In the courtyard the man looks
at a tall temple. The guide whispers:
“In one thousand years only two have fallen.”
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In I, there was a suggestion that the structures known as the World Trade Towers were influenced by religious considerations on the part of Yamasaki, the architect . Now it is time to more fully assert the idea: the Trade Tower was a structure whose purpose and design were almost entirely Buddhist.
But why would Yamasaki design a duplex, hundred story pagoda? I will limit my evidence, for now, to ten points:
(1) The Trade Center was commissioned during a period of international conflict. Within the matrix of the Cold War, Vietnam was the dominating concern of Americans, including the Japanese-American architect. Many turned to Eastern religions for guidance; in this architect’s case, he first undertook a world tour of ancient forms, many encoded in the Towers.
(2) At that time, earthquakes were an impediment to the solution of industrial growth for Asian cities; the need for a way to build a tall structure was on the minds of many architects... As he investigated old temples in Japan, Yamasaki began to notice what others had pointed out; that pagodas had survived many earthquakes and windstorms.
(3) “ ..the building looks very sturdy and solid, but ...if you take one of the angle rafters and give the end of it a good shove the whole structure swings back and forth “*
Studying the form of the stacked gables of the temple, he may have realised that the solution for his tower would be the flexibility of attachments.
(4) What started as a pragmatic engineering solution, however, became a search for cultural heritage. Looking more deeply into the temple design, Yamasaki may have seen that for the work to be a pure expression , to fulfill the religious purpose he envisioned, it must follow the forms provided by ancient architecture.
(5) In particular, the pagoda is inherited from China, and before that, from the Indian “Stupa”. The “Stupa” was the form erected over the belongings of the Buddha after his death; in China, the sacred form was put atop an observation tower; and in Japan, many centuries later, the “observation tower has evolved to a tower that is itself observed...” *
(6) According to one student, the original pillar of the Stupa has been enclosed in the pagoda “as a housing or shell for the ‘shinbushi’" (i.e. the sacred central pole). Furthermore, in Japan, the pagoda has revealed secrets of earthquake and wind resistance; by “permitting some movement, or play, the joints absorb the shocks” as the stacked gables move freely and in counterpoint, one above another. In the diagram, the congruences of flexible gables and trusses, “shinbushi” and central core, are apparent. Both structures interact dynamically with the wind.
(7) The same student anticipates Yamasaki: “..such a concept could never emerge from Western construction techniques.” Flexibility, rather than the rigid monolith, becomes the model.
(8) This practical application, however, does not fully describe the depth of this relation. The Japanese say that they”come from the land of yellow springs” (i.e. a marshy area) and it is necessary that “ the hiji (pillar) reach to the heavens, and the thick palace pillar reach to the bedrock...”
A precise description of the excavated site for the Trade Towers and the necessity of planting the central core in bedrock.
(9) There is some imprecision as to whether the “shinbushi” is embedded in the earth or actually suspends from atop the temple. It has been argued that the latter enabled a further damping effect against earthquake shock. I think, however, that the former was the influence on Yamasaki.
It is likely, that Yamasaki had a Temple in mind when he designed the Towers, a temple devoted explicitly to World Peace, as he said in various interviews;
In adopting the square plan, he emulated the pagoda .
In eliminating interior columnation, he emulated Japanese design.
In describing the towers as different from the “strong “ buildings of the West, he referred indirectly to his attraction to the “accepting” spirit of Buddhism.
In adopting “Visco-Elastic Damping Assemblies” (VEDAS) to physically counter windloads, he acknowledged the most ancient Indian source ..
In replicating the Tower, he expresses a possibility of Reincarnation.
The mystery of the “arbitrary” placement of the Towers is addressed by the unique Japanese temple format known as “ laterality”; whereas the Chinese had always adopted a strictly symmetric series of axial gateways in their temples (viz. the Forbidden City) the introduction of Buddhist architecture in Japan was marked by the
entrance through symmetric gates, followed by a turn to left or right. **
It is possible, that the formal roots of the Trade Center Towers are in the Japanese Temple, before that the Chinese and before that the Indian Stupa; before, that, of course, we are effectively in prehistory. And it is in prehistory, that we will find the source for the violent antagonism which led, implacably, to the tragedy of September.
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*Fr. “Goju no to “ in “Nihon oyobi Nhonjin” 1994. My apologies to any who are more fluent in these ideas, which I of course may have mistated.
** from a misplaced text