Minoru Yamasaki is a Second Generation Japanese (Nisei) born in Seattle, Washington on December 1^st, 1912. Despite his poor background, Yamasaki worked at the Alaskan Salmon Cannery through college and graduated from the University of Washington with a bachelor’s degree in architecture in 1934. During the late 1930s, he moved to New York City to further his education where he attended New York University. He earned his masters degree in architecture and began working at local firms that designed the Empire State building and Rockefeller Center.

Being on the East Coast, Minoru Yamasaki was spared from the internment camps and in 1945 was named chief of design at Smith Hinchman & Gryllis in Detroit. In 1949 he left the firm and started his own independent firm with George Hellmuth and Joseph Leinweber. With his new firm, Minoru Yamasaki designed sleek new buildings such as the Pruitt-Igoe public housing project, which because of multiple problems was demolished in 1972, and the more respected Lambert-St. Louis Airport terminal. Afterwards in 1959 he left his partners and began his own firm in Troy, Michigan.

He continued to design sleek and modern designs. He designed the new campus buildings and plazas in Detroit’s Wayne State University, which earned Yamasaki top national honors and allowed the world to see his changed style, a fusion of simple Asian and European forms such as reflecting pools and arches. His first major high rise building was the Michigan Consolidated Gas Company headquarters in Detroit which was built in 1963. Afterwards, he was solicited by the New York Port Authority to create a World Trade Center on the budget of 280 million dollars (which would rise to 1 billion). Minoru Yamasaki created the twin towers with the help of his friend Leslie E. Robertson for the engineering portion of the towers. Being 110 stories tall and its unique design (thin narrow windows throughout, due to his fear of heights), the World Trade Center towers would be Yamasaki’s biggest achievement, which was completed in 1976. Whether lucky or unlucky, Minoru Yamasaki died of stomach cancer in 1986, so he never got to see his most prized work destroyed in the September 11^th attack.

Minoru Yamasaki is a part of Asian American pop culture because of his modern designs and fusion styles; he imprinted Asian on American culture. Many of the buildings that he designed can still be seen today, and even though they no longer exist, the twin towers will forever place Minoru Yamasaki in American history. Minoru Yamasaki was selected to design the towers over I. M. Pei, Philip Johnson, and Walter Gropius. Being selected over these three well known architects shows how he defied the stereotypes of Japanese at the time (i.e. Yellow Peril), getting out of the dark ages and bringing American architecture a step into a more modern era.

Sources:

http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File_Id=5352

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoru_Yamasaki

http://www.answers.com/topic/minoru-yamasaki