Yamasaki’s first skyscraper, and the only one he designed prior to the World Trade Center.

Originally the headquarters for the Michigan Consolidated Gas Company, this 26-story structure has precast concrete panels applied to the exterior, hiding an internal steel frame. The building’s narrow windows—intended to help combat acrophobia among visitors and workers—form prominent vertical lines running from the lobby up to the top of the building to emphasize its height.

The public lobby’s great openness is achieved by covering the structural columns in bright travertine, elevating the ceiling to 30 feet, and using reflective aluminum mullions and extremely tall window panels.

Yamasaki moved to Detroit in 1945 to join Smith, Hinchman & Grylls as chief designer. His first opportunity to design a substantial building came when the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago sought to remodel its downtown Detroit branch.

Yamasaki conceived an 8-story Annex with a curtain wall of alternating bands of white marble panels and tinted green glass conjoining the existing Neoclassical bank. The curtain wall is intentionally thin and light in contrast to its neighbor. He also set the structure back 30 feet from the street, making a tiny urban oasis of sunlight and greenery for the Bank’s office workers.

This building was the first modernist skyscraper in downtown Detroit.

Yamasaki’s masterpiece, the McGregor Conference Center, demonstrates his transition to a different kind of modernism in the mid-50s.

After suffering from nearly-fatal ulcers in 1953, he took some time off and traveled to Italy, India, and Japan. On this journey, Yamasaki was impressed by his encounter with historical monuments like the Taj Majal, as well as traditional Japanese vernacular architecture. Upon his return, he began to think about design in a new way.

The McGregor Center shows Yama beginning to include more “serenity and delight” in his work, here in the form of a sunken courtyard oasis and a solid building sliced open to form a light well. The prevalent pointed arches, screens, water features, and bold silhouette would all characterize Yama’s new approach.

The Prentis Building reveals Yamasaki’s continued exploration of prefabricated concrete panels. Precast concrete supports dominate the façade, but unlike the Education Building, the columns are much farther apart, and the concrete trees form columns and horizontal spandrels instead of arches.

The strong vertical columns gracefully curve up from the ground through the upper two floors before terminating just above the roofline. These continuous columns form a system of bays that dominate the building’s east and west sides, while the active roofline reveals Yamasaki’s interest in a dramatic silhouette against the sky.

The DeRoy Auditorium is a rectangular concrete box with a slightly protruding flat roof and entries at each end. Yamasaki enlivened the walls with a pattern of non-structural arches that reached almost to the roofline, giving the appearance of a line of concrete flowers growing up the side of the wall. These decorative elements present a visually active and interesting surface that catches the light and gives rise to interesting shadow effects that shifted constantly change during the day.

A moat surrounds the structure, sunken below grade, removing it from a heavily trafficked area—another example of Yamasaki’s effort to insert a serene oasis in the midst of a busy urban campus.

Yamasaki designed this building at a point when he was poised between his previous, more minimalist work and the richer characteristics of his later creations.

In the mid-50s he began to explore different materials and an intimate relationship of structure and surroundings. This was one of his first attempts at incorporating a Japanese-inspired landscape in a design on a small scale, with trees, grass, and (originally) reflecting pools placed between the building and a looming screen wall. The brick wall contains small slits in an interlocking pattern that tease viewers with glimpses into the courtyard and building.

The American Concrete Institute headquarters looms large in Yamasaki’s history as the first time he fully explored the potential of concrete, which would become his main building material from the late-50s on.

For the narrow site, Yamasaki devised a two-story, rectangular structure only 90 feet long. The building exploits concrete’s tensile, compressive, and decorative capabilities, acting as a showpiece for the product pursuant to the client’s request. It also shows Yamasaki’s growing interest in Japanese precedents, which can be seen in the slight flaring of the roof and the block wall that originally enclosed the property.

After World War II, the Reynolds Aluminum Company sought to aggressively expand its product range into both architecture and the automotive industry, hiring Yamasaki to design a regional sales office in metro Detroit to assist in both projects. Reynolds intended the building to be a showpiece for its products and to attract the attention of Detroit’s auto giants.

The simple, temple-like structure consists of a rectangular steel and glass box with a large central atrium. The lower level was left largely open while Yamasaki wrapped the upper two stories with an ornamental screen made of gold anodized aluminum rings. This screen served to break up direct sunlight and provide a richly textured surface in contrast to the smooth glass.

Yamasaki designed only a handful of religious structures, and one of his best is this synagogue complex in Bloomfield Hills for metro Detroit’s oldest Jewish congregation.

The sanctuary’s dramatic tent-like form is intended to reference the earliest synagogues; Yamasaki had previously designed a smaller version of the tent form for a Methodist congregation in Warren. A continuous window around the building’s base allows the congregants seated inside to see landscaped grounds outside, while the gently sweeping ceiling inevitably draws one’s eyes up toward the sky. Connected to the sanctuary are various other spaces, including a schools, a library, and offices.

When Yamasaki left Smith, Hinchman & Grylls to form a partnership with Joseph Leinweber and George Hellmuth, the fledgling firm occupied some small offices downtown before moving out to Royal Oak. After a few years, Yamasaki, Leinweber & Associates relocated to a building at the corner of Adams and Maple in Birmingham.

By the early 1960s, Yamasaki’s success and growing firm required new accommodations. Hence, he designed a sleek new one-story structure on Big Beaver Road less than half-a-mile from his home. The building, somewhat hidden from traffic, was intended to accommodate 100 employees as the firm continued to grow.