Minoru Yamasaki: Humanist Architecture for a Modernist World

Architectural historian Dale Allen Gyure will discuss the career and life of Minoru Yamasaki (1912–1986), best know as the architect of the World Trade Center. Born to Japanese immigrant parents in Seattle, Yamasaki became one of the towering figures of midcentury architecture, even appearing on the cover of Time magazine in 1963. His self-proclaimed humanist designs merged the modern materials and functional considerations of postwar American architecture with traditional elements such as arches and colonnades. Yamasaki’s reputation began to decline in the 1970s with the mixed critical reception of the World Trade Center and the spectacular failure of St. Louis’s Pruitt-Igoe Apartments, which came to symbolize the flaws of midcentury urban renewal policy.

Gyure is the author of the first book to examine Yamasaki’s life and career, Minoru Yamasaki: Humanist Architecture for a Modernist World, published in November 2017 by Yale University Press. Copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing from Yale University Press.

Co-sponsored by the AIANY Historic Buildings Committee and DOCOMOMO New York/Tri-State.

Speaker:
Dale Allen Gyure, PhD, Professor and Associate Chair of Architecture, Lawrence Technological University; author, Minoru Yamasaki: Humanist Architecture for a Modernist World

Dale Allen Gyure, PhD, is Professor and Associate Chair of Architecture at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan, where he teaches classes in architectural history and theory. Gyure’s research focuses on nineteenth- and twentieth-century architecture, particularly the intersections of architecture, education, and society. His numerous publications include Frank Lloyd Wright’s Florida Southern College (2010), The Chicago Schoolhouse, 1856-2006: High School Architecture and Educational Reform (2011), Minoru Yamasaki: Humanist Architecture for a Modernist World (2017), and The Schoolroom: A Social History of Teaching and Learning (2018). Gyure has served on the boards of directors of the Society of Architectural Historians, the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, and DOCOMOMO Michigan.

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