(b Seattle, WA, 1 Dec 1912; d Detroit, MI, 6 Feb 1986). American architect. He studied architecture at the University of Washington (1930–34) and at New York University (1934–5). He worked for important firms in New York and later in Detroit, where he established his own practice in 1949. The Lambert Air Terminal (1956), St Louis, MO, reflected technical principles of mainstream modernism in its thin shell concrete vaults and brought Yamasaki professional prominence. During international travels he became impressed with Gothic and Indian styles as well as indigenous Japanese building, from which he developed a romantic, non-functionalist and very personal modernism that incorporated delicacy, symmetry and understatement in a search for elegance and repose. This synthetic style characterized the McGregor Center (1958), Detroit, with its prismatic glass skylights and reflecting pool; the Michigan Consolidated Gas building (1963), Detroit, with its precast surface tracery; and the Dhahran Air Terminal (1961), Saudi Arabia, with its references to Islamic arcuation beneath concrete canopies.

• Yamasaki, Minoru
  • collaboration
    • Skyscraper, §2(ii): History and development, 1945 and after
  • works
    • Detroit
    • Jewish art, §II, 1(iii)(a): Synagogues after c A 800: Western
    • Los Angeles, §1: History and urban development
    • Roth, Emery
    • Saudi Arabia, §1: Architecture