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Watch dragonflies zip from lotus blossom to lotus blossom at the Oriental Garden built by Isamu Taniguchi. Take a turn around Town Lake, whose beauty was enhanced through the designs of Alan Taniguchi. Spy the soaring silver roof atop the Palmer Events Center and you see the work of Evan Taniguchi, the third generation in a family famed for shaping Austin. Evan Taniguchi has spent his life living up to the architectural and activist achievements of his father and grandfather.

In the last hot days of a long summer, Evan Taniguchi leads me through his office on West Sixth Street. Rolled blueprints, drawing tables and computers fill the cramped but cozy bungalow. A large solar panel leans against a wall, tucked out of the way. The receptionist's newborn baby snoozes in a nearby playpen. Renderings of mid-century modern homes, retail spaces, and a mission style hotel share the walls with architectural awards. Only a red-lacquer fan propped in the window hints of Japanese ancestry. Wearing a denim shirt, khaki pants and leather loafers, Evan Taniguchi answers questions in a warm, Texas drawl.

From victims to champions

Evan Taniguchi's early years were shaped by his family's suffering during World War II. Isamu Taniguchi was born in 1897 in Okayama, Japan, near Osaka. When he was seventeen he moved to Stockton, California. Later, he bought land in Brentwood just outside San Francisco and he farmed that land until WW II. Although they didn't know each other at the time, both Evan's mother and father were first-year students at the University of California at Berkeley when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

Evan Taniguchi says, "Isamu was picked up within a week after Pearl Harbor and put into the Stockton jail before being moved around to several camps, finally ending up in Crystal City, Texas, where he spent most of his internment. He was considered a serious threat because he was a community leader of the Japanese families in that area."

Evan Taniguchi's grandmother, Sadayo, his father, Alan, and uncle, Izumi, were shipped out to join Isamu two months later. The woman who would one day become Evan's mother, Leslie Etsuko Honnami, and her family were sent to a camp in Utah.

Evan Taniguchi says, "My father was able to leave camp after about a year under the sponsorship of the Quaker program in Detroit, which allowed him to work and continue his education during WW II. My uncle also left when he enlisted in the US Army and served as a translator."

In 1945, at the close of WW II, Alan Taniguchi traveled to Crystal City to help his parents on their journey back to California. When the Taniguchis returned to Brentwood, they found their farm confiscated and the locals hostile. This was a direct result of a policy of the American government, which during the war encouraged qualified citizens to take some six thousand farms owned by interned Japanese. The Taniguchis lost their farm, their home, and all their possessions.

It would be more than forty years before, under the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, the government would pay the Taniguchis twenty thousand dollars each for their loss of property and years of confinement. Isamu and Sadayo Taniguchi received their payments in 1990. Alan and Leslie Taniguchi were paid in 1992.

Meanwhile, after the war, Alan Taniguchi went on to complete his degree in architecture at Berkeley, where he met his future wife, Leslie. At the same time, Isamu and Sadayo Taniguchi struggled in California. Penniless and desperate, they decided to move back to South Texas where farmland was more affordable. Alan Taniguchi left his job as an architect in San Francisco and with Leslie accompanied his parents to the Rio Grande Valley in 1950. Eventually they settled in Harlingen.

And so it was that in 1952 Evan Taniguchi was born in Harlingen, Texas. His brother, Keith, was born fourteen months later.

Evan Taniguchi says, "I was raised by my grandfather. So I have a lot of appreciation of the culture and the food because my brother and I, we actually spoke Japanese to my grandparents when we were very young."

Evan Taniguchi's mother, Leslie Taniguchi, was a native of San Francisco and became bored with rural life in Texas. "There was so little do…so she got involved in politics down there when JFK was running for president in 1960. And she kind of headed the JFK campaign down in South Texas, if you can imagine."

The prejudice and internment the Taniguchis suffered during WW II sparked their involvement in progressive politics and Alan and Leslie Taniguchi spent the rest of their lives fighting for causes that served marginalized groups and the underprivileged.

Alan Taniguchi casts a long shadow

Evan Taniguchi grew up in his father's shadow. "My résumé says that I was born in an architect's office. My dad built a house for my grandfather, a very nice house…It looked very California-like. My dad actually brought the California style down to South Texas. Now these houses are being recognized there because they are all these mid-century modern houses…the real deal. It's so funny to see it way down there in the middle of nowhere."

