Minoru Yamasaki

The attacks of September 11 2001 brought America to a standstill as the twin towers which collapsed after two hijacked planes were driven into them. In the aftermath, many people decided to look up and research about the history of the towers before they were destroyed. One of the people they looked up about was the architect of the towers, Minoru Yamasaki.
Minoru was born in 1912 to Japanese immigrants in Seattle, Washington. He experienced racism and prejudice for being of Japanese descent in his youth. After graduating from University of Seattle's architectural programme, Minoru worked as an engineer and a draftsman before getting a master's degree in architecture at New York University. His first job was working for the designers behind the Empire State Building, Shreve, and Lamb & Harmon who helped him with avoiding internment (prison without trial) during the Second World War After working at various other architectural firms, Minoru started his own partnership with one of his first designs being a bakery in Detroit, Michigan. Minoru was inspired by
Gothic architecture which features include ribbed vaults, ornate decoration, and pointed arches. He was also known for his usage of narrow vertical windows. In fact, the narrow windows reflected his fear of heights so when he was designing the Twin Towers in the 1960s, he designed them with narrow windows so the buildings' occupants would feel secure inside. Minoru also designed the towers with framed tube structures which saw the stairwells and the lift shafts being housed within the middle of the towers so tenants would have an open floor plan uninterrupted by walls or pillars. The Twin Towers had 110 floors to comply with the Port Authority's requirement for office space to be 10,000,000 square feet (930,000 m2). Designing the Twin Towers was the commission of a lifetime for Minoru, he could not turn it down while understanding that it was too big of a job for his office
At first, people were not happy with the World Trade Center project's conception but the critical reception shifted dramatically as the project progressed. The North Tower opened first in December 1970 while the South Tower opened in January 1972.
Minoru also designed the Rainer Tower in Seattle, 100 Washington Square in Minneapolis and Torre Picasso in Madrid. Minoru died in 1986 from stomach cancer, 15 years before his iconic Twin Towers were obliterated by Al-Qaeda hijacked planes. A new tower stands in the same plaza where the Twin Towers were called the One World Trade Center while two reflecting pools stand on the exact points of the plaza where the towers were with the names of those who died in scripted on bronze parapets.