Hideo Sasaki (25 November 1919 – 30 August 2000) was a Japanese American landscape architect.
Hideo Sasaki was born in Reedley, California, on 25 November 1919. He grew up working on his family's California truck farm, and harvesting crops on Arizona farms. He began his college studies at the University of California, Berkeley during the time of World War II. Owing to his Japanese descent, he was forced into the Poston internment camp in Arizona after the signing of Executive Order 9066.[1] He was able to leave the camp upon volunteering to work as a farm hand in Sterling, Colorado.
Soon after the war, he moved to Denver, Colorado where he met his wife, Kisa, a graduate of the University of Colorado. Sasaki then moved to the University of Illinois where he received Bachelor of Fine Arts and Landscape Architecture in 1946. During his time at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Sasaki worked with Charles Harris.
In 1948 he graduated with a Master of Landscape Architecture from Harvard Design School.[2] After graduation he returned to Illinois where he instructed for two years. For the next eighteen years (1953-1970) he became a professor and the chairman of the department of Landscape Architecture of the Harvard Graduate School of Design. In 1953, he founded Sasaki Associates, incorporated in nearby Watertown, Massachusetts, where he was the president and chairman until 1980. He led the company's architects and planners in developing many noted commercial areas and corporate parks. In 1956 he worked on the design of the Havana Plan Piloto with Mario Romañach and the Catalan architect Josep Lluís Sert. Fellow landscape architect Peter Walker would join Sasaki Associates and become a partner in 1957; in the following decade, the firm would expand significantly, from six landscape architects to over 200 in various disciplines.[2]
During his later years he lived with his family (wife and two daughters, Rin and Ann) in Lafayette, California. He died on 30 August 2000 in a hospital in Walnut Creek, California.[3]
Hideo Sasaki had partnered with Peter Walker to create Sasaki Walker and Associates. After creating the firm, Sasaki was able to expand his company into having offices in San Francisco, Nashville, Baltimore, Denver, Washington DC and even Canada. The firm's work includes Golden Gateway Center, San Francisco (1959–60—with Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill); Foothill College, Los Altos, CA (1960–2); Weyerhaeuser Headquarters, Tacoma, WA (1963–72); the roof-gardens, etc., Bona-ventura Hotel, Montréal, Canada (1964–8— designed by Masao Kinoshita as part of a huge development, the architecture of which was designed by Affleck); Greenacre Park NYC (1970–2); Constitution Plaza, Hartford, CT (1969–73); and the John Deere & Co. headquarters, Moline, IL (1957–63—with buildings by Saarinen)."[4]
The Cultural Landscape Foundation described the firm as, "The firm evolved through various configurations, but consistent was Sasaki’s conviction in the notion of oasis and that landscapes can restore the human spirit."[5] He is credited with introducing the modernist design principles of minimalism and abstraction to landscape architecture. He was instrumental in developing the “Sasaki Style” which emphasized the integration of natural and man-made elements, the use of simple materials, and the integration of landscape, architecture, and urbanism. He was the first landscape architect to receive the American Society of Landscape Architects’ Medal of Excellence, in 1972. Some of Sasaki’s most notable works include the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia, the San Francisco State College campus, the First National Bank Plaza in Minneapolis, and the National Mall in Washington, DC.[3]
Sasaki's firm operated under his own name, as Sasaki Associates, as Sasaki, Walker & Associates (with landscape architect Peter Walker), as Sasaki, Strong & Associates in Toronto (with landscape architect Richard Strong) and as Sasaki, Dawson, DeMay Associates, Inc..