Few figures in the American arts have stories richer in irony than does architect Minoru Yamasaki. While his twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center are internationally iconic, few who know the icon recognize its architect’s name or know much about his portfolio of more than 200 buildings. One is tempted to call him America’s most famous forgotten architect. He was classed in the top tier of his profession in the 1950s and ’60s, as he carried modernism in novel directions, yet today he is best known not for buildings that stand but for two projects that were destroyed under tragic circumstances: the twin towers and the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis. This book undertakes a reinterpretation of Yamasaki’s significance that combines architectural history with the study of his intersection with defining moments of American history and culture. The story of the loss and vulnerability of Yamasaki’s legacy illustrates the fragility of all architecture in the face of natural and historical forces, yet in Yamasaki’s view, fragility is also a positive quality in architecture: the source of its refinement, beauty, and humanity. We learn something essential about architecture when we explore this tension of strength and fragility.
In the course of interpreting Yamasaki’s architecture through the wide lens of the book we see the mid-century role of Detroit as an industrial power and architectural mecca; we follow a debate over public housing that entailed the creation and eventual destruction of many thousands of units; we examine competing attempts to embody democratic ideals in architecture and to represent those ideals in foreign lands; we ponder the consequences of anti-Japanese prejudice and the masculism of the architectural profession; we see Yamasaki’s style criticized for its arid minimalism yet equally for its delicacy and charm; we observe Yamasaki making a great name for himself in the Arab world but his twin towers ultimately destroyed by Islamic militants. As this curious tale of ironies unfolds, it invites reflection on the core of modern architecture’s search for meaning and on the creative possibilities its legacy continues to offer.
Beautifully illustrated with over 100 color illustrations of Yamasaki’s buildings, this book will be of interest to students, academics and professionals in a range of disciplines, including architectural history, architectural theory, architectural preservation, and urban design and planning.
Preface and Acknowledgements
1. Rethinking Yamasaki
Yamasaki Known and Unknown
The Fate of a Style
The Fragility of Architecture
Course of the Study
2. The Fragility of Dreams
Inspiration and Tribulation
The Making of a Modernist
Founding a Practice
Success and Its Costs
The Long Shot
The Persistence of Culture
3. The Fragility of the City
Design on Trial
High-Risers and Low-Risers
Looking Beyond Design
A Hard Legacy
4. The Most Fragile of Arts
The Flower and the Deer
The Experiential Dimension
The Devil in the Details
The Architecture of Humanism
5. The Presence of the Past
Japanese Heritage
Islamic Legacies
Venetian Synthesis
Classical Transformations
"The New Formalism"
6. The Moral Imperative
Ethics and Ethos
Ethics in Practice
The Ethos of Modern Architecture
Expressing Structure
Strength as Symbol
The Question Reconsidered
7. Populism and Democratic Culture
Symbolizing the State
Imagining the Academy
Serving the Market
Populism and Manufactured Culture
Serious Play
8. Greatness and Vulnerability
Saint Louis Sequel
The Calamity Wager
Scale and Concentration
City in the Sky
The Scale of Tragedy
Greatness and Bigness
9. The Ambiguity of Symbols
The Nature of Symbol
The Sacred and the Mundane
The World Trade Center as Symbol
Rebuilding and Not Rebuilding
10. Postmodern Postludes
The Day Modern Architecture Died
Postmodern Theory
Ironic Historicism
Postmodern Violence and Anti-Violence
11. The Question of Preservation
Historical Grounds for Preservation
Grounds in Artistic Merit
The Presence of Yamasaki
Photo Credits
Index
Biography
Paul Kidder, Ph.D., is Professor of Philosophy at Seattle University, where he has taught courses on the history of philosophy, existentialism, philosophical hermeneutics, philosophy of art and architecture, and ethics in urban affairs. He is the author of Gadamer for Architects (2012), published by Routledge.
"Minoru Yamasaki and the Fragility of Architecture by Paul Kidder is an excellent, thoughtful survey of the difficulties of placing Yamasaki in the pantheon of modern and postmodern architects." – Knute Berger, Crosscut.com
Excerpt from https://crosscut.com/culture/2021/09/remembering-seattle-architect-who-built-world-trade-center