatherhill, 1979), 114.

114–23. Edward Reynolds to Yamasaki, April 19, 1960, box 8, folder 18, MYP. 14. “Syntax: The Contribution of the Curtain

25. The New York Port Authority may have

38. Louis H. Sullivan, “The Tall Office Building

Press, 1988), 108. 39. Yamasaki, Life, 32.

been prescient in this regard: Mies,

40. Glanz and Lipton, City in the Sky, 113.

Gropius, and Welton Becket would all die

41. Ada Louise Huxtable, “A New Era

Wall to a New Vernacular,” and “Machine

within seven months of one another in

Heralded: Architectural Virtue of Trade

Made America,” Architectural Review 121

1969—four years before the World Trade

Center Expected to Enhance City’s

(May 1957): 299–300, 308.

Center was finished.

Skyline,” New York Times, January 19,

26. Yamasaki to Richard C. Sullivan, June 29,

1964; Huxtable, “N.Y.C. Architectural Ups

Architectural Forum 111 (July 1959): 114;

1962, in Robins, World Trade Center,

and Downs,” New York Times, February 2,

“Minoru Yamasaki lecture, 1959 Aug. 13.”

85–86.

15. “A Conversation with Yamasaki,”

16. On DeWitt-Chestnut, see “Apartments:

27. World Trade Center: Evaluation of

1964. 42. See Glanz and Lipton, City in the Sky, chap.

The Problem Is Not Just More Space for

Architectural Firms, book 1 (New York: Port

4. Robins, World Trade Center, 42;

More People,” Architectural Record 139

of New York Authority, 1962), 21–22,

Meadowbrook interview, unedited

(January 1966): 160–61. On framed

cited in Robins, World Trade Center, 31.

transcript, 1974, box 14, folder 16, MYP;

tubes, see William J. LeMessurier, “The

28. Robins, World Trade Center, 29.

unedited interview transcript, 1974, box

Return of the Bearing Wall,” Architectural

29. Richard Roth, “High-Rise Down to Earth,”

14, folder 16, MYP. The Port Authority’s

Progressive Architecture 38 (June 1957):

archives were destroyed on September

Record 132 (July 1962): 168–71. 17. Huxtable, “Pools, Domes, Yamasaki,” 152.

196, 200; Stern, Mellins, and Fishman,

18. William H. Whyte, City: Rediscovering the

New York, 1960, 51. On Roth & Sons, see

Center (1988; reprint, Philadelphia:

Clauson, Pan Am Building, 274–276.

University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009),

30. Robins, World Trade Center, 83.

104.

31. Robert J. Karn, formerly of MYA, was

19. Some commentators have described these supports as columns, but Bassett

quoted as saying that these “extra” versions were “atrocious little schemes

273

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 273

York: Times Books, 2003), 359n. 32. Minoru Yamasaki, “The World Trade

11, 2001, along with the buildings. 43. Desmond Smith, “Manhattan’s Tower of Babel,” Nation, February 28, 1966, 235–38; “Gargantua-by-the-Sea,” Architectural Forum 124 (April 1966): 81. 44. Wolf von Eckardt, “Manhattan Towers Are to Be Topped,” Washington Post, March 1,

NOTES TO PAGES 180–209

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

1964; von Eckardt, “New York’s Trade

2.

Center: World’s Tallest Fiasco,” Harper’s Magazine, May 1966, 94–95.

3.

Yamasaki, A Life in Architecture (New York:

of one of the earliest articles about a

Weatherhill, 1979), 33.

Yamasaki project: “How to Rejuvenate a

Yamasaki, undated handwritten note, c.

125-Year Old House,” Architectural Forum

1973, box 26, folder 28, Minoru Yamasaki

45. Ada Louise Huxtable, “Who’s Afraid of the

95 (December 1951): 111–13. 16. On the energy crisis’s effects on

Big, Bad Buildings?” New York Times,

Papers, Archives of Labor and Urban

May 29, 1966.

Affairs, Wayne State University (hereafter

architecture, see Giovanna Borasi and

MYP).

Mirko Zardini, Sorry, Out of Gas:

Alvin Nagelberg, “Wards Tells Plans to

Architecture’s Response to the 1973 Oil

1971; Huxtable, “Big but Not So Bold,”

Develop $60 Million Complex in City,”

Crisis (Montreal: Canadian Centre for

New York Times, April 5, 1973.

Chicago Tribune, October 28, 1970.

Architecture, 2007). On the impact of

Henry Guthard, interview with author,

Western architects on the Middle East

10, 1973, Huxtable to Yamasaki, April 23,

November 19, 2014; Russell Bourne,

during this time, see Walter McQuade,

1973, box 13, folder 14, MYP.

“American Architect Yamasaki,”

“The Arabian Building Boom Is Making

Architectural Forum 109 (August 1958):

Construction History,” Fortune

Yamasaki to Tobin, May 4, 1974, box 12,

85; John Gallagher, Yamasaki in Detroit: A

(September 1976): 112–15, 186, 188,

folder 26, MYP.

Search for Serenity (Detroit, Mich.: Wayne

190; Sandy Isenstadt and Kishwar Rizvi,

State University Press, 2015), 2.

eds., Modernism and the Middle East:

46. Ada Louise Huxtable, “Anyone Dig the Art of Building?” New York Times, April 11,

47. Yamasaki to Ada Louise Huxtable, April

4.

5.

48. Austin Tobin to Yamasaki, April 30, 1973,

49. Ada Louise Huxtable, “New Custom House: Modern, Functional, No Match for

6. James Glanz and Eric Lipton, City in the

the Old,” New York Times, October 4,

Sky: The Rise and Fall of the World Trade

1973; Huxtable, “A Skyscraper Fit for a

Center (New York: Times Books, 2003),

King (Kong)?,” New York Times, February

115–16.

Architecture and Politics in the Twentieth Century (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008). 17. Michael Kubo, “The Incorporation of

For Yamasaki’s Century City work, see

Architecture: Bureaucratic Modernism

Artistically Considered: The Search for a

“New Hotel in a New City,” Interior Design

and Global Practice after 1945,” Aga Khan

Skyscraper Style (Berkeley: University of

37 (October 1966): 154–59; “The

Program 2013–2014 Travel Grant

California Press, 1982). The book actually

Century Plaza: A Resort in Mid-City,”

Report, https://akpia.mit.edu/sites/

cites the Trade Center in one sentence,

Architectural Record 140 (August 1966):

calling it a “superbuilding” with big crowds;

124–27; and Art Seidenbaum, “All Things

18. Yamasaki, Life, 175.

Yamasaki to Huxtable, May 8, 1975, box

Being Equilateral,” Los Angeles Times,

19. David C. Paterson, interview with author,

13, folder 22, MYP; Yamasaki to Huxtable,

December 15, 1975.

1, 1976; Huxtable, The Tall Building

date unknown (1973), box 26, folder 28,

7.

8. Yamasaki to University of Washington

MYP; Huxtable to Yamasaki, July 8, 1975,

Board of Regents, July 9, 1974, box 14,

box 13, folder 22, MYP.

folder 7, MYP.

50. Ada Louise Huxtable, “The New York Process,” Wall Street Journal, September 17, 2001.

9.

Yamasaki to Louis R. Guzzo, September 7, 1973, box 12, folder 10, MYP.

10. Ada Louise Huxtable, “Surviving

default/files/images/travelkubo.pdf.

April 29, 2011. 20. Yamasaki, Life, 180. 21. Modris Pudists, interview with author, April 21, 2011. 22. Architectural Forum 101 (December 1954): 128–31; see also Gretchen Buggeln, The Suburban Church:

Downtown ‘Progress,’” New York Times,

Modernism and Community in Postwar

Potential Suppliers’ Scramble for Orders,”

October 20, 1974; Paul Goldberger,

America (Minneapolis: University of

Wall Street Journal, November 4, 1964.