Alan Taniguchi's work became so popular that in 1959 he was offered a part-time teaching job at the University of Texas at Austin's School of Architecture. For two years, he commuted between Harlingen and Austin. When UT finally offered him a permanent teaching job in 1961, he moved his wife and sons to Austin. Leslie Taniguchi, by then a veteran political activist, immediately got involved in women's causes.

As Evan Taniguchi grew from a young boy into his teens, his father's career took off. Austin architect Sinclair Black recalls, "Soon after (Alan's) arrival he became dean and moved architecture at UT from a sleepy department into a world-class endeavor with school status and a brilliant future…He was busy planning Town Lake, the open-space heart of Austin, fabricating a national minority scholarship program for the AIA (American Institute of Architects), chairing the (City of Austin's) Planning Commission, (and) attracting the Michener Art Collection to UT, just to name a few of his roles."

Black, who was a professor of architecture at UT at the time, and later served on the Town Lake Beautification Project, said Alan Taniguchi designed the first Town Lake master plan. The plan, published in the February 1964 edition of Texas Architect magazine, communicates the Town Lake Study Committee's vision for developing hike and bike trails, docks for boat rental, fishing areas, an outdoor theatre, an aqua festival parade, and the conversion of Red Bud Isle into a picnic retreat. Alan Taniguchi served as architect on the project along with landscape architect Stewart King and planner Sam Zisman.

As a seventeen-year-old, Evan Taniguchi started to take his own political stands. "When I was a junior in high school during the Vietnam War…we had a big march...(of) a hundred thousand people-one of the largest protest marches in the nation was in Austin. And my dad was one of the speakers...So I wore my black armband to (Austin High) school…(and) they kicked me out."

Evan claims that his biggest political influence wasn't his father. "My mother would just donate money to every cause, even though there wasn't that much." Leslie Taniguchi took an active part in supporting female political candidates such as Wilhelmina Delco and Mary Jane Bode, both of whom won election to the Texas House of Representatives in the nineteen-seventies. She also became great friends with Sarah Weddington, the lawyer who argued for the plaintiff before the US Supreme Court in Roe V. Wade, the landmark decision that overturned anti-abortion statutes throughout the country.

Isamu Taniguchi builds a garden for Austin

Evan Taniguchi was in high school when his grandfather, Isamu, retired from farming in 1967. Evan recalls, "When he moved here he was bored…He couldn't tear up his yard here in West Austin. They just wouldn't let him do that so he started thinking, 'I would like to build a garden for the city.' He loved Austin. I think what got him started was he was involved in the garden club at Zilker. Every time they would have a contest, he would be bringing home all the blue ribbons. And my grandmother would get really pissed. 'You're a professional gardener. You've been doing this all your life. Why don't you give those guys a chance?'"

Working without pay, Isamu Taniguchi built an Oriental garden in Zilker Park dedicated to universal peace. He hoped that by contemplating fern-festooned waterfalls, gem-colored fish, and the arch of a moon-viewing bridge, visitors would enjoy beauty and forget the competitive urges that drove them to war, and more specifically, the use of atomic weapons. Evan Taniguchi says, "As I recall, Isamu worked single-handedly on the garden for fourteen months until the Austin Parks and Recreation Department (PARD) gave him a crew to help him finish it quicker, four months later. I've heard that PARD was afraid he might expire before it was complete if he tried to do it all by himself." The Isamu Taniguchi Oriental Garden was opened to the public in 1969.

For three years thereafter, Lady Bird Johnson lobbied the Japanese Government and the American Institute of Architects to grant Isamu Taniguchi an award, which resulted in a Rising Sun Medal for furthering "good will and understanding among the peoples of Japan and the United States," and a visit with the future emperor and empress of Japan.

In 1974, Johnson wrote a letter to the Consul General of Japan, "(Isamu Taniguchi) is also convinced that there is a way to grow cherry trees along the banks of our riverfront, and he spends much of his time on this effort." To this day, every spring, flowering trees bloom along the north shore of Town Lake. When the cherry trees he planted failed due to poor soil and climate conditions, he grafted branches of cherry trees from Washington, DC, to native plums. Most of his efforts to grow trees failed, but the City of Austin has continued to plant flowering redbuds and peaches where the cherry trees would have been.

Civic activism

The civic activism of Isamu Taniguchi's son took a decidedly more political bent. In 1969, Alan Taniguchi, by then the dean of the UT School of Architecture, faced off with Frank Erwin, chairman of the UT System's Board of Regents, in defense of his students and others chained in the branches of the trees slated for destruction along Waller Creek. To make way for the construction equipment to rebuild the upper deck of Memorial Stadium, Erwin ordered that protesters be arrested and bulldozers be used to remove the trees.

