Friends of Yamasaki Summer 2025 News

Celebrating Two Years of Accomplishments

Since our founding, Friends of Yamasaki has grown enormously.  Beginning with co-chair Donald Kunz’s initial meeting with Eugenia Woo of Historic Seattle in July 2023, our membership now approaches 200 Friends, including 14 partner organizations and 3 business partners.

Minoru Yamasaki is widely considered one of the most important and prominent Japanese American architects of the twentieth century and recognized as one of the most significant and influential architects of twentieth century’s modernist movement.  We have successfully reached out to both the Japanese American community and our local design and historic preservation communities.  Specifically, we have the support of the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Washington, Historic Seattle, Queen Anne Historical Society, Redmond Historical Society, Shoreline Preservation Society, and the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation, among other key organizations.  We also have support from several city and state historical organizations where Yamasaki’s architecture left a significant imprint including New York, Minnesota and Michigan.  We look forward to linking with more partnering organizations.

Here’s a summary of our accomplishments:

• In March 2024, PSC’s project manager, Mädchen Beltrie, briefed co-chairs Donald and Brooks on the work of Pacific Science Center’s planning and design team, with participation by consulting architect Grace Kim of Schemata Workshop and landscape architect Shannon Nichol of Gustafson Guthrie Nichol.  In September 2024, we held a community-wide forum on the future of the courtyard, at Historic Seattle’s Dearborn House headquarters.
• In December 2024, we launched our website Home | Friends of Yamasaki which chronicles both the challenge we face—including leaking pools, one of which has been drained, and deteriorating infrastructure systems — and the opportunities to restore them.  Many thanks to Dana Guppy of First Mile Services for designing and maintaining our site:  IT Services | First Mile Services LLC
• In March 2025, Will Daugherty, President and CEO of PSC, led a group from Friends of Yamasaki, and several people with the Seattle Center Advisory Commission, including Marshall Foster, Director, on a site tour to show us specific areas of concern, including but not limited to the leaking pools, deteriorating terrazzo terraces, rusting railings, and sagging cantilevered slabs.  Will also noted the lack of accessible routes and malfunctioning electrical wiring.  He outlined PSC’s four overarching goals for the courtyard’s future: preservation, restoration, accessibility, and sustainability.
• In June, we met again with Will, Mädchen, and others to review an in-house engineering feasibility study and cost estimate for the courtyard restoration.

As a result of this progress, Friends of Yamasaki is now viewed by the PSC administration as an established stakeholder in the future of Yamasaki’s masterpiece. Our goal for full restoration of the courtyard and pools is clear and our work is ongoing.  PSC has not yet ruled out installing living plants or a meadow in the south pool.  We were informed that a decision has been deferred for several years and remain hopeful PSC will withdraw this option in the future.  Meanwhile, we are exploring new preservation initiatives, such as nominating the facility for the National Register of Historic Places, for which we hope to obtain PSC’s approval.

See below for more detail about what’s in store for the coming months.

Pacific Science Center and Seattle Center Announce Partnership

In March 2025, Seattle Center Director, Marshall Foster, and Pacific Science Center President and CEO, Will Daugherty, announced an exciting new partnership to collaborate on restoring the Pacific Science Center’s buildings, courtyard, and infrastructure.  Until now, the two organizations have been strictly separate, given that Pacific Science Center owns its building and land while the City of Seattle owns the adjacent Seattle Center campus.

At our March 2025 meeting with Will Daugherty, he and Marshall Foster provided more details of this new relationship.  While details of the partnership have yet to be resolved, Friends of Yamasaki envisions that it will afford an opportunity for future City funding of the restoration program, possibly with a levy and raising private funds.  Meanwhile, owing toa surplus of square footage and an ongoing funding crisis, Pacific Science Center is exploring a wide range of opportunities to ensure a thriving future.  Stay tuned to future issues of this newsletter for an update on the work of the partnership and the status of land ownership.

