Kaneji Domoto (1912-2002)

Kaneji (Kan) Domoto was a trained landscape architect and architect born in Oakland, CA who attended UC Berkeley for landscape architecture in 1938 and studied with Frank Lloyd Wright in 1941. Disrupting his Taliesin education, Domoto was incarcerated with his wife Sally Fujii at Amache, Colorado during World War II. After the war, Kan and Sally moved to New York and raised four children.

Kan’s career in architecture and landscape design spanned over fifty years and included both residential, commercial, recreational, and educational projects in the Bay Area and East Coast—including Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian Housing Project. He received many awards for his gardens including the Frederick Law Olmsted Award for his Jackson Park design in Chicago circa 1981.

The Kaneji Domoto Collection spans the years 1928-2002 and includes personal, professional, and project records. This collection is organized into five series: Personal Papers, Professional Papers, Frank Lloyd Wright (Taliesin) Papers, Project Records (Architecture), and Project Records (Landscape Architecture). Major architectural projects include Arthur Bier’s Usonia Home Site #53 (Mount Pleasant, NY) circa 1955, and John Silson Usonia Homes Site #36 (Mount Pleasant, NY) from 1954-1955. Major landscape architecture projects include New York Aquarium Penguin Pen (New York City, NY) from 1967-1968; Swansea Mall (Swansea, MA) in 1973; AMF/Schulman Investment Corporation (White Plains, NY) circa 1980; and University of California, Berkeley, Botanical Garden’s Japanese Pool (Berkeley, CA) circa 1940.