Minoru Yasui

Minoru Yasui 19 Oct 1916 - 12 Nov 1986

The architect Minoru Yamasaki designed corporate skyscrapers across the American urban landscape in the 1960s and 1970s. The two “twin towers” of New York City’s World Trade Center (1972–73) came into international focus when they collapsed during the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Yamasaki’s design employed steel girding that sustained the two buildings upright for comparatively much longer periods of time than other designs would have, enabling more lives to be saved.

Detesting modernist architecture’s signature of windows and steel girding, Yamasaki described the international style as a “dogma of rectangles.” Conversely, his signature “thinness” and verticality in design are seen in structures such as the Michigan Consolidated Gas Company building (Detroit, 1963). Yamasaki was the first Japanese-American architect to preside over an internationally active and influential firm, Minoru Yamasaki & Associates of Rochester Hills, Michigan.

Credit: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift in loving memory of Minoru and True Yasui