“Seattle’s Balance of Terror,” New York

Minnesota Press, 2015), chap. 4.

Times, March 25, 1977.

Appearing on the pages following the

51. “New York’s Skyscraper Project Sets Off

52. New York State Museum, “The World Trade Center: Rescue, Recovery,

11. Goldberger, “Seattle’s Balance of Terror.”

A-frame article was a multipage spread on

Response,” http://exhibitions.nysm.nysed.

12. David W. Moore Jr., Justin B. Edgington,

Saarinen’s Concordia College, with its

gov/wtc/about/index.html; Minoru

and Emily T. Payne, “A Guide to

distinctive main chapel featuring a steep,

Yamasaki, untitled ms., March 9, 1977, box

Architectural and Engineering Firms of the

triangular roof and interior base of light.

27, folder 10, MYP (emphasis added);

Cold War Era” (Project 09-434)

“An Old Village Silhouette for a New

Yamasaki, “Morality of Modern

(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of

College: Concordia Senior College, Fort

Architecture,” Architectural Forum 104

Defense Legacy Program, 2010), available

Wayne,” Architectural Forum 101

(May 1956): 74; Yamasaki, “A Humanist

at http://www.denix.osd.mil/cr/upload/

(December 1954): 132–37. It is worth

Architecture,” Architect and Building

FINAL_Report_A-Guide-to-Architecture-

noting that Saarinen’s MIT Chapel at MIT,

News, November 23, 1960, 666;

Engineering-Firms_Cold-War-Era_

then being finished, also featured interior

Yamasaki to Sullivan, June 29, 1962, in

09-434.pdf.

walls that “floated” on a ring of light. The

Robins, World Trade Center, 86. 53. “World Trade Center Confounds Critics,”

13. Yamasaki, Life, 29.

Warren Methodist Church was covered in

14. “Minoru Yamasaki Designs His Own

“Protected Sanctuary,” Architectural

Engineering News Record, December 21,

Office,” Architectural Record 144

1978.

(September 1968): 137–42. 15. The MYA job list shows one other

Record 127 (February 1960): 149–58. 23. Minoru Yamasaki, “Shinji Shumei-kai Temple,” Japan Architect 58 (September

CHAPTER 7. THE LATE WORKS

residence since the midfifties—the

1.

Yamasaki to Henry Wright, March 8, 1974,

Bassett Residence (6018) in Coral

box 14, folder 7, MYP.

Gables, Florida, but this structure remains

Lee Rainwater, “The Lessons of

unverified. The farmhouse was the subject

Pruitt-Igoe,” National Affairs 8 (Summer

274

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 274

1983): 28. 24. Bailey, “Case History of a Failure,” 22–25;

NOTES TO PAGES 210–254

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

1967): 116–26; Eugene J. Meehan, Public

1912–1986,” Progressive Architect 67

Reality (New Brunswick, N.J.: Center for

(April 1986): 26.

Urban Policy Research, 1975); Oscar

book, again dating his revised approach to

30. Daralice D. Boyd, “Minoru Yamasaki,

Housing Policy—Convention versus

the early sixties. 37. “News Briefs,” Architectural Record 174 (March 1986): 55; “Deaths,” Architecture

31. William Ellis, ed., “Forum: The Beaux-Arts

Newman, Defensible Space: Crime

Exhibition,” Oppositions 8 (Spring 1977):

75 (April 1986): 108; Sara Rimer, “Minoru

Prevention through Urban Design (New

160; Robert Venturi, Complexity and

Yamasaki, Architect of World Trade Center,

York: MacMillan, 1972).

Contradiction in Architecture (New York:

Dies,” New York Times, February 9, 1986;

Museum of Modern Art, 1966), 18;

Boyd, “Minoru Yamasaki, 1912–1986,”

of Post-Modern Architecture (New York:

Robert A. M. Stern, New Directions in

26.

Rizzoli, 1977), 9.

American Architecture (New York:

25. See, e.g., Charles A. Jencks, The Language

Braziller), 31. The lone exception was

CONCLUSION

“Pruitt-Igoe: Policy Failure or Societal

Suzanne Stephens, who did not care for

1.

Symptom,” in The Metropolitan Midwest:

Yamasaki’s work but considered him to be,

Historical Turn: Phenomenology and the

Policy Problems and Prospects for Change,

along with Saarinen, Stone, Johnson, and

Rise of the Postmodern (Minneapolis:

ed. Barry Checkoway and Carl V. Patton

Kahn, in a group that she considered

University of Minnesota Press, 2010), xi.

(Urbana: University of Illinois Press,

“Precursors of Post-Modernism” for their

1985); Katherine G. Bristol, “The

fascination with modernism’s “antithetical

Pruitt-Igoe Myth,” Journal of Architectural

characteristics” (“decorative,” “historicist,”

Education 44 (May 1991): 163–71;

“classicizing,” “vernacular,” and “contextual”

Alexander von Hoffmann, “Why They Built

motifs) or its “aberrant themes” or “surface

Pruitt-Igoe,” in From Tenements to Taylor

subversions.” Their explorations would

Homes: In Search of an Urban Housing

eventually evolve into “full-fledged

Policy in Twentieth-Century America, ed.

principles characterizing one sort of

John F. Bauman, Rogers Biles, and Kristin

current reaction to Modernism known as

M. Szylvian (University Park: Pennsylvania

‘Post-Modernism.’” Suzanne Stephens,

State University Press, 2010); Bloom et

“Precursors of Post-Modernism,” a+u

al., Public Housing Myths; and The

Architecture and Urbanism, extra edition:

Pruitt-Igoe Myth, directed by Chad

American Architecture: After Modernism,

Freidrichs (Unicorn Stencil Films, 2011).

guest ed. Robert A. M. Stern (January

26. For Pruitt-Igoe, see Roger Montgomery,

Hunt, Blueprint for Disaster, 122. Yamasaki’s quotation is from Yamasaki, “High Buildings for Public Housing?,” 226. 27. Minoru Yamasaki, “The Morality of

1981): 324. 32. Cranston Jones, Architecture Today and Tomorrow (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961), 151; Paul Rudolph, “Regionalism in

Modern Architecture,” March 14, 1956,

Architecture” (1957), in Writings on

box 26, folder 10, MYP.

Architecture (New Haven: Yale University

28. The Gratiot project won an award from Progressive Architecture, but Mies’s plan was substituted when Herbert Greenwald became involved, resulting in the Lafayette Park development. 29. Minoru Yamasaki, “Speech Given at the Architectural League in New York City 5/21/59,” box 26, folder 11, MYP; “The ARPANET Dialogues,” http://www.

Press, 2008), 35; Minoru Yamasaki, “About Architecture,” undated, box 22, folders 4–7, MYP. 33. These autobiographical documents are in box 28, folder 18, and box 26, folder 15, MYP. Charles Cunningham, University of Washington Press, to Yamasaki, May 6, 1968, box 9, folder 24, MYP. 34. Yamasaki, “About Architecture.” The

arpanetdialogues.net; Yamasaki to George

document also contains the following

Becht, December 4, 1972, box 12, folder

passage: “I now see that I went overboard

6, MYP. This fascinating computer

in my early precast concrete buildings in

conversation was part of a series of

the use of forms which were not

cultural discussions sponsored by the U.S.

particularly suitable to our time and

Department of Defense’s Advanced

culture. I had difficulty understanding the

Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in the

degree to which machine-made means

1970s. Participants communicated via

should be incorporated into our buildings

ARPANET, a Defense Department

to evoke the same quality of emotional

computer network that anticipated the Internet. Other conversations included Ayn Rand, Yoko Ono, Henry Moore, Jane Fonda, and Ronald Reagan.

