Author Justin Beal has written a book on World Trade Center architect Minoru Yamasaki. Continuing our series marking the anniversary of 9/11 he told us about Yamasaki's experience designing the building and his influence on architecture.
Named Sandfuture, the upcoming book by Beal aims to give an insight into the life and work of the little-known American architect Yamasaki.
Yamasaki is best known for designing the original World Trade Center towers, which were destroyed on 11 September 2001 in a terrorist attack.
At 1,368 and 1,362 feet (417 and 415 metres) tall, the towers were the world's tallest buildings when they opened in 1973.
Minoru Yamasaki (above) was the architect behind the original World Trade Center (top)
However, despite their international significance, Beal believes that Yamasaki's career sits in "the margins of architectural history". "I was an architecture major, just weeks out of a very rigorous architecture program and I remember standing at the foot of these extraordinary buildings [the Twin Towers] and wondering how it could be that I had no idea who designed them"" Beal told Dezeen.
"No one ever said anything about Yamasaki," he continued. "As I started working on this book, which was not originally going to focus so much on Yamasaki, I began to appreciate how the breadth and cultural significance of his life and his career combined into this extraordinary story and that that story needed to be in the centre ...