Читать книгу Designing a World-Class Architecture Firm - Patrick MacLeamy - Страница 26

Gyo Obata was born in San Francisco in 1923. His father, Chiura Obata, came from a distinguished line of Japanese artists in Sendai, Japan. He emigrated to the United States in 1903, at age 17, and settled in the Bay Area. He soon became a successful artist and eventually joined the art faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. His wife, Haruko, was a noted Ikebana artist who introduced the art of Japanese flower arranging to the West Coast.

FIGURE 2.3 Gyo Obata.

Source: Photo courtesy of HOK.

Obata's father traveled often to the Sierra Nevada Mountains to paint, and Yosemite was his favorite location, so the Obata family camped in Yosemite every summer. Chiura Obata met and became good friends with famed photographer Ansel Adams, who spent a lifetime photographing Yosemite and the Sierras. The Adams family lived in Yosemite Valley and operated Best's Studio, a small gallery featuring his photographic prints. Adams invited Chiura Obata to exhibit his Yosemite paintings there, and both men taught summer classes through the gallery. Obata remembers his father and Ansel Adams often spent summer evenings together discussing art.

Obata grew up in Berkeley, and his parents were sure he would become an artist like them. However, Obata also enjoyed science and, with his mother's encouragement, decided to pursue architecture. He enrolled at UC Berkeley to study architecture in September 1941. However, after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor just three months later, the U.S. government interned most Japanese-Americans in camps for the duration of World War II. It was a close call for Obata. “I left Berkeley the night before my whole family was interned,” Obata recalled later.¹

Though he would have to leave his family while they were held in an internment camp, regulations permitted Obata to continue his education—just not in California, Oregon, or Washington, the three states bordering the Pacific Ocean. “Washington University in St. Louis was one of the few colleges that accepted Japanese-Americans,” Obata explained. He added that if the telegram announcing his acceptance had arrived just one day later, “I'd have been sent to the camps, too.”² Sometimes you have to seize the moment. Obata traveled by train to St. Louis where he was befriended—he would say adopted—by the university faculty and students.

FIGURE 2.4 Gyo Obata with sister Yuri, mother Haruko, and father Chiura Obata, c. 1939. Public domain. Larger copy of photo courtesy of Kiku Obata.

Obata's wartime experience made a deep impression. He was determined to overcome the barriers placed in his way during the war. He was a naturally shy, soft-spoken student, but developed a strong, resilient, competitive nature that served him well his entire life. Obata also developed a deep affection for the people of Washington University and his adopted city of St. Louis.

After graduating from Washington University in 1945, Obata received a scholarship to study under Finnish master architect Eliel Saarinen at Cranbrook Academy in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Cranbrook offered a diverse education in arts and crafts, as well as architecture, and attracted faculty and students from around the world. While there, Obata made many friends and gained an international perspective on design. Like his father before him, he formed a lifelong friendship with visionaries who would become famous: Charles and Ray Eames, the internationally acclaimed designers who made significant contributions to modern architecture, furniture design, graphic art, and film.

“When I went to Cranbrook to study with Eliel Saarinen, he was interested in students working on city planning, so I worked on a master plan for the St. Louis region,” Obata recalled, later in life. “He taught me not to be afraid of large projects, of the planning involved.” That's good advice for all architects. “Learning about community, urban planning and the relationship of buildings to each other was a very important part of my learning and an important inspiration to me,”³ Obata said. He received a Master of Architecture and Urban Design degree from Cranbrook in 1946.

In an ironic twist, Obata spent two years in the U.S. Army, after graduating from Cranbrook, serving the same government that had interned his family. The army ordered him to report for duty at a remote base on Adak Island, part of the Aleutian Chain of islands stretching from Alaska toward Asia. Before shipping out, he asked one of his army friends what it was like and the guy told him, “You'll love it—there's a girl behind every tree!” When Obata arrived, he discovered there were no trees on Adak Island.

In 1947, Obata received his army discharge and found his first architecture job at the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill. Just two years later, he received the important call from Minoru Yamasaki, asking him to join the newly formed Leinweber, Hellmuth, and Yamasaki office in Detroit. As Obata recalls, “I started at Mr. Yamasaki's Detroit office, but was soon spending most of my time working on the new international airport in St. Louis.”⁴

After only a short time in Detroit, Obata relocated to the HYL office in St. Louis to work directly with the airport team, where he was reunited with a Washington University colleague, George Kassabaum.