"It was almost like a standoff between my dad and Frank Erwin…It went way past (bulldozing trees)." Alan Taniguchi also defended Vietnam War protesters.

"You know where the Architecture Building is at UT? It looks down on the (West) Mall there in front of the Student Union. During some of the war demonstrations, the FBI would go up into the men's restroom in the Architecture Building and take pictures (of the demonstrators). My dad went in there and kicked them out. He was the dean of the school and if they didn't have a permit or something then he didn't want them there. Of course that got reported to Frank Erwin and the Board (of Regents)."

It was only a matter of time before Alan Taniguchi's activism caught up with him. Frank Erwin cut off all funding and maintenance to the School of Architecture. A new building for the School of Architecture that had been scheduled for construction never broke ground. After three years of Frank Erwin's wrath, Alan Taniguchi resigned as dean in 1972 in protest of administration policies. He was immediately hired to head the School of Architecture at Rice University in Houston.

While his father and grandfather toiled to beautify the city, Evan Taniguchi came of age in the hippie counterculture. He says, "I started to college in the fall of 1970 and you can't imagine what the times were like back then. The Vietnam War was at its height, which provoked a new movement of progressivism, flower power (music and drugs), and anti-(establishment attitudes). Of course the last thing on many young people's minds was going to school except to get a deferment to stay out of the war. My lottery number was three hundred sixty two, so I was safe from being drafted, but I still wasn't that interested in attending the University. But I did go, mainly for my parents' sake…

"Having grown up around architecture and learning a lot from my father, I wasn't that excited about being in the School of Architecture. I remember hearing how O'Neil Ford, my father's good friend, had never gone to college and was proud of it, so that motivated me to do the same. I preferred to learn from actually doing things, so I worked construction, ran blueprints, and worked for my father since I was in high school. But if I had not had so many distractions back then, especially from being in Austin during such fun times, I probably would have done well in school and graduated. Now that I look back, I wish I had."

After dropping out of UT in 1978, Evan went to work full-time for his father, who by then had returned from Houston and opened his own architecture firm. It was here that Evan matured. Together, they designed the US embassy in Georgetown, Guyana.

In 1994, after years of dedication to her sons and activism in progressive politics, Leslie Taniguchi died of a massive stroke. Evan Taniguchi says, "Leslie had been very active until 1984, when she had a pretty serious stroke, and another in 1988."

In 1997, Evan Taniguchi and his brother, Keith, went to New Orleans to watch their father receive the Whitney M. Young Jr. Award for his advocacy of the underprivileged and efforts against inequality.

"A lot of that had to do with his days in academia, because he brought in the first female and black faculty the UT School of Architecture ever had. He pushed for scholarships for the underprivileged in the mid-sixties." Alan Y. Taniguchi died in February 1998, only four months after receiving the award.

Evan Taniguchi steps out of the shadows

With their father's death, Evan and Keith Taniguchi found themselves at a loss for where to hold the funeral, as the family didn't attend a church. The brothers decided to hold the memorial service at Huston-Tillotson College (now Huston-Tillotson University), where Alan Taniguchi had been a board member. Their decision unwittingly set in motion Evan's life as a social activist.

"They've got this beautiful chapel and dad had been on the board for two terms…They set everything up. We had a beautiful memorial service on a Saturday afternoon in February…The chapel was packed. And about a month after that, I got a call from the president (of Huston-Tillotson College). He said, 'You know, Evan, we need to fill your dad's position. Will you serve?' I had never been on a board before, especially not a college or a university."

Nevertheless Evan Taniguchi followed in his father's footsteps and while on the board served as the architect and project manager for the 2004 bond improvements, which renovated the Huston-Tillotson dormitories. He also provided the architectural efforts for the historical restoration of the administration building erected in the early nineteen-hundreds.

Terry S. Smith, executive assistant to the president of Huston-Tillotson University, said all of Evan Taniguchi's work as an architect and project manager for Huston-Tillotson is provided free of charge. "It appears to be a labor of love for him. He's supportive of the mission of the university and sees it as an essential asset for the city, the state and the nation."

Evan Taniguchi says, "Some of the larger tasks, such as the rehab of the old administration building, are being done at-cost, as proposals received from other architectural consultants were so high they would not leave much for the actual construction."

