Minoru Yamasaki

Minoru Yamasaki was an architect who unfortunately passed away in 1986 due to cancer. He wasn't the most prolific worker and his creations were quite mauve, for want of a better word, but he created some 'interesting' pieces. The first one that springs to mind is the ex-Twin Towers of NY, Minoru was slightly lucky in that he did not see his masterpiece fall apart in such an extreme way. The one thing Minoru did witness in his lifetime was the demolition of Pruitt-Igoe, another one of his ill-fated designs. Minoru wasn't a bad architect by any stretch of the imagination and his products failings have never been because of any action of him. Pruitt-Igoe was a set of 33 tower blocks/apartment complexes in the middle of St Louis that were originally built to be a multi-racial modern haven for the working class. Unfortunately this wasn't meant to be, and as the buildings fell into disrepair and the surrounding areas value plummeted, through a period of about 15 years, the St. Louis Housing Authority finally set about demoloshing the blocks in 1972. Moving onto the point, Godfrey Reggio filmed the demolition as part of his film Koyaanisqatsi, and with the help of Philip Glass made the destruction of Mr Yamasaki's hard work seem a moving creation in itself. If you get chance to see the film do, its really very good, but the music from the scene, called Pruitt-Igoe, along with the sombre images of a desolate and empty block of two and half thousand apartments being blown to smitherines is just ripping.

Philip Glass - Pruitt-Igoe