Austin History Center

Alan Yamato Taniguchi was born in 1922 and grew up on a farm in Brentwood, California. Upon completion of high school he entered the University of California at Berkeley. His education was interrupted by World War II when his family was interned in Crystal City, Texas. Taniguchi went back to college after the war and graduated in 1949. After graduation he began working for Anshen and Allen in San Francisco, but by 1952 he had relocated and begun his own firm in Harlingen, Texas. In the late 1950s Taniguchi became associated with the University of Texas School of Architecture and in 1968 he became the Dean of the School of Architecture. In 1968 he also founded his firm of Taniguchi Shefelman Vacker and Minter. Notable projects were the Labor Building in Washington, D.C. which he worked on while working for the Austin firm of Brooks Barr Graeber and White, Wiess College at Rice University in Houston, the U.S. Embassy in Georgetown, Guyana, the Clarksville Clinic and the Manchaca Road Brank Library in Austin. He