Jorge Otero-Pailos, Architecture’s

response.” 35. Alan Abrams, “Architectural Legacy,” Detroit Jewish News, December 12, 2003. 36. Yamasaki, “A Life, Revisions to 1st Draft,” box 22, folders 8–9, MYP. Yamasaki included a similar passage in the published

275

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 275

NOTES TO PAGES 254–265

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

The photographers and the sources of visual material other than the owners indicated in the captions are as follows. Every effort has been made to supply complete and correct credits; if there are errors or omissions, please contact Yale University Press so that corrections can be made in any subsequent edition.

Emily Matt

Archives of Michigan

1.5

2.16, 2.26, 2.29, 3.3, 3.10, 4.27, 5.4, 5.17, 5.26, 6.3, 6.13, 6.18, 6.22, 7.17, 7.20

Missouri History Museum, St. Louis 2.5, 2.8, 2.13

National Park Service, Jefferson National Expansion Memorial

1.7 2.1–2.5, 2.7, 2.9–2.12, 2.14, 2.15, 2.17–2.19, 2.21, 3.2, 3.4–3.9, 3.11, 3.12, 3.14–3.18

Anthony W. Robins, The World Trade Center, expanded ed. (New York: Thompson and Columbus, 2011)

4.1–4.11, 4.16, 4.19–4.23, 4.25, 4.26, 4.28

6.29

2.22, 2.25, 2.27, 2.28, 2.31–2.33

5.1–5.3, 5.5–5.7, 5.10, 5.13–5.16, 5.18–5.22, 5.24, 5.25, 5.27–5.31 6.1, 6.2, 6.4–6.9, 6.11, 6.12, 6.14, 6.15, 6.19–6.21,

Special Collections, University of Washington Libraries

6.23–6.28, 6.30

1.2

7.1–7.16, 7.18, 7.21–7.35

Creative Commons

Minoru Yamasaki Papers, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University

5.12

0.1, 1.1, 1.4, 1.6, 1.8, 3.1, 4.29, 4.30, 7.36

Matt Frattasio 4.17, 4.18

Dale Allen Gyure 1.3, 2.6, 2.20, 2.30, 3.13, 4.12–4.15, 4.24, 4.31, 4.32, 5.8, 5.9, 5.11, 5.23, 6.17, 7.19

Harvard University Archives (HUV 303 [3–15]) 6.10

Balthazar Korab Collection, Library of Congress 2.23, 2.24, 6.16

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 276

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

INDEX

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations.

Banham, Reyner, 155–56, 269n44

Bunshaft, Gordon, 95, 110, 157, 185,198, 263; World Trade Center advisory committee,

Bank of Oklahoma (Tulsa, Okla., 1972–77),

191–92

222

A

Barnes, Edward Larrabee,

Burchard, John, 117

Adler, Richard, 191–92, 195

IBM Building, 226, 228

Busso von Busse, Hans, 118

Agha Khan Award for Architecture, 147

Barron House, (Detroit, 1952–54), 47,

Aalto, Alvar, 11, 123–24, 146

Albert Kahn Associates 80, 248; National Bank of Detroit, 170. See also Kahn, Albert Alberti, Leon Battista, 123

51–56, 99, 237, 260; courtyard, 53;

C

exterior, 53; floor plan, 52; living room, 54

Ca d’Oro, 117

Bassett, Charles (SOM), John Hancock Building, 188, 273n19

Alschuler, Alfred Jr., 148

Bauer, Catherine, 22

American Concrete Institute (ACI)

Bay Region Style, 86, 123

calla lily, 151 Candela, Felix, 32, 87, 105, 107 Carleton College. See Carleton College campus plan; West Gymnasium, Carleton

Headquarters (1955–58), 95, 100, 103,

bearing-wall office towers, 182–86

107–11, 171; arches, 138, 140, 143;

Beaux-Arts Institute of Design in New York, 2

exterior, 107; floor plan, 109; praise for,

Beaux-Arts method, 2–4, 127

110–11, 121, 157; as “roof building,” 251;

Becket, Welton, 4, 273n25

Carlson, David B., 177, 179

skylight, 47, 87, 108, 109; use of concrete,

Becker, William C. E., 32

Carr Square Village, St. Louis, 19

109, 110–12; Yamasaki critique of, 111,

Belluschi, Pietro, 58, 63, 71, 85, 123, 92–94

Carson & Lundin, 171

177

Bertoia, Harry, 11, 36, 129, 237; Sunlit Straw,

Carson, Lundin & Shaw, World Trade Center

American Institute of Architects (AIA), 22, 69,

130

College Carleton College campus plan (Northfield, Minn., 1958–59), 83

consideration, 192–93

71, 112, 168, 265; awards, 36, 43, 71, 83,

Biko, Steve, 255

Case Study Houses, 56

93, 102, 121, 147

bimah, 150–53, 250

Caudill, William W., 40

Amin, Samir, 255

Birkerts, Gunnar, 119

Caudill, Rowlett & Scott, 57, 182, 239

Amman & Whitney, 108, 113, 140

Birmingham (Mich.) Unitarian Church

Century Plaza Hotel (Los Angeles, 1961–66),

Anderson, Beckwith & Haible, 69, 268n18 Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco), 143

(1957–59), 44, 91 Blake, Peter, 87–88 Blunt, Anthony, 84

222, 225, 230, 265 Century Plaza Towers (Los Angeles, 1968–75), 222, 225–26

araidashi, Japanese plaster style, 66, 268n18

Boeing Aerosystems International, 243

“chaoticism” in modern architecture, xi, 85–87

Architectural League of New York, 27, 87, 127,

Booth, George Gough, 11, 80, 93

Chelsea High School (Chelsea, Mich.,

153, 255 Athens Charter, 9

Boyd, Daralice, 261 Boyd, Robin, 86–88, 269n38 Breuer, Marcel, 77, 103, 148, 193, 257, 263

B

brise-soleil, 100, 185

Baird, George, 256

Brookfield Office Building (Farmington Hills,

Baker House (Greenwich, Conn., 1949–51),

Mich., 1984–86), 233

47–49, 51, 53–56, 99, 237, 260; exterior,

Brown, Denise Scott, 88, 256

48, 55; floor plan, 49

Bush-Brown, Albert, 117

1955–56), 44 Christian Education Building, Christ Church Grosse Pointe (Grosse Pointe, Mich., 1953–55), 91 Christiansen, Jack, 160, 195, 214 Chrysler Building, 209 Chrysler Financial Corporation Building (Troy, Mich., 1973–75), 232

“Ballet School,” 85, 155–56, 269n44

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 277

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

CIAM. See Congrès International d’Architec-

Eastern Province Airport (Dammam, Saudi

ture Moderne (CIAM) Ciampi, Mario, 57 “The City” (Orange, Calif., 1964–71), 163, 221

Goldberger, Paul, 229

244

Goldsmith, Myron (SOM), 185

Edward Durell Stone & Associates, 69. See

Goldstein House (Birmingham, Mich., 1950–52), 47, 49–51, 55–56, 237;

also Stone, Edward Durell

Civil Aeronautics Administration, 29–30 Clinton-Peabody Terrace, St. Louis, 19

Goldberg, Bertrand, 167; Marina Towers, 222

Arabia, 1975–99), 243–45, 260; model,

exterior, 49; foyer, 50

Eero Saarinen & Associates, 69. See also Saarinen, Eero

Cochran Apartments (St. Louis, 1949–53), 19–22, 24, 38, 57, 267n11; aerial view, 21;

Eichstedt, Edward A., 79–80, 164, 186

model, 21

Eichstedt-Johnson Associates, 97

Goodman, Percival, 148, 150–52 “Googie” architecture, 88, 108, 155. See also populism/popular taste in architecture

