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The story of modern architecture in St. Louis is complex and often contradictory. Beginning in the 1930s, internationally known architects such as Eric Mendelsohn, Eero Saarinen and Minoru Yamasaki — alongside important regional and national figures like Harris Armstrong, Charles Fleming... View full entry
The walk can never be repeated, but it also can never be undone. You cannot fly a jetliner into a memory. In hindsight, the so-called art crime of the century has become a tribute to the lives of the 2,753 who were killed in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, and whose stories, too, will always live on. When I see a photo of Mr. Petit in the air, it suggests to me that the lost were able to bridge that distance, too. — The New York Times
Philippe Petit’s early morning stunt on August 7, 1974, helped sway public opinion in favor of the recently opened NYC World Trade Center towers, which struggled financially until the Port Authority changed course and allowed financial services companies to begin leasing space by the end of the... View full entry
Admirers of World Trade Center architect Minoru Yamasaki in search of a hot beach read this summer look no further! We’re giving away a copy of Justin Beal’s engrossing title Sandfuture, recently published by The MIT Press, wherein the prolific career and perplexing obscurity of the late... View full entry
An excellent example of the New Formalist style is now available for the relatively low price of $4.3 million. Local news outlets are reporting the recent addition of Minoru Yamasaki’s Michigan State Medical Society to the real estate market in East Lansing. Image courtesy Michigan State... View full entry
In 1962, Diniz was hired by architect Minoru Yamasaki as part of the team designing the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers. His drawings in the WTC portfolio show viewers the experience of monolithic structures in the context of Lower Manhattan and inside the buildings themselves. The drawings were intended to illustrate Manhattan as a center of international business. — The Dallas Morning News
Carlos Diniz' drawings occupy a revered place in architectural history, and his World Trade Center drawings have been by and large kept out of public collections until now. The illustrator was first hired by Minoru Yamasaki in 1962 to give the public a sense of place and scale caused by the... View full entry
Blueprints for the original World Trade Center have gone on sale at the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair on Friday after a Colorado man pulled them out of the trash.
The set of plans for sale represents the largest floor plan of the Twin Towers complex ever offered for sale, according to the New York-based Janes Cummins Bookseller. Cummins told the Associated Press that he expected the sale to be in the six figures.
— DW
According to the Wall Street Journal, the plan set includes over 500 original plans from the 1960s and once belonged to Joseph Solomon, one of the World Trade Center architects. The Twin Towers at the NYC World Trade Center in 2001, shortly before the September 11 attack. Photo: Carol M. Highsmith. View full entry
Detroit-based lifestyle brand Shinola celebrates the legacy of Minoru Yamasaki with a new addition to their Great American Series of watches, the Yamasaki Limited Edition Watch 38mm. "Through his world-class architecture, Yamasaki’s legacy continues to delight and surprise those who... View full entry
If Michigan isn’t the first place that comes to mind when considering [the Modern era] — unlike, say, Germany or France in the 1920s — it should be. The presence of Ford in the city and Booth in the country was enough to make Michigan ground zero for the Modernist experiment [...] making the state home to perhaps the most diverse and best-preserved collection of early Modernist experiments in the world. — The New York Times
A look at Michigan's history in the Modernist movement and the story it tells for our future. M.H. Miller traces three main convergences in the state: Henry Ford's first Model T factory, the Cranbrook school's presence, and numerous influential architects most notably Albert Kahn and Minoru... View full entry
The firm of famed Detroit architect Minoru Yamasaki is returning to the city, seven years after it was forced to close.
The Seattle-born architect lived in Detroit from 1945 until his death in 1986. He launched his own firm in 1950, which survived him until 2009 when it closed due to financial problems.
Yamasaki’s most famed work is the World Trade Center twin towers, although he contributed many buildings to the Detroit skyline, including the One Woodward office tower.
— Michigan Radio
"I think we’re really interested in that kind of momentum that Detroit has now," Robert Szantner, a long-time employee of Minoru Yamasaki's original firm until it closed, told the Detroit Free Press. Szantner had bought the intellectual property, including the name, out of receivership in... View full entry
I must ask myself if we want to design buildings for people to fit some preconceived idea of a glass world. Is this really the future of cities?" – Minoru Yamasaki — businessinsider.com
While the critical response to the new 1WTC has been, at best, one of resigned acceptance, the original Twin Towers didn't receive much fanfare either when they first opened in 1973. Ada Louise Huxtable, then architecture critic for The New York Times, wasn't much of a fan of Minoru Yamasaki's... View full entry
