Hideo Sasaki


Hideo Sasaki was an American landscape architect.

Biography

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. 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. In 1948 he graduated with a Master of Landscape Architecture from Harvard Design School. After graduation he returned to Illinois where he instructed for two years. For the next eighteen years 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.
During his later years he lived with his family in Lafayette, California. He died on 30 August 2000 in a hospital in Walnut Creek, California.

Style of design

Sasaki helped to modernize the concepts of Landscape Architecture. He created a practical approach to designing a landscape. In his works, several characteristics are taken into account, such as the historical, cultural, environmental, and social use of the land. Sasaki became famous for developing this concept of interdisciplinary planning. In all of the sites that he developed, a balance is implemented into the design. One aspect that Sasaki Associates pays particular attention to is the environmental aspect of the land. They have taken part in creating several "green designs." These designs are created to enhance or maintain the health of the environment. Some prominent examples can be viewed at the Utah State University Innovation Campus, The Virginia Biosphere, Walden Woods, and the Manulife Financial U.S. Operations Headquarters. Another facet of Sasaki's approach was the modernism that he worked into his college campus projects.

Major projects

Sasaki's firm operated under his own name, as Sasaki Associates, as Sasaki, Walker & Associates, as Sasaki, Strong & Associates in Toronto and as Sasaki, Dawson, DeMay Associates, Inc..