Shoji Sadao, Shoji Sadao (January 1927 – November 3, 2019) was a Japanese American architect, best known for his work and collaborations with R. Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi. Whose parents had immigrated from Japan, came to fill that role by an unusual route that included both time in an internment camp during World War II and service in the Army.
Shoji Sadao (pronounced SHO-jee seh-DOW-oh) was born in Los Angeles; his family said that he and his high school transcript gave his birth date as Dec. 20, 1926, but that his parents, Riichi and Otatsu (Kodama) Sadao, registered the date on his birth certificate as Jan. 2, 1927.
His father was a farmer, his mother a homemaker, and they spoke only rudimentary English. Shoji grew up an English speaker, learning the language from friends and at school. That made for a reticent sort of household.
After World War II began, he and most of his family were sent to the Gila River internment camp in Arizona along with thousands of other Japanese-Americans. He finished high school there. The camp staff included Quakers who were conscientious objectors, he said, and for a work-study program he was paired with a Quaker architect who was in charge of buildings and grounds. That got him interested in architecture.
Young people could leave the camps if they were accepted to attend college, and Mr. Sadao got into Boston University. He had just begun freshman year in 1945 when he was drafted into the Army. He was at basic training at Camp Croft in South Carolina when V-J Day came in August 1945, marking the end of the war. He served for four years, stationed in Germany in a topographic unit, an experience that would come in handy when he met Fuller.
He had enrolled at Cornell University’s School of Architecture on the G.I. Bill, and Fuller turned up there in 1952 as a visiting professor. Fuller set the students to constructing a 20-foot-diameter “miniature earth” project, a sphere with the continental land masses marked on its surface. Sadao also assisted Fuller in creating versions of his Dymaxion Map, a flat representation of the globe that Fuller hoped would help people see the features and peoples of Earth as connected rather than disparate.
He graduated in 1954 with a degree in architecture and joined Fuller’s office in Raleigh, N.C. Among the projects he worked on there was the design of lightweight shelters for military equipment and personnel that could be airlifted to areas where they were needed. In the 2003 talk, he also recalled a United States government assignment to design, on one month’s notice, a dome for a trade show in Kabul, Afghanistan.
The building was subsequently used at other trade shows. “Many years later, Bucky said that this is the first building in history that’s flown around the world,” Mr. Sadao said. Mr. Sadao was also a quiet force behind “Three Structures by Buckminster Fuller,” a 1959-60 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
In 1965, in preparation for working on Expo 67, the two formalized their partnership with the creation of Fuller & Sadao Architects. According to an obituary of Mr. Sadao on the website of the Buckminster Fuller Institute, one important thing Mr. Sadao brought to the partnership was that he was a licensed architect. Fuller was not.
Throughout this period, Mr. Sadao was also working with Noguchi, Fuller’s longtime friend; Fuller had introduced the two in 1956. As the website of the Noguchi Museum in Queens (which Mr. Sadao helped design) puts it, Noguchi was interested in “an expanded definition of sculpture more directly related to the lived experience.”
That led him to design large outdoor sculptures and entire parks, with Mr. Sadao often helping to make them a reality. The first Noguchi project he worked on, in the late 1950s, was the Billy Rose sculpture garden at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. After Noguchi’s death in 1988, Mr. Sadao stepped in to finish, among other things, Bayfront Park in Miami.
He also became executive director of the Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, serving in that capacity until 2003.
Mr. Sadao, who lived in Tokyo in recent years, is survived by his wife, Tsuneko Sawada Sadao, whom he married in 1972; a sister, Masako Asawa; and a brother, Frank.
Shoji Sadao (pronounced SHO-jee seh-DOW-oh) was born in Los Angeles; his family said that he and his high school transcript gave his birth date as Dec. 20, 1926, but that his parents, Riichi and Otatsu (Kodama) Sadao, registered the date on his birth certificate as Jan. 2, 1927.
His father was a farmer, his mother a homemaker, and they spoke only rudimentary English. Shoji grew up an English speaker, learning the language from friends and at school. That made for a reticent sort of household.
After World War II began, he and most of his family were sent to the Gila River internment camp in Arizona along with thousands of other Japanese-Americans. He finished high school there. The camp staff included Quakers who were conscientious objectors, he said, and for a work-study program he was paired with a Quaker architect who was in charge of buildings and grounds. That got him interested in architecture.
Young people could leave the camps if they were accepted to attend college, and Mr. Sadao got into Boston University. He had just begun freshman year in 1945 when he was drafted into the Army. He was at basic training at Camp Croft in South Carolina when V-J Day came in August 1945, marking the end of the war. He served for four years, stationed in Germany in a topographic unit, an experience that would come in handy when he met Fuller.
He had enrolled at Cornell University’s School of Architecture on the G.I. Bill, and Fuller turned up there in 1952 as a visiting professor. Fuller set the students to constructing a 20-foot-diameter “miniature earth” project, a sphere with the continental land masses marked on its surface. Sadao also assisted Fuller in creating versions of his Dymaxion Map, a flat representation of the globe that Fuller hoped would help people see the features and peoples of Earth as connected rather than disparate.
He graduated in 1954 with a degree in architecture and joined Fuller’s office in Raleigh, N.C. Among the projects he worked on there was the design of lightweight shelters for military equipment and personnel that could be airlifted to areas where they were needed. In the 2003 talk, he also recalled a United States government assignment to design, on one month’s notice, a dome for a trade show in Kabul, Afghanistan.
The building was subsequently used at other trade shows. “Many years later, Bucky said that this is the first building in history that’s flown around the world,” Mr. Sadao said. Mr. Sadao was also a quiet force behind “Three Structures by Buckminster Fuller,” a 1959-60 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
In 1965, in preparation for working on Expo 67, the two formalized their partnership with the creation of Fuller & Sadao Architects. According to an obituary of Mr. Sadao on the website of the Buckminster Fuller Institute, one important thing Mr. Sadao brought to the partnership was that he was a licensed architect. Fuller was not.
Throughout this period, Mr. Sadao was also working with Noguchi, Fuller’s longtime friend; Fuller had introduced the two in 1956. As the website of the Noguchi Museum in Queens (which Mr. Sadao helped design) puts it, Noguchi was interested in “an expanded definition of sculpture more directly related to the lived experience.”
That led him to design large outdoor sculptures and entire parks, with Mr. Sadao often helping to make them a reality. The first Noguchi project he worked on, in the late 1950s, was the Billy Rose sculpture garden at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. After Noguchi’s death in 1988, Mr. Sadao stepped in to finish, among other things, Bayfront Park in Miami.
He also became executive director of the Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, serving in that capacity until 2003.
Mr. Sadao, who lived in Tokyo in recent years, is survived by his wife, Tsuneko Sawada Sadao, whom he married in 1972; a sister, Masako Asawa; and a brother, Frank.
