Hideo Sasaki

Pearl Street Mall, Boulder, Colorado

Hideo Sasaki (25 November 1919 - 30 August 2000) was an American landscape architect.

Biography

Hideo Sasaki was born in Reedley, California, on 25 November 1919. He grew up working on his family's California truck farm, and harvesting crops on Arizona farms. He began his college studies at the University of California, Berkeley during the time of World War II. Owing to his Japanese descent, he was forced into the Poston internment camp in Arizona.[1] He was able to leave the camp upon volunteering to work as a farm hand in Sterling, Colorado. Soon after the war, he moved to Denver, Colorado where he met his wife, Kisa, a graduate of the University of Colorado. Sasaki then moved to the University of Illinois where he received Bachelor of Fine Arts and Landscape Architecture in 1946. In 1948 he graduated with a Master of Landscape Architecture from Harvard Design School. After graduation he returned to Illinois where he instructed for two years. For the next eighteen years (1953-1970) he became a professor and the chairman of the department of Landscape Architecture of the Harvard Graduate School of Design.[2] In 1953, he founded Sasaki Associates, Incorporated in nearby Watertown, Massachusetts, where he was the president and chairman until 1980. He led the company's architects and planners in developing many noted commercial areas and corporate parks.[3]

During his later years he lived with his family (wife and two daughters, Rin and Ann) in Lafayette, California. He died on 30 August 2000 in a hospital in Walnut Creek, California.[4]

Style of design

Sasaki helped to modernize the concepts of Landscape Architecture. He created a practical approach to designing a landscape. In his works, several characteristics are taken into account, such as the historical, cultural, environmental, and social use of the land. Sasaki became famous for developing this concept of interdisciplinary planning. In all of the sites that he developed, a balance is implemented into the design. One aspect that Sasaki Associates pays particular attention to is the environmental aspect of the land. They have taken part in creating several “green designs.” These designs are created to enhance or maintain the health of the environment. Some of the prominent examples can be viewed at the Utah State University Innovation Campus, The Virginia Biosphere, Walden Woods, and the Manulife Financial U.S. Operations Headquarters. Another facet of Sasaki's approach was the modernism that he worked into his college campus projects.

Major projects

aerial view of Bell Labs Holmdel Complex, Holmdel Township, New Jersey, 1962

Sasaki's firm operated under his own name, as Sasaki Associates, as Sasaki, Walker & Associates (with landscape architect Peter Walker), as Sasaki, Strong & Associates in Toronto (with landscape architect Richard Strong) and as Sasaki, Dawson, DeMay Associates, Inc..

Awards and achievements

References

  1. ↑ "National Archives: Sasaki". Retrieved 2010-04-30.
  2. ↑ Leslie Luebbers, "Sasaki, Hideo", Grove Art Online, (Subscription required (help)) Check date values in: |access-date= (help);
  3. ↑ "In the boom years after World War II, Mr. Sasaki's team built some of America's first corporate parks, as companies like Upjohn and John Deere moved their headquarters from city to country." NYTimes obituary
  4. 1 2 3 Raver, Anne (September 25, 2000), "Hideo Sasaki, 80, Influential Landscape Architect, Dies", The New York Times
  5. ↑ "UPACE | ERA Architects". www.eraarch.ca. Retrieved 2016-08-09.
  6. ↑ http://www.emporis.com/application/?nav=building&id=1maritimeplaza-sanfrancisco-ca-usa
  7. ↑ Thomas E. Luebke, ed., Civic Art: A Centennial History of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, 2013): Appendix B, p. 554.
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