Aaron Schreier, a Michigan architect who early in his career was project director of the World Trade Center’s design team and later collaborated with its architect, Minoru Yamasaki, on projects he built across the country, has died at his home in Beverly Hills, Mich. He was 72.
The cause was complications from prostate cancer, according to his son David.
Mr. Schreier, who died Wednesday, never established his own reputation as an important independent designer, although he tried in the 1980s, after leaving the Detroit firm run by Yamasaki, who was commissioned in 1962 to design the trade center. From the mid-1990s until his death, Mr. Schreier worked for the federal Department of Veterans Affairs in Ann Arbor, where he was a senior staff architect.
As project director for the trade center, Mr. Schreier led the team of young designers who reconciled the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s demand for 10 million square feet of office space with the vision of Yamasaki, creating a practical plan for what would be the largest office complex in the world.
Mr. Schreier met Yamasaki while Mr. Schreier was a student at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Yamasaki was a juror reviewing student projects, including one of Mr. Schreier’s. Afterward, he hired Mr. Schreier, a graduating senior, and put him on his staff.
When Yamasaki won the trade center job, neither he nor Mr. Schreier had ever tackled a project remotely like it. Mr. Schreier, then 31, was working on plans for a six-story insurance office building in Minneapolis when he was switched to the Port Authority job. The team of young architects, packed into a compact drafting room in a suburb near Detroit, worked through dozens of different possible compositions for the trade center before they arrived at the twin towers.
Mr. Schreier, as project manager, focused much of his effort on designing their core, including figuring out the layout for the giant express elevators. One other major aspect of his work involved reining in Yamasaki, who was struggling to decide what amount of decorative elements would be appropriate to apply to the facades of the giant towers.