Eisenman, Peter, 256

Gowan, Lancelot, 3–4

University (Detroit, 1956–60), 82, 11,

Einfühlung (empathy theory), 122–23

Graham, Bruce, (SOM), 185

115–17, 134, 171; criticism of, 88,

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 60–61, 120, 204, 210,

Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, Federal

College of Education Building, Wayne State

concrete system, 117, 136–37, 175, 212 Colorado National Bank (Denver, 1969–74),

Emery Roth & Sons, 194–95, 230

Grand Central Station, 31–32, 35–36

Empire State Building, 5, 196, 205, 208–9

Great Depression, 2–5, 8, 17, 238 Greenwald, Herbert, 275n28

218–22, 230 Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM), 9, 20, 26

Reserve Bank Detroit, 14

233, 251

117–18, 140; exterior view, 115; precast

F

Grissim, John, 164

Federal Housing Act of 1937, 19

Gropius, Walter, 20, 72, 239, 273n25;

Contini, Edgardo, 32

Federal Housing Act of 1949, 20, 22

Bauhaus, 13, 84; Japanese architecture

Cranbrook, 11, 13, 34, 36, 76, 80, 93, 234

Federal Public Housing Authority (PHA), 20,

interest, 58–60; Pan Am Building,

Cret, Paul, 11

25–28, 254–55. See also U.S. Housing

193–94; U.S. Embassy, Athens, 127;

Creighton, Thomas, 83, 85–86

Authority

University of Baghdad Mosque, 147;

Curtis & Davis, 102, 184, 190

University of Baghdad plan, 146; World

Federal Reserve Bank (Richmond, Va.,

Crane, C. Howard, 11

Trade Center consideration, 192–94;

1971–78), 222, 224, 243

Grosse Pointe University School (Grosse

Federal Reserve Bank Annex (Detroit,

D

1949–52), 14–16, 170; curtain wall, 15,

Pointe, Mich., 1951–54), 41–44, 72;

Daniel H. Burnham & Company, 11

184, 220; distant view, 15

classroom plan and sections, 41; drawing,

Darst, Joseph M., 19–20 Decoration. See ornament/decoration

1955–60), 100, 151, 246–48, 250;

Delaney, John J., 7

exterior, 247; interior, 247

De Pree, D. J., 10

40; floor plan, 40; Gruen, Victor, 80, 110,

First Methodist Church (Warren, Mich.,

FitzGerald, James, Fountain of Freedom, 142;

255; Northland Shopping Center, 80, 95 Guthard, Henry, 119–20, 151, 2215 Gutheim, Frederick, 36

IBM Fountain, 198

DeRoy Auditorium, Wayne State University (Detroit, 1961–64), 83, 135, 136, 163,

folded plate roofs, x, 103, 105, 107–8

H

243

Foley, Mary Mix, 87–88

Halprin, Lawrence, 114, 152–54, 268n13

Detroit Institute of Arts, 11, 14, 73, 93, 121

Ford & Earl Design Associates, 230

Haner, Astra Zarina, 118, 167

Detroit Public Library, 11, 73

Foreign Buildings Operations, U.S. State

Haner, Douglas, 118

Department, 58, 63, 69

Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts Building (Detroit, 1955–59), 76, 93–94, 98, 100,

Framed tube construction, 185–86, 195, 217,

Harley, Ellington & Day, City-County Building, 169

260; drawing, 93; enclosing wall, 94;

220, 222, 230; IBM, 188–89; Rainier

Harris, Ernest C., 15

skylight, 47, 94–95

Bank, 227; World Trade Center, 197, 202,

Harrison, Wallace, x, 8, 185, 263; Time cover,

212–14

Dhahran Air Terminal (Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, 1959–61), 119, 143–48, 239, 243–44,

Frampton, Kenneth, 264

260; arches, 139, 151, 154; awards, 168;

Franklin Jr. High School (Westland, Mich., 1955–56), 43–44, 76, 121

on banknote, 147; courtyard, 145; exterior, 144, 146; floor plan, 144

Fukuyama, Francis, 255

Diamond Chair (Bertoia), 36

Fuller, Buckminster, 273n36

Doge’s Palace, 60, 70, 198, 203

fusuma (Japanese paper and framed sliding doors), 51, 56, 165

Downtown–Lower Manhattan Association, 191

G

DuSell, D. Lee, 76, 98, 152, 177, 240, 253

Gender, and modern architecture, 154–56.

Dyckerhoff & Widmann, 32

Building, 95, 272n2; Republic Bank Building, 272n2; U.S. Steel Building, 272n2; Wachovia Bank Building, 171 Harrison, Abramovitz & Abbe, Corning Glass Building, 171; U.S. Steel Headquarters, Harrison, Abramovitz & Harris, Time- Life Harrison, Fouilhoux & Abramovitz, 8–9

Giedion, Sigfried, Space, Time and

Hartford Sport Arena (Hartford, Conn.,

Eames, Charles, 11, 13–14, 36, 56, 162, 168

Gilbert, Cass, 11

Eames, Ray, 11, 14, 36, 162

Girard, Alexander, 13–14, 18, 51, 56, 112;

Eastern Airlines Terminal, Logan International

Building, 187

See also “Ballet School” Architecture, 124

E

Goodenough House, 14

Airport (Boston, 1965–69), 137–38,

Githens & Keally, 5

244–45

Goheen, Robert F., 130

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 278

committee, 191–92 Harrison & Abramovitz, 126, 148, 191; Alcoa

237

Drexler, Arthur, 36, 59–60

278

198; World Trade Center advisory

1954–55), 106 Haskell, Douglas, 10, 22, 57, 83, 117, 168; “Architecture and Popular Taste,” 88 Heino, Albert, 30–31 Hejduk, John, 256

INDEX

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

Hellmuth, George, 10, 17–18, 20, 39, 57,

James Hall, Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass., 1959–65), 180, 181, 182, 184

71–72, 118, 223 Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum (now HOK), 72, 148, 239, 244

Kivett & Meyers, 148 Knoll, Florence, x, 11, 14, 36, 103

Japanese American Citizens League, 166–67

Knoll and Associates, 36, 103

Japanese American Committee for

Korean War, 28, 95

Democracy, 7

Hellmuth, Yamasaki & Leinweber (HYL),

Koenig, Fritz, Sphere, 215

17–18, 20, 23, 28, 37–38, 57, 258;

Japanese cultural fascination, 59–60

Koyama, Mihoko, 251

dissolution, 71–72, 118

Japanese Cultural and Trade Center (San

Ku, William, 118, 167

Herman, Justin, 166

Francisco, 1960–68), 163–66, 180;

Herman Miller Company, 10, 13

model, 165

Kump, Ernest Jr., 41, 57, 69

Hilberry, Clarence, 76

Jencks, Charles, 179, 254

L

Hilberseimer, Ludwig, 20

Jensen, Jens, 80

Labatut, Jean, 264

Hirashiki, Teruko (Teri), 7–8, 13, 22

Joedicke, Jürgen, 84–85

La Guardia, Fiorello, 7

Hisaka, Don, 118–19, 167

Johanson, Perry, 4, 182

Lambert, Albert Bond, 29

historicism, xi, 11, 85, 118, 126–27, 157

Johnson, President Lyndon B., 130

Lambert Field, 29

Hitchcock, Henry-Russell, 155

Johnson, Philip, ix–x, 85, 263; AIA Honor

Lambert–St. Louis Airport (St. Louis,

Awards, 147; Amon Carter Museum, 127;

1951–56), 28–36, 38, 72, 84, 112, 244,

(Springfield, Ill., 1968–72), 229–32, 239;

Congregation Kneses Tifereth Israel

261; awards, 36; compared to London

distant view, 231

Synagogue, 124, 271n11; criticism of, 85,

Embassy, 70; compared to New Haven

Horatio Alger Award, 1, 168

102, 155–56; criticism of Yamasaki, 198;

Railroad Station, 106; exterior, 34; floor

Horiguchi, Sutemi, 59, 268n3

historicism, 188, 256–57; Kline Tower,

plan, 35; Gyo Obata role, 72, 118; Harry

Hornbeck, James, 190

193; New Formalism, 127; New York State

Bertoia screen, 36, 129; history of,

Honda, Ben, 167

Theater, 127; as postmodernist, 275n31;

