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.
George Kassabaum
George Edward Kassabaum was born in 1920 in Atchison, Kansas, the only child of George Alexander Kassabaum and Dorothy Gaston Kassabaum. His father worked as General Secretary for the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). When George was five years old, the YMCA transferred his father to Fort Scott, Kansas, so the family relocated. This move was to have a long-term impact on George, as his daughter Karen Kassabaum Ivory recalled from a family story: “When George was a schoolboy of about 10 years old in Fort Scott, he passed a Presbyterian church every day on his way to school. He thought it was the most beautiful building he had ever seen and announced that he wanted to become an architect and design beautiful buildings.”
FIGURE 2.5 George Kassabaum.
Source: Photo courtesy of HOK.
The family moved again due to his father's YMCA work, this time to Oklahoma City, where young George Kassabaum attended high school. While many children's career interests vary over time, he still wanted to become an architect. His mother helped him research universities that offered architecture degrees. They decided Washington University in St. Louis was the best choice: It had a good reputation in architectural education, and it was in the Midwest, not too far from home.
Kassabaum enrolled at Washington University in the late 1930s. He made many friends among the students and faculty and developed a deep bond with the university which was to continue his entire life. Kassabaum was a good student. Because of his natural inclination to be well-organized, he gravitated toward production, the portion of a project where architects transform a good design into working drawings, then work with the contractor during construction until the building is finished. There's a lesson here: Some architects yearn to be designers, because that's where the glory is, but if your true talents lie elsewhere, you can have a wonderful career as a project architect or project manager. Kassabaum did both.
World War II interrupted Kassabaum's studies. From 1944 to 1945, he worked for Boeing Aircraft and served in the U.S. Army Air Corps. He applied drafting skills he learned in architecture school to his work at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. Although his Air Force superiors would not confirm this, Kassabaum was quite sure he drew up the bomb rack for the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.
Kassabaum was quite sure he drew up the bomb rack for the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.
Kassabaum returned to Washington University after the war and received his Bachelor of Architecture degree in 1947. After graduation, he got his first job with Murphy and Mackey, a St. Louis architecture practice led by two Washington University faculty members. Joseph Murphy was dean of the School of Architecture, and Eugene Mackey also taught at the school. Kassabaum himself later joined the architecture faculty at Washington University.
During his teaching career, Kassabaum was fixed up on a blind date with Marjory Verser, who had also graduated from the university and was working in the Business School. Marjory was a natural extrovert, lively and talkative, and Kassabaum was quieter, but a great listener. Marjory often said of that first date, “I had a touch of laryngitis that evening, so George thought he had found a nice, quiet woman to spend a lifetime with. Was he wrong!” After a whirlwind romance, they got married in early 1949. Throughout his life, Kassabaum continued to be somewhat quiet and a great listener, qualities essential to his success as the production leader of HOK.
In 1950, Kassabaum joined HYL as Leinweber's top assistant for production. George Hellmuth was already in the office, and Gyo Obata had recently transferred there from Detroit. The three men who would cofound HOK were now working together at the same firm. The stage was set.
By 1955, the St. Louis HYL office had become very busy, requiring more of Yamasaki's attention. But he was frail after a stomach ulcer operation and found frequent travel to St. Louis a burden. Yamasaki had also become unhappy with the broad variety of projects Hellmuth brought to the office. He wanted to design signature projects—prominent, important, and notable buildings—not ordinary buildings like schools.
Lambert Airport was the only “signature project” to come from the HYL St. Louis office, and Yamasaki believed Detroit offered more opportunities. On one of his visits to St. Louis, he invited Hellmuth to lunch at the Statler Hotel. During lunch, Yamasaki proposed closing the HYL St. Louis office and relocating Hellmuth to Detroit to look for signature projects. Hellmuth reacted negatively to Yamasaki's proposal. He still believed success came from a diversity of work, not just signature projects. There's a saying that comes to mind: “There are no bad projects. Only bad architects.” Yamasaki was a good architect, but the point is that truly great architects will find the potential and do wonderful things even with ordinary buildings.
Hellmuth was proud of the HYL St. Louis office and believed it was on the path to success. His reaction to Yamasaki's proposal was so strong, that after lunch he sought out Gyo Obata and George Kassabaum and proposed a new partnership. As Hellmuth recalled later, “The entire conversation took about two minutes.”5 Hellmuth needed extraordinary partners and had approached the two best leaders in the HYL St. Louis office to join him in forming