Gyo Obata Biography, Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth and Family

Obata died in St. Louis, Missouri, on March 8, 2022, at the age of 99.

In 2010, Obata was featured in a book written by Marlene Ann Birkman and published by The Images Publishing Group titled, Gyo Obata: Architect | Clients | Reflections. The book features 30 of Obata’s projects (and clients) spanning five decades.

He then studied under master Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, receiving his master’s degree in architecture and urban design in 1946.

After serving in the U.S. Army from 1946 to 1947 and working as an architect in the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill from 1947 to 1951, Obata returned to St. Louis in 1951 to join the firm of Minoru Yamasaki (who would later design the World Trade Center towers), another Nisei architect. Four years later, in 1955, he joined architects George Hellmuth and George Kassabaum in establishing the St. Louis-based architecture firm Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum.

Obata was born and raised in San Francisco. Due to his family’s Japanese heritage, he was nearly interned with other Japanese-Americans during World War II. Though his family was sent to an internment camp, he avoided it by leaving the School of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, to study architecture at the School of Architecture at Washington University in St. Louis, the only university in the United States willing to accept Japanese nationals at that time. He earned his bachelor of architecture degree there in 1945.

Gyo Obata (小圃 暁, February 28, 1923 – March 8, 2022) was an American architect, the son of painter Chiura Obata and his wife, Haruko Obata, a floral designer. In 1955, he co-founded the global architectural firm HOK (formerly Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum). He lived in St. Louis, Missouri, and still worked in HOK’s St. Louis office. He designed several notable buildings, including the McDonnell Planetarium and GROW Pavilion at the Saint Louis Science Center, the Independence Temple of the Community of Christ church, the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois.