Robert Murase

Kazuo Robert Murase (1938-2005) was an acclaimed Sansei landscape architect who was based in the Pacific Northwest, where some of his most celebrated gardens are located.

Born in San Francisco, California, on October 9, 1938, Murase was only three years old when he was sent with his parents and grandparents to the Tanforan Assembly Center and later to the American concentration camp in Topaz , Utah. After World War II, the family returned to San Francisco. As a teenager, Murase worked for his uncle, a landscape contractor, and learned the trade firsthand before enrolling at the University of California, Berkeley, to formally study landscape architecture. In 1963, he received an M.L.A. from University of California, Berkeley, followed by an internship with Lawrence Halprin & Associates. In 1965, he was hired by San Francisco-based landscape architect firm Royston, Hanamoto, Mayes, and Beck and began his career. To further enrich his experience in the landscape architecture field in 1967, Murase moved to Japan, where he maintained a practice for almost ten years, conducting garden research at Kyoto University and creating designs for the Aichi Green Center botanical garden and a Buddhist temple at Myodo Kyo Kai.

In the early 1980s, he taught landscape architecture at the University of Oregon for three years and worked with a Portland firm before establishing his own landscape architecture firm, Murase Associates, in 1982. In 1987 Murase Associates opened an office in Seattle.

Among his dozens of renowned projects are the courtyard garden at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, the Garden of Remembrance at Benaroya Hall in Seattle, Washington, the Yao Garden addition to the botanical gardens at Wilburton Hill Community Park in Bellevue, Washington, the Pier 69 headquarters of the Port of Seattle, Microsoft's Redmond West campus and Safeco's Redmond campus and a large rock and water sculpture at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport's new south terminal international arrival hall. Murase was a fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects. His award-winning work also can be found in Japan, the Pacific Basin and the Caribbean, and his projects have been featured in architectural magazines, journals and books in America, Europe and Japan.

Murase contributed to Touching the Stones, a book tracing 100 years of Japanese American history, which is based on his design of the Japanese American Historical Plaza in Tom McCall Waterfront Park, Portland, Oregon. He was named a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects in 1994.

He died at age 66 on July 19, 2005, in Portland, Oregon.