Courtyard to Open to Seattle Center Soon!

Photographs of Yamasaki’s original design for the United States Science Pavilion at the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair reveal that the PSC courtyard was directly connected to the Seattle Center Campus.  A broad stairway led directly up to thet errace from the east-west pedestrian concourse that connects Yamasaki’s building with the Space Needle.  When the Pacific Science Center opened after the fair closed, a series of doors around the courtyard perimeter were used for ticketing and entrance to its exhibits.

However, in the 1990s, ticketing was consolidated at a single-entry point, necessitating construction of the ticket booths, fences, and gates that have walled off the PSC from the surrounding Seattle Center for the past thirty years.  The exciting news is that the first official action of the new PSC/Seattle Center Partnership will be removal of those ugly barriers!  Work will proceed in the months ahead and is expected to be completed in time for the 2026 World Cup FIFA games in Seattle next June.

Development Proposed for Pacific Science Center Garage Site

In 2019, Pacific Science Center sold its garage to Grousemont Associates, a development company managed by David Wright, for $13.9million. The garage parcel was not included in the 2010 PSC landmark designation, and according to PSC President and CEO, Will Daugherty, PSC no longer needs the garage to meet its parking needs.  Grousemont has proposed an eight-story multi-family development on the site with 151apartments.  Early design guidance for architect Mithun’s design has been completed by the City of Seattle.  Friends of Yamasaki has gone on record opposing the development because it will obscure the Gothic tracery of the white tilt-up concrete walls along the west and southwest facades of Yamasaki’s buildings and will eliminate 11 Giant Sequoia trees along the north side of Denny Way.

Friends of Yamasaki Seeks Partnership with UW CBE to Honor Yamasaki’s Legacy

Every ten years, including in spring 2025, the University of Washington College of Built Environments designates new recipients of its “Honor Roll” of significant leaders in architecture, urban planning, and landscape architecture.  The names of the honorees are inscribed on a frieze that wraps around the crown molding of the amphitheater auditorium in Architecture Hall on the University of Washington campus.

Believing Minoru Yamasaki to be eminently qualified for this honor, in December 2024, Donald and Brooks enlisted UW architecture and engineering professor, Tyler Sprague, to submit an honors nomination for Yamasaki.  Unfortunately, we recently learned that the nomination was declined. This does not mean that CBE views Yamasaki as undeserving.  Rather, it is an indication of thenarrowly-defined parameters for the honor. Traditionally, honorees are persons who either taught classes at CBE or practiced architecture for decades from an office headquartered in Seattle.  While Yamasaki contributed 3 buildings to Seattle’s cityscape, he neither taught at the UW nor had a Seattle office (he primarily worked out of his Detroit and Troy, Michigan offices.)

All is not lost, however.  We firmly believe that a figure as distinguished as Yamasaki clearly merits an award from the UW CBE, along with many other distinguished alumni who moved away from Seattle after graduating.  In the coming months, Donald and Brooks expect to meet with CBE faculty to propose that CBE establish a separate award pathway for deserving CBE alumnae including Minoru Yamasaki.  We will report back on what we learn.

Friends of Yamasaki Sponsored by Allied Arts Foundation!

In spring 2025, Friends of Yamasaki applied for and received fiscal sponsorship from the Allied Arts Foundation.  AAF fiscal sponsorship means that, in the event that FOY elects to raise money for the restoration of the PSC courtyard and pools, we will be eligible to apply for grants, and the grantors’ donations will be tax deductible. We firmly hope that our collaboration with Will Daugherty, Marshall Foster, and the PSC planning and design team will lead to opportunities to join with them in raising funds for the restoration project!

We look forward to staying in touch with all of you as new developments occur.  Look for our next newsletter in Fall 2025.  Meanwhile, if you have questions or concerns, please write to Donald Kunz at darkunz@me.com or to Brooks Kolb at brooks@brookskolbllc.com.