28–29; innovation of, 76; interior, 33;

Hugh Stubbins Associates, 69

praise of Yamasaki, 71; Rehovot Nuclear

interior drawing, 33; praise for, 29, 36, 57;

humanism, x–xi, 122–26; Yamasaki and,

Reactor, 147; Romanticism, 209; Time

publicity, 36–37, 71, 143; as “roof

cover, 273n36; World Trade Center

building,” 251; section, 35; structure,

consideration, 192–94

32–35, 61, 90, 112, 114, 138, 244; in

Horace Mann Insurance Company Building

125–26, 193–94, 214–15 Hunt, D. Bradford, 254 Huxtable, Ada Louise, 126, 179–80; on Dhahran Air Terminal, 146; on Michigan

Jones, A. Quincy, 4 Jordy, William, “The Formal Image: USA,” 127;

Time, 168; Yamasaki’s opinion of, 177, 260 Landrum & Brown, 29, 31, 143, 145

Consolidated Gas Company, 180; on Pop

on formalism (New Formalism), 127; on

Langsner, Jules, 126–27

architecture, 88; on Rainier Bank Building,

McGregor Memorial Conference Center,

Larned Elementary School (Detroit,

229; on Robertson Hall, 135, 271n19; on

84–85, 156; on Philip Johnson, 155–56

World Trade Center, 135, 156, 205–6,

Joseph Darst Apartments, 24

1951–54), 44 Le Corbusier, 11, 77, 87, 126, 185; influence on

209–12; on Yamasaki’s work, 157–58, 186 hyperbolic paraboloid roofs, x, 34, 105, 107

Yamasaki, 16; mass housing ideas, 6, 254;

K

Modulor system, 123; Notre Dame du

Kagawa, Wallace, 167

Haut, 61, 110; Time cover, ix, 198;

Kahn & Jacobs, 192–93

University of Baghdad Gymnasium,

IBM Building (Seattle, 1962–64), 180–90;

Associates

Leinweber, Joseph W., 16, 57, 71, 118 Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth (LYH), 18,

compared to Colorado National Bank,

Kahn, Louis, 58, 85, 180, 193, 262, 275n31

219; compared to World Trade Center,

Kassabaum, George, 72

190, 203, 212; distant view, 183; façade,

Kaufmann, Edgar, Jr., 110, 269n38

189; floor plans, 188; framed tube,

Keally, Francis, 5

Levy, Malcolm (Mal), 193, 195, 207

184–86, 189; plaza, 9, 187; praise for,

Kelly & Gruzen, Chatham Green Apartments,

Life magazine, 10, 36, 159

190; as prototype, 222; and Unico, 226

193; U.S. Mission to the United Nations

Ibn Saud, King, 143, 146

Building, 193; World Trade Center

Igoe, William L., 24

consideration, 192–93

International Business Machine Company (IBM), 182–83, 187, 214

Kennedy, John F., Advisory Council on Pennsylvania Avenue, 168

58; schools, 39–44; houses, 47–56; dissolution, 71–72, 118

Lincoln Elementary School (Livonia, Mich., 1954–56), 41 Lindbergh, Charles, 29 Lindsay, John, 208 Linwood Arms Apartments project (1954), 171,

International Style modernism, 16, 85, 123

Kessler, William, 72, 118

Irwin Library, Butler University (Indianapolis,

Ketchum, Morris Jr., 121

Lippold, Richard, 259

Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates,

Loewy, Raymond, x, 9

1959–63), 83, 140, 141–42

172

Itschner, Emerson C., 145–46

Ford Foundation Headquarters, 228;

Lopez, Frank, 43

Ito, Hana, 1–2, 7, 167

Knights of Columbus Headquarters, 220

Lower Manhattan, 191, 193–95, 209, 215

Ito, Koken, 2

Khan, Fazlur (SOM), 185–86

Ito, Tadayoshi, 251

Kiley, Dan, 49, 168

M

King Humanities Building, Oberlin College

Mannerism, architectural, 84–85, 156

J

(Oberlin, Ohio, 1958–66), 83, 100, 101,

Manzu, Giacomo, 177

Jackson, Hugh, 69

154

mashrabiya (Islamic window screens), 100, 145

Jacobus, John, 84, 88, 156

Kirk, Paul, 4

279

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 279

146–47

Kahn, Albert, 11, 248. See also Albert Kahn

I

INDEX

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

Mason State Office Building (Lansing, Mich.,

midcentury modernism, and gender, 154–156;

New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad

and humanism, 122–125; Mies van der

projects (1954–55), 102–7, 199; New

Matter, Herbert, 103, 105

Rohe, Ludwig, 47, 85, 92, 127, 155, 193,

Haven stations, 104–5, 171–72, 179; New

Maybeck, Bernard, 123

221, 273n25; 860–80 Lake Shore Drive

London station, 104; Westwood Station,

McCosh Walk, Princeton, 130, 135

apartments, 9, 197, 221; Crown Hall, 110;

McDonald, James (Smith, Hinchman), 177

Farnsworth House, 56; IIT campus, 90, 92;

New York World’s Fair, 1939, 5–6

McDonnell Aircraft Company, 29

influence on Yamasaki, 56, 60–61,

New York World’s Fair, 1964, 191–92

McElvenny, Ralph T., 170–72, 177, 179, 272n2

79–80, 90, 110, 233, 258, 264;

Nicoletti, Manfredi, 118

McGinnis, Lucille, 103

Lafayette Park, 275n28; New Classicism,

Niemeyer, Oscar, Secretariat at Brasilia, 197

McGinnis, Patrick B., 102–3, 105–6

126; Promontory Point Apartments, 171;

Nisei, 2–4, 7, 166–67, 198, 255

McGregor Fund, 72–74, 80, 112

publicity, 168; Seagram Building, 36, 171,

Noguchi, Isamu, 7

McGregor, Katherine Whitney, 72

179, 187

Norberg-Schulz, Christian, 264

1946–47), 12, 13, 18, 71

McGregor Memorial Conference Center, Wayne State University (Detroit,

103; New York State Insurance Code, 5

mihrab, 240

Nowicki, Matthew, Dorton Arena, 32–34, 106

Military Personnel Records Center (St. Louis,

Northminster Presbyterian Church (Troy,

1951–56), 37–38, 61, 105, 143

1955–58), x, 47, 72–80, 82–83, 89, 97, 116, 261; arches, 154; atrium, 75; awards,

minka (farmhouse), 251

83, 121; classicism, 27; compared to

Minoru Yamasaki and Associates (MYA), 87,

Mich., 1957–60), 44, 46 North Shore Congregation Synagogue (Glencoe, Ill., 1959–64), 148–54, 245,

Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts, 94;

123, 165, 194, 234–35, 243, 254, 260,

248, 261; aerial view, 153; arches, 139,

compared to Horace Mann, 232; criticism

272, 274; office operations, 122–26;

151; Ark, 152; compared to Meishusama

of, 83–85, 156, 163, 198; door, 77; form,

Saudi work, 247–48, 254

Hall, 253; compared to Temple Beth El,

84; garden/courtyard, 79–80, 162;

Missouri Urban Redevelopment Corporations

248; DuSell designs, 76; engineers, 184;

Act of 1945, 19–20

location next to Education Building, 115–17; Mannerism, 84–85; National

Miyako Hotel (San Francisco, 1960–68), 180

Historic Landmark status, 265; plan, 74;

Montgomery Ward Headquarters (Chicago, 1969–74), 219–22; distant view, 220

praise for, 83, 89, 117; publicity, 168, 265;

exterior view, 150; publicity, 154; as “roof building,” 251; sanctuary, 149; skylight, 151; Yamasaki’s opinion of, 260 Northwest YWCA (Detroit, 1956–59), 41, 45

screens, 100; skylights, 47, 74, 76–77,

Moore, Charles, 264

94; view from pool, 73, 81; walls, 78–79;

