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(贞夫翔二, January 1927 – November 3, 2019)
Japanese Architect

Shoji Sadao was one of Isamu Noguchi’s most valued collaborators and confidants from the mid-1950s until Noguchi’s death in 1988. An indefatigable facilitator for both Noguchi and R. Buckminster Fuller, he designed, engineered, and oversaw the nuts-and-bolts details that made Fuller and Noguchi’s grand visions possible.

In the book he wrote about his work with these two titans of twentieth-century design—Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi: Best of Friends (2011) an expanded take on his 2006 exhibition of the same name—the always modest Sadao somewhat unfairly cast himself as a supporting player. The only details he revealed about his own background are those similar to Noguchi’s: born in California, and confined to a Japanese American incarceration camp in Arizona during World War II. Noguchi voluntarily went to Poston; Sadao’s family was sent to Gila River, where he graduated from high school.

From the description of Shoji Sadao by the Isamu Noguchi Museum https://www.noguchi.org/isamu-noguchi/digital-features/shoji-sadao/

Shoji is best known for his decades of work with Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi, both creative geniuses of the 20th century - one a “design scientist” and the other an artist. He would minimize how central his own role was in creating visionary works with both of them from the early 1950s to the 1980s. When he was well into his 70s, Shoji finally had time to reflect on his life and tell his own story. Even then, it was instead to tell the story of his two mentors and colleagues and the extraordinary half-century friendship between them.

From the description of Shoji Sadao by the Buckminster Fuller Institute https://www.bfi.org/dymaxion-forum/2019/11/shoji-sadao-quiet-visionary