 . . . Spring 1998
"They have the spark of genius. I'm continually surprised by the innovative way they conceive of space and problems of organization," says U-M President Bollinger, returning the compliment.
Bollinger became acquainted with Venturi and Scott Brown, both professionally and personally, when he was provost at Dartmouth. Part of his duties were to oversee their work there, which consisted of designing a library and devising a plan for an area made available when the medical center moved out of town. Their plan included a set of principles for future architects to follow that envisaged ways to meld Dartmouth's old Georgian buildings but with modern sensibilities.
Why should there be such a grand project at Michigan, a campus that has seen a lot of construction and renovation over the last dozen years? "We've had no master plan, really, in the last 40 years," Bollinger explains. Instead, he says, construction has gone forth "as if the campus is composed of discrete areas–North Campus and the medical sector, with Huron Street as the Maginot line."
Returning to Ann Arbor to take the presidency after a three-year absence (he was a member of the U-M law faculty from 1973-1987 and then dean until 1994), he found campus sprawl had oozed out to two additional campuses, to East Campus (medical and research facilities northwest of the city, across Highway 23) and to Briarwood facilities (administrative offices and a medical clinic in a mall area on the town's south edge along State Street). When added to the original Central Campus and to the Medical Campus, the North Campus and South Campus (athletic buildings), the segments total six campuses.
"If we want to have interdisciplinary education, how does the way we organize space help or hurt?" Bollinger asks. He mentions as specific dislikes "Siberian, wind-swept bare plazas" and "the Fleming Building and environs."
"Too many times," he adds, "Michigan has settled for the pedestrian in its physical planning."
VSBA have often been controversial but never pedestrian. Bob Venturi, who trained at Princeton and American Academy in Rome, wrote one of architecture's modern classics in 1966, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. In that book he forcefully argued the case for a mixture of styles from classic to pop. "I prefer 'both-and' to 'either-or," he wrote, summarizing his view. Reflecting on Venturi's book three decades later, architectural writer Martin Filler remarked in The New York Review of Books last October 23 that Venturi "has a keen intelligence in transforming the lessons of history to contemporary purposes" and that his book "affirmed that recent as well as older styles were admissible."
Denise Scott Brown, born in Zambia and educated in South Africa, studied architecture and urban planning in Africa, Europe and America, where she became grounded in the idea of community architecture that fits with its surroundings. She met Venturi when she joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was also a new teacher. They have been collaborating since 1960, and after their marriage in 1967, she officially joined the firm.
Venturi joined Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, a partner in their firm, in writing a second classic in 1972, Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism in Architectural Form, which most historians agree changed the way we look at modern architecture. "The book argues for an understanding of the everyday landscape in our own backyard, even if it is ugly or ordinary," explains Scott Brown.
VSBA's buildings demonstrate their philosophy by combining a variety of styles, but in a harmonious and logical way, so they fit with their surroundings. Designing campus structures (Princeton, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, among others) they have learned from traditional "Collegiate Gothic" architecture that simple and generous structures allow for flexibility. They usually design a basic modern building, but allude to historic styles by defining its purpose and symbolic importance through decoration, such as brick patterns.
Their most famous recent project is the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery in London. They were hired in 1987 when it came up to be redesigned after Prince Charles called the original plan "a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend." VSBA made the wing with the original 1838 building by using the same material, Portland limestone, and the same cornice height, but created a clearly modern structure. "We borrowed details from the existing building but reinterpreted it with more syncopated rhythm appropriate for the 20th century," Scott Brown says.
They've also designed a number of museums in this country (Seattle, La Jolla and Houston). Concurrent with designing projects, Venturi and Scott Brown have worked on master plans during their whole careers. Since both have taught, they know the challenges firsthand "of relating educational strategies to physical development." And each university poses its own set of challenges. At Dartmouth, the medical school had moved out of town, which Scott Brown said "was as if the lake dried up in Chicago." At Penn, they solved the problem of an overcrowded student union by rehabbing old buildings nearby and putting in a plaza to create what Scott Brown calls a "student precinct."
VSBA started work last fall on the University of Michigan Master Plan. They are in