Moore, Henry, 70

Company Building (NWNL, Minneapolis,

Yamasaki opinion of, 260

Mo-Sai Associates, 112

1961–64), 127–29, 158, 195; compared

McGregor Tracy, 72–73, 269n27

Moynihan, Daniel P., 168

to Prentis Building, 135; compared to

McKim, Mead & White, 11

M&T Bank (Buffalo, 1963–67), 222–223

Robertson Hall, 129, 133, 135; design

McQuade, Walter, 106

Mumford, Lewis, 22, 85–86, 123

team, 230; engineers, 184; facade, 128;

Meathe, Philip, 72, 118

Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), 36, 59,

historicism of, 138; lobby with Bertoia

Northwestern National Life Insurance

85–86, 124, 256

Meathe, Kessler & Associates, 72

sculpture, 130; water feature, 129, 187

Medical College of Ohio campus plan (Toledo, Ohio, 1967), 82, 83, 221 Medwadowski, Stefan J. (Amman & Whitney), 113

N

O

Nagare, Masayuki, 129

Obata, Gyo, 72, 118–19, 167

Nakajima, Takeshi (Ken), 268n13

Oberlin College. See King Humanities Building,

Meehan, Eugene J., 254

Nakamura, George, 4

Meishusama Hall, Shiga Sacred Garden

Naramore, Bain, Brady & Johanson (NBBJ),

(Kyoto, Japan, 1978–83), 166, 246,

Oberlin College Oberlin Conservatory of Music (Oberlin, Ohio,

182, 184, 226

1959–64), 164

251–53, 260; aerial view, 252; interior,

National Archives and Records Service, 38

Okada, Mokichi, 251, 253

252; skylight, 251–53. See also Shinji

National Association of Housing Officials, 22,

Olin Sciences Building, Carleton College

Shumeikai

254–55

Mendelsohn, Erich, 148

National-Braemar Corporation, 164

Metropolitan Life Insurance, 5–6. See also

Nelson, George, x, 9, 14, 184, 221; work with

Parkchester

Neo-Classicism, 126

Michigan Consolidated Gas Company (Detroit,

Neo-Palladian, 94

1958–63), 169–80, 218; construction,

Nervi, Pier Luigi, 32, 110

174–75, 186; criticism of, 179–80;

Neutra, Richard, 56, 168, 257; Time cover, ix, 198

ance, 173–74; 185, 188; floor plan, 173;

New Empiricism, 183–84

lighting, 177, 179; lobby, 177, 178; office,

New Formalism, 127

175; praise for, 177, 179; reception desk,

New Haven Sports Arena project (1954–55),

76, 129; water feature, 175, 187; windows, 174, 203 Michigan State Medical Society Building (Lansing, Mich., 1957–61), 138, 140, 141

154 Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries

Yamasaki, 8, 10

Metropolitan Tract, Seattle, 182, 226–27

distant view, 170, 176; façade appear-

(Northfield, Minn., 1958–61), 100, 101,

106 New Humanism, 124

(OPEC), 217, 238–39 ornament/decoration, 83–89, 102, 126–27, 269n38; gender and, 154–56; Yamasaki and, 94, 99, 157, 217, 232, 240, 256–58 Orr, Douglas W., 129 Otero-Pailos, Jorge, 264 Oya tuff, 65

P Pahlavi University campus plan project (1960), 82, 83, 163

Newman, Oscar, 254

Palladio, Andrea, 123, 126

New York City, Yamasaki in, 4–9

Palmer Woods neighborhood, Detroit, 51 Parkchester, 5–6, 18, 20, 266n8

280

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 280

INDEX

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

Parke-Davis Office and Warehouse (Menlo Park, Calif., 1956–58), 111–15, 140;

58; Jewett Arts Center (Wellesley

TRW, Inc.

construction, 114; courtyard, 114; exterior,

Rainwater, Lee, 254

College), 84, 156; late work, 263; New

112; floor plan, 113; structural system,

Ralph M. Parsons Company, 143

Formalism, 127; popular taste, 88;

113–14, 138–39, 143

Rapson, Ralph, 11

publicity, 168; Romanticism, 209

Pei, I. M., 185, 192, 198; Hancock Tower, 226;

Raymond Loewy Associates, 9–10

May D&F Department Store, 105; Miho

Reid, John Lyon, 57

S

Museum, 251, 253; Mile High Center, 171

Reynolds, David P., 95

Saarinen, Eero, 11, 34, 36, 49, 192, 220, 263;

Pereira, William, 102; Time cover, 273n36

Reynolds Metals Regional Sales Office

AIA Honor Awards, 147; Ballet School

Perkins, Lawrence, 40

(Southfield, Mich., 1955–59), 93—102,

criticism, 161; Brandeis University, 34;

Petit, Philippe, 265

107, 119; atrium, 47, 98, 100–101;

CBS Building, 186, 190, 202; Concordia

Pevsner Nikolaus, 84, 123

awards, 102, 168; classicism, 127;

College, 274n22; design tendencies, 87,

PHA. See Federal Public Housing Authority

criticism of, 156; effect on Yamasaki’s

119–20, 185; Detroit Civic Center plan,

Phenomenology, 264–65

reputation, 102, 156; exterior, 96–97;

169; Drake University, 13; friendship with

Philip Johnson and John Burgee, Pennzoil

landscaping, 97; popularity of screens,

Yamasaki, x, 13, 184; General Motors

102; praise for, 102; reception desk, 76,

Technical Center, 13, 36, 80; Miller House,

Piazza San Marco, 60, 70, 186, 197

98, 129, 177; screens, 99–100, 154, 175;

49; Japanese travel, 58; Jefferson

Pierce, Lillian, 167

section, 101; skylights, 47, 98–100, 102,

National Expansion Memorial (St. Louis

Pilafian, Suren, 73, 79–80

108; structure, 97–98; in Time, 168;

Arch), 11, 13; Entenza House (Case Study

Ponti, Gio, 146

Yamasaki’s opinion of, 260

#9), 13, 56; Kresge Auditorium (MIT), 34,

Place, 226

Richardson, H. H., 11

108, 124; MIT Chapel, 147, 274n22; New

87–89, 269n47. See also “Googie”

Rieveschl, George Jr., 112–13

Haven Railroad, 103; North Shore

architecture

Robinson House (Grosse Pointe Woods, Mich.,

Synagogue competition, 148; as

populism/popular taste in architecture, 85,

Port of New York Authority (Port Authority), 163, 191–96, 205–7, 209–14 Postmodernism, x, 254, 256–57, 261, 265, 275n31 Prentis Building, Wayne State University

1950), 99–100

postmodernist, 275n31; Romanticism,

Roberts & Schaefer, 32

209; as structural innovator, 107; Time

Robertson, Charles, 139

cover, ix, 198; TWA Terminal, 154; U.S.

