(gentle ambient music) - Amid the wonder and carnival atmosphere of the 1962 Seattle World's Fair, with Elvis, the Wild Mouse rollercoaster and space-age Bubbleator, there was a tranquil oasis away from the hubbub.

(instrumental music) Outside, the Cold War was getting hotter, with things like the Bay of Pigs, the raising of the Berlin Wall, and Americans building bomb shelters like, well, there was literally no tomorrow.

(instrumental music) The times could rattle you.

So this World's Fair oasis, the US Government's Federal Science Pavilion, was designed by a Seattle trained architect who had seen some of the worst of humanity.

He yearned to inspire us to be our best.

How did that go?

(instrumental music) (gentle ambient music) Minoru Yamasaki, born in 1912, grew up in a family struggling economically in Seattle's Japan town on Yesler Hill.

(gentle ambient music) He attended local schools, including the University of Washington, where he studied architecture.

To put himself through and support his family, he spent summers working in the misery of Alaska's salmon canneries.

His fellow students nicknamed him Sockeye.

In Alaska, he faced racism, brutal hours, and dirty working conditions.

It was there that Yamasaki was inspired to have a career that could uplift people, including himself.

(instrumental music) He moved to New York in 1934 and worked in architecture firms there, including one helping to design the New York World's Fair of 1939.

And he also faced more prejudice.

When World War II broke out, his parents were threatened with incarceration along with other West Coast Japanese Americans, so Yamasaki brought his family east where they shared his small apartment, and he did volunteer work attempting to find housing for other displaced Japanese Americans.

At the same time, he passed muster to work on a US military base.

(instrumental music) He eventually moved to Detroit and hung out his own architect shingle and began working on various commissions.

(instrumental music) His buildings were more decorative than the trend in modern architecture at the time.

He bucked the look of severity and strength that had become modern architecture's orthodoxy.

A famed architectural critic dismissed one of his buildings as a "twittering aviary."

Yamasaki said he was looking for serenity in his designs, not brutalism.

As Seattle planned for its fair in the 1950s, Yamasaki was tapped to serve on its architect's advisory committee.

At the same time, local organizers had pledged to the federal government to make the Seattle fair a science fair.

- [Narrator] As we look to the future, we see many extras for tomorrow's telephone users.

One day you may be able to call home and automatically turn off the oven.

- The US committed to create a science pavilion, and Yamasaki got the job of designing it.

(instrumental music) What he created was a complex of separate structures around a series of pools, marked by giant, decorative gothic arches.

Their beautiful vaults had no real functional purpose.

People could see science exhibits from space flight to experiments with pigeons inside the complex, or they could rest their feet outside and contemplate a future that seemed to be rushing at them at rocket speed.

One person who was inspired was a representative of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Guy Tozzoli, who'd been sent to Seattle to scope out the fair.

He was also looking for someone to design their new headquarters, which became known as the World Trade Center.

In a history of that project, "City in the Sky," authors James Glanz and Eric Lipton described Tozzoli's impression.

Quote, "Here, amid an orgy of noise, was a marvelously cool and inviting place, a constructed space with a serenity of a natural sanctuary, but where the aura almost recalled the majesty of the Alhambra or the Taj Mahal."

Before the fair was over, Yamasaki was signed on to design the Port's big project, and his science pavilion in Seattle was preserved to become the permanent Pacific Science Center.

(instrumental music) If the science center was a gateway project to the big time, it also led Yamasaki to continue to make his mark in his hometown with signature projects.

Just as he was finalizing his Trade Center design, the IBM high rise office Tower in Seattle opened in the mid 1960s, using some of the innovative engineering that was later used in the Twin Towers.

(instrumental music) A block away in the 1970s, he also designed the Rainier Tower Complex.

Notably, the showy office tower cantilevered over a 12 story pedestal.

It received mixed reviews.

The influential New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable called it a popsicle, saying it was part of a trend characterized by, quote, "Scalelessness, discontinuity, inhumanity, and crimes against urban nature."

That its construction resulted in the demolition of the historic White-Henry-Stuart building rankled local preservationists, especially architect and Pike Place market savior Victor Steinbrook.

He had been a friend and classmate of Yamasaki's before they had a falling out when Steinbrook went to work for him in Detroit.

Steinbrook fought Yamasaki's development scheme.

The Rainier Tower was built anyway.

(dramatic music) Steinbrook had become frustrated with how easy it was for architects to become too theoretical and not serve common humanity.

(instrumental music) That conflict came to haunt Yamasaki with his Twin Towers.

How do you create serenity by designing the tallest buildings in the world, ones that represent global trade?

Yamasaki saw his towers as, quote, "a living representation of man's belief in humanity and his need for individual dignity."

(instrumental music) Yamasaki, who died in 1986, did not live to see the tragic day when his buildings were destroyed by people who saw them as a different kind of symbol.

(instrumental music) Yamasaki's idealistic architecture still marks Seattle's skyline, however.

His World's Fair Oasis is still a place where people can go to ponder a better future, perhaps the one of humanity and dignity he tried to build.

(instrumental music) - [Announcer] For more on this episode, listen to the Mossback Podcast.

Just search for Mossback wherever you listen.