His work ? more than 250 buildings in the span of 30 years ? was lauded by critics and colleagues, cited for international design awards, and landed the architect on the cover of Time. But today, even practitioners and aficionados might be challenged to name one of Minoru Yamasaki's buildings beyond his two most infamous creations that no longer exist: the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis and New York?s World Trade Center towers. Paul Kidder explores this complex architect and his work in a new book, Minoru Yamasaki and the Fragility of Architecture (Routledge).

World Trade Center / Minoru Yamasaki Associates + Emery Roth & Sons. Image © Wikipedia Commons

His work ? more than 250 buildings in the span of 30 years ? was lauded by critics and colleagues, cited for international design awards, and landed the architect on the cover of Time. But today, even practitioners and aficionados might be challenged to name one of Minoru Yamasaki's buildings beyond his two most infamous creations that no longer exist: the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis and New York?s World Trade Center towers. Paul Kidder explores this complex architect and his work in a new book, Minoru Yamasaki and the Fragility of Architecture (Routledge).Kidder, a professor of philosophy at Seattle University, provides a fresh, sobering assessment not only of Yamasaki's architecture but the man himself: his challenges, triumphs, and contradictions, as well as the fragility of archi...