Robertson Hall, Princeton University

Embassy (London), 69, 71, 155; work

(Princeton, N.J., 1961–65), 119, 129–35;

exhibited, 14, 36

(Detroit, 1961–64), 83, 135–37; exterior,

columns, 134–35; compared to Prentis

Saarinen, Eliel, 11, 36, 80, 169

136; wall, 137

Building, 137; criticism, 156, 158, 271n18;

Salsinger, Harry, 117

curves in, 133–34; exterior, 131; floor

San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, 164

plans, 132; lobby, 133; plaza, 130, 133,

Sasaki, Dawson, DeMay Associates, 230, 232

135; section, 132; skylight, 143

Sato, Eisaku, 166

Prevost, Treacy, Schreier, Pudists, Turner & Ernst, 246 Pries, Lionel, 3–4, 258

Robertson, Leslie, 160, 186, 195, 214

Saudi Arabian Bechtel Company, 244

Igoe Homes) (St. Louis, 1950–56), ix,

Robertson, Marie, 129

Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA)

24–28, 37–38, 216; aerial views, 24;

Robins, Anthony W., 207–8

Headquarters (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia,

apartment interior, 25; buildings, 27;

Rockefeller Center, New York, 186–87, 190,

1973–85), 239–41, 260; atrium, 242;

Pruitt-Igoe Apartments (Pruitt Apartments,

demolition of, x, 254; effect on Yamasaki’s

197, 199

exterior, 240; floor plan, 241; skylight, 239,

reputation, x, 216, 254, 264; effect on

Rockefeller, David, 190–91

Yamasaki’s work, 255–56, 261, gallery,

Rockefeller, Nelson A., 191, 214

27; gallery drawing, 23; innovation of, 26,

Rosati, James, Ideogram, 215

28, 41; legacy, 253–55; mentioned in

Rosenthal, Tony, 251

obituary, 261; model, 17; praise for, 28,

Roth, Alfred, 39

Schipporeit & Heinrich, Lake Point Tower, 222

57; restrictions on design, 25–28;

Roth, Richard, 194–95

Schnee, Ruth Adler, 4

revisionist history of, 254–55;

Rowe, Colin, 84–85, 126

Schreier, Aaron, 195, 197, 203, 222, 246, 258

segregation of, 28; Yamasaki’s dislike of,

Rowland, Wirt (Smith, Hinchman), 11;

Scott, Geoffrey, The Architecture of Humanism,

255

Guardian Building, 170

Pruitt, Wendell O., 24

Royal Commission on Fine Arts, 69

Pudists, Modris (Mike), 246

Royal Institute of British Architecture, 14, 63, 125, 168 Royal Reception Pavilion, King Abdul Aziz

Q Queen Emma Garden Apartments (Honolulu, 1959–64), 164, 180

R Rainier Bank Building (Seattle, 1972–77); 9, 211, 222–29; distant view, 226, facade, 228

Airport (Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, 1974–79),

241 Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) Towers (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 1970s), 239, 242

122–23 Scully, Vincent: on curtain walls, 77; criticism of Edward Durell Stone, 102, 156; criticism of McGregor Memorial Conference Center, 84, 198; criticism of Yamasaki, 156, 163; humanism, 124–25; New Classicism, 126; pavilions, 157

245 Royal School of Architecture, Rome, 14

Serota, Kip, 119

Royce Chapel, U.S. Naval Training Station

Sert, Josep Lluís, 69, 182

Sampson (Geneva, N.Y., 1942–43), 6,

Shah Mosque, Isfahan, 139

139

Shepley, Henry, 63

Rudolph, Paul, ix–x, 47, 193, 257; Ballet School criticism, 85; criticism of, 85, 156;

281

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 281

criticism of Yamasaki, 84; Japanese travel,

Ramo-Woolridge Corporation, 63. See also

Shigaraki Mountains, Japan, 251, 260 Shimano, Eddie, 7

INDEX

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

Shinji Shumeikai (religion), 246, 251, 253. See

U.S. Naval Training Station Sampson (Geneva,

T

also Meishusama Hall, Shiga Sacred

TAC. See The Architects’ Collaborative

Garden

Taj Mahal, 60–62, 80, 159

N.Y.,), 6–8, 139, 143, 158 U.S. Pavilion, World Agricultural Fair (New Delhi, India, 1958–59), 143, 158–60,

Shoji, 59, 66, 68, 100

Takenaka Komuten, 164

Shreve, Richmond H., 5

Taniguchi, Yoshiro, 164

Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, 5–8, 18

Tedesko, Anton, 32, 34

Siskin, Edgar, 152–54, 156

Temko, Alan, 156

143, 160–63, 182, 192, 194, 201, 216;

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), 147, 239,

Temple Beth El (Bloomfield Hills, Mich.,

courtyard, 161–62; criticism of, 163;

262; Chase Manhattan Bank, 187, 191;

1968–74), 119, 246, 248–51; exterior,

Connecticut General Life Insurance

248; sanctuary, 249; skylight, 250–51

162; entry, 158 U.S. Science Pavilion (Seattle, 1959–62), x,

engineers, 163, 184; ornament, 243; site plan, 161

Company, 171; DeWitt-Chestnut

Terry, Roland, 4

University Properties (Unico), 182, 226

Apartments, 185–86; Inland Steel

The Architects’ Collaborative (TAC); 146; John

University of Saskatchewan campus plan

Building, 95, 272n2; John Hancock

F. Kennedy Federal Building, 193; World

(Regina, Saskatchewan, 1962–65), 83,

Building (San Francisco), 188; John

Trade Center consideration, 192–94. See

163, 221

Hancock Center (Chicago), 186; King

also Gropius, Walter

Abdul Aziz International Airport, 244;

Thiry, Paul, 4

V

Lever House, 171, 191, 202; Prudential

Thompson Products Inc. (Euclid, Ohio,

Van Bourg/Nakamura & Associates, 164, 166

Life Insurance Building, 272n2; Reynolds Metals Company Headquarters, 95;

1953–58), 63, 65; drawing, 65 Time magazine, 2, 83, 160, 273n36; Yamasaki

Sears Tower, 226; Union Carbide Building,

in, 110, 168, 198, 228

Van Leuven, Karl, 255 Vaughn, George L., 24 Venturi, Robert, 88, 256

95; U.S. Air Force Academy, 36; World

Thurber, Cleveland, 112

Von Eckardt, Wolf, 102, 156–57, 208–9

Trade Center proposal, 191

Tobin, Austin, 210–11

Voysey, C. F. A., 93

Skilling, John, 160, 195, 214

toplighting, 41, 44

Skilling, Helle, Christiansen & Robertson, 214;

Torre Picasso (Madrid, Spain, 1975–88), 222,

Horace Mann Life Insurance Company,

224

W Wadowski, Cass, 119, 270n22

230, 232; Rainier Bank Building, 227–28;

Tozzoli, Guy F., 163, 192, 207

Wagner, Robert F., 208

Temple Beth El, 250

Transcontinental Air Transport Company, 29

Walker, Ralph, 63

Trowbridge & Livingston, 5

Walter Dorwin Teague Associates, 162

TRW, Inc., 65. See also Ramo-Woolridge

Warnecke, John Carl, 41

skip-floor/skip-stop elevators, x, 22–24, 26, 28, 41 Smith, Desmond, 208 Smith, Hinchman & Grylls, 10, 18, 20, 72, 118–19, 170; Michigan Consolidated Gas

Corporation

Education Building; DeRoy Auditorium;

Tsuchiya, Harold, 167, 177

McGregor Memorial Conference Center;

Company, 172, 176; Yamasaki employment, 11–17, 171 St. Louis Housing Authority, 19–20, 22, 24–25, 27–28 St. Paul Catholic School (Grosse Pointe, Mich., 1949–51), 39 Steinman College Center, Franklin and

Wayne State University. See College of

Tsuboi, Yoshikatsu, 251, 253

Prentis Building; Wayne State University Campus Plan

U U.S. Army, Detroit Arsenal Tank Plant (Detroit, begun 1950), 91, 143 U.S. Consulate, Kobe (Kobe Consulate) (Kobe, Japan, 1954–56), 58, 60, 63–70, 89–90, 143; arches, 154; compared to

Marshall College (Lancaster, Pa.,

Dhahran Airport, 147; compared to

1968–76), 83, 233

Horace Mann, 232; compared to

Wayne State University Campus Plan (Detroit, 1958), 80–82; model, 81 Weese, Harry, 110 Weisberg, Feld, and Weisberg Medical Clinic (Detroit, 1952–55), 71, 90, 92–93, 99 Welton Becket & Associates, 127; Capitol Records Building, 193; World Trade

Stephens, Suzanne, 275n31

McGregor Memorial Conference Center,

Stern, Robert A. M., 256

72, 79–80; exterior, 66; garden, 67;

