Dr. Allen Gyure is Professor of Architecture at Lawrence Technological University. His research focuses on American architecture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His books include Frank Lloyd Wright’s Florida Southern College, The Chicago Schoolhouse,1856-2006: High School Architecture and Educational Reform, and the recently published Minoru Yamasaki: Humanist Architecture for a Modernist World. Dr. Gyure serves on the Board of Directors of Docomomo Michigan and is a member of the Michigan Historic Preservation Review Board.

This presentation will provide an overview of architect Minoru Yamasaki’s most celebrated buildings and his significance to modern architecture. Yamasaki’s popularity arose from a unique form of humanist architecture which melded his interest in invoking feelings of “serenity” and “delight” with insights gained from studying historical architecture around the world. His work offered a gentler, more decorated style of modernism distanced from the obsession with function or structure that
characterized much of contemporary architecture.

This is the second in a six-lecture series. The subject is Architecture: Shaping Buildings; Shaping Us. The next lecture series will start March 8, 2018. The title is Behavioral and Social Sciences: Real World Applications.