News of Evan Taniguchi's pro bono work for Huston-Tillotson spread quickly and he was approached by Planned Parenthood of the Texas Capital Region Inc., which was building a new clinic on East Ben White Boulevard in South Austin. "(They) asked me if I would serve on the board and I was shocked, because up to this point…I hadn't given them any money or anything. They had been planning this building for a while…so, sure enough, as soon as I got elected they formed a building committee, which I chaired. It wasn't my design but I worked with the architect."

The services provided at the new Planned Parenthood clinic would include tubal ligations, vasectomies, pregnancy and HIV testing, gynecological exams, condoms, birth control pills, and other vital services to the poor and uninsured. More controversially, the center also provides abortions.

As anyone who has remodeled a house knows, managing a construction project is difficult, even when all the workers are doing a great job. Now, imagine managing a construction project when your workers receive threats on the phone and in the mail. Chris Danze, a pro-life activist and owner of Austin-based Maldonado and Danze Inc., organized a boycott against all builders and suppliers who worked on the Planned Parenthood clinic. Eventually, plumbers, roofers, concrete suppliers, electricians and the general contractor, Browning Construction Company, pulled out of the project, in fear of losing future work.

After Browning Construction pulled out, Evan stepped in.

Glenda Parks, executive director of Planned Parenthood's Texas Capital Region, says, "When we had to become our own general contractor, no one here had any experience doing that, so (Taniguchi) stepped in and provided the professional guidance that we needed. He worked with the superintendent on the job, talked about different materials. When there were mistakes, he knew about them. He would help rectify how we were going to solve mistakes and things like that. He was very much a hands-on project manager for us."

During construction, Danze called every concrete supplier within sixty miles of Austin and told them that if they delivered materials to Planned Parenthood, he would blacklist them so that they wouldn't get other contracts. Then, Danze set up an anti-abortion web site that published photographs of all the laborers.

Evan worked hard to see the project through but building the new facility continued to be difficult. "Toward the end of the project we needed more concrete to pour all the driveways…We were even looking at using brick pavers because we were running out of ideas. We got a call from somebody who is not too far out of town, and he was tired of all those antics also, so he came in and poured (the concrete) for us."

In the face of boycotts Evan Taniguchi ensured that Central Texas teens would have access to inexpensive programs to prevent HIV and pregnancy. In renovating Huston-Tillotson and completing the new Planned Parenthood center, he made a name for himself as an activist.

Evan Taniguchi's next step into the light was architectural. "I was very lucky because after my dad passed away I got some big projects." He renovated the O. Henry Middle School, his alma mater. In 2002, the City of Austin completed the new Palmer Events Center a block south of Town Lake, with its tent-like soaring silver roof designed by Taniguchi. As a result, he was awarded the Texas Society of Architects 2004 Design Award, along with his collaborators, Centerbrook Architects and Planners, and Barnes Gromatzky Kosarak Architects.

For the past seven years, Evan Taniguchi has had an ongoing architectural services contract with UT Austin. He says, "Most of the firms in this situation are assigned to a specific college and is mainly responsible for the work that goes on in that school." His firm designs about three projects a year for the McCombs School of Business, everything from basic offices and classrooms to corporate projects such as the AIM Training Center and the Carpenter Lounge.

Associate Dean Susie Brown says, "We've had Evan four or five years now and used only him. He is very customer-oriented…The McCombs School of Business hopes to have a long relationship with his firm. We are a rather demanding client and he is good at what he does, so we appreciate it."

Melody Leung, who for a decade was Taniguchi's assistant, says, "For every intern he took in, for every person that needed a second chance or a helping hand, he gave unconditionally and provided opportunities for them to flourish. Evan simply believes that we each have a part to play in our world, locally and globally, and we should all be responsible citizens and human beings…."

Evan Taniguchi, who has never married and has no children, devotes his life to architecture and civic duty. With the completion of the Palmer Events Center, his architectural work embellishes the shores of Town Lake like the work of his father and grandfather. The third generation in a family famous for shaping Austin, Evan Taniguchi is starting to cast a shadow of his own.

What are his dreams for the future? Taniguchi says, "Hopefully I will have the opportunity to utilize my experience and knowledge to continue to work on projects which improve our quality of life, whether it's educational facilities, low-cost housing or nonprofit buildings, something that contributes to sustainability. And hopefully, they will exhibit…maturity and refinement…And if that doesn't happen by the time I'm seventy years old, maybe I'll just build another Japanese Garden, just like my grandfather did. That would really be cool!"

Laura Ohata returned from a three-year teaching stint in the Far East with a passion for Japanese gardens and architecture, and how they influence American public spaces. You may e-mail Laura at lohata@goodlifemag.com.