West Coast, 127, 156; Nisei, 2, 4, 167

Stone, Edward Durell, ix–x, 71, 85, 148, 263;

interior, 68; and Japanese architecture,

West Gymnasium, Carleton College

Center consideration, 192–93

criticism of, 85, 102, 156–57; design

65–69, 164–65; model, 63; plan, 64;

characteristics, 87, 102, 127, 263;

publicity, 68, 71, 168; screen, 99–100;

Whittlesey, Julian, 22–23

General Motors Building, 202; Kennedy

Yamasaki’s exclusion from A Life, 261

William L. Pereira & Associates, Transamerica

Center, 191; as postmodernist, 275n31;

U.S. Department of Defense Building project

Romanticism, 209; Time cover, 198; U.S. Embassy (New Delhi), 36, 84, 102, 191;

(1966–67), 221, 230 U.S. Embassy project, London (London

(Northfield, Minn., 1961–64), 250, 251

Building, 222 Wimberly, George J., 30 Wittkower, Rudolf, Architectural Principles in

World Trade Center advisory board,

Embassy) (1955–56), 69–72, 90, 143,

191–92. See also Edward Durell Stone &

147–48, 198; arches of, 71, 139;

mannerism, 84

Associates

compared to McGregor Memorial

Wood, Elizabeth, 22

Stonorov, Oscar, 255

Conference Center, 80; compared to

Woodrow Wilson School of Public and

Straub, Frank, 119

Reynolds Sales Office, 98; Doge’s Palace

Sullivan, Louis, 173, 202–3, 240

influence, 70; rendering, 70; windows, 174

Sullivan, Richard, 192–93

U. S. Housing Authority, 19–20. See also Federal Public Housing Authority (PHA)

the Age of Humanism, 123–26; on

International Affairs, 129–30. See Robertson Hall, Princeton University World Trade Center (New York, 1962–76), ix, 204, 217, 229, 233–34, 245, 258, 265; in A Life, 260; application for, 120, 193–94;

282

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 282

INDEX

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

ix, 198; Yamasaki admiration of, 60; work

arches, 202–3; burden on MYA and

exhibited, 36, 127, 148

Yamasaki, 169, 221–22; compared to Century Plaza Towers, 222; compared to

Wright, Orville, 29

Colorado National Bank, 219; compared

Wurster, William, 86, 123

to IBM, 190; compared to Rainier Bank,

Wurster, Bernardi, & Emmons, 69

226–27; compared to SAMA Headquarters, 241; construction, 212–14;

Y

criticism of, 156, 208–9, 217, 221;

Yamasaki and Associates Office Building (Troy,

criticism effect on Yamasaki, 217, 221,

Mich., 1964–67), 233–34; drafting

226–27; dedication ceremony, 214;

room, 235; entry, 234; floor plan, 235

design history, 190–208; distant view of,

Yamasaki, Carol, 8

190; Doge’s Palace influence, 70; DuSell

Yamasaki House (Bloomfield Township, Mich.,

work on, 76; engineers, 186, 197; effect

1971–72), 234, 236–38; exterior, 237;

on Yamasaki’s career and reputation, 156,

floor plans, 236; living room, 238

169, 255, 263–65; façade appearance,

Yamasaki, Ken, 1, 7

204; first version, 199–206; framed tube

Yamasaki, Kim, 13

construction, 186, 197, 212–14; galleria

Yamasaki, Leinweber & Associates (YLA), 71

drawing, 201; Huxtable criticism, 135,

Yamasaki, Minoru: apartment renovation

156, 180, 209–12; massing studies, 196;

project, 8–9; architectural theory,

mezzanine and lobby, 205; models, 200,

60–63, 90, 125–26, 193–94, 204–5,

206–7; Piazza San Marco influence, 197;

214, 256–57, 260; design practice, 119,

plaza and sculpture, 215; praise for first

221; education, 2–5; health problems, 18,

version, 205–6; as prototype skyscraper,

71, 169, 222, 257, 261, 263–64,

218, 222, 229; publicity, x, 154, 160, 217,

268n45; houses, 47–57; influence of

228; relation to previous work, 261; scale,

Japanese architecture, 49, 51, 55, 63–66,

x, 215; Science Pavilion importance for,

68, 76, 119, 251; influence of Japanese

160, 163; second version, 206–7; site

gardens, 61–62, 66, 80; in Japan, 3–4,

plan, 198; structural diagram, 213; in

58–59; Jefferson Expansion Memorial

Time, 198–99; wall-to-glass ratio, 204,

Competition entry, 11, 12; marriage, 7,

219

222; Michigan Bell Telephone exchange,

Windows on the World restaurant, 205;

11, 16; office structure and operation,

Yamasaki opinion of, 214; Yamasaki

118–20; photographs, xi, 1, 12, 17, 43,

selection as architect, 192–94

60, 259; professional confidence, 6, 209,

World War II, 6, 14, 49, 84; architectural

216, 221, 229, 263; public housing, 6,

humanism after, 128, 132; blackouts

18–28, 253–55; in Saudi Arabia,

during, 179; curtain wall usage after,

238–46; schools, 38–43, 57; student

184–85; Detroit after, 10–11; economic

project, 4; synthesis of Japanese and

boom after, 238; folded plate roofs after,

modern architecture, 163–66, 237–38;

108; Grosvenor Square, 69; Lambert

Time cover story, 198–99; use of skylights,

Airport at the beginning of, 29; modern

41, 43–44, 47, 51, 53–54, 56, 62, 126;

architecture after, 85; precast concrete

world trip, 60

availability after, 110, 112; relocation/

Yamasaki, Taro, 13, 266n21

internment camps, 9, 123; Saarinens’

Yamasaki, Tsunejiro (John), 1, 3, 7

Detroit civic center plan and, 169; Smith

Yeon, John, 123

Hinchman after, 10; single-family home

Yesler Hill neighborhood, Seattle, 2

design after, 47; St. Louis after, 18–19;

Yorkville neighborhood, Manhattan, 7

synagogue design after, 150; United States and Saudi Arabia after, 143;

Z

Yamasaki’s experience at USNTS

Zalewski, John, 69

Sampson during, 143, 158

Zarina, Astra. See Haner, Astra Zarina

Worthington, Skilling, Helle & Jackson, 120, 160; IBM Building, 182–90; U.S. Science

zeilenbau (“row construction”), 20 Zemeckis, Robert, The Walk, 265

Pavilion, 163; World Trade Center, 195, 197, 203 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 11, 86, 111, 221, 257; Baghdad Opera House project, 146–47; Imperial Hotel, 65; Johnson Wax Research Tower, 229; Price Tower, 229; Time cover,

283

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 283

INDEX

29/7/2017 3:38 PM

Publication of this book was funded in part by a Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant of the College Art Association and a Publication Grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. Copyright © 2017 by Dale Allen Gyure. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. yalebooks.com/art Portions of this text have appeared elsewhere in different form: “Serenity and Delight: The Architectural Humanism of Minoru Yamasaki,” in Amy L. Arnold and Brian D. Conway, eds., Michigan Modern: Design That Shaped America (Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith, 2016). “The Plaza,” CLOG 12: World Trade Center (December 2014): 156–57. Designed by Luke Bulman–Office Set in Times Ten and Venus Printed in China through Oceanic Graphic International, Inc. Library of Congress Control Number: 2016960159 ISBN 978-0-300-21709-4 eISBN 978-0-300-22986-8 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z 39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Cover illustrations: (front) View of World Trade Center, New York (Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, 1962–76; destroyed). Balthazar Korab, photographer. Courtesy of the Archives of Michigan; (back) Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Reynolds Metals Regional Sales Office (fig. 4.10). Pages ii, iv, vi: World Trade Center, facade. Adapted from artwork by Emily Matt (fig. 6.22).

38788-Yamasaki v04.indd 284

29/7/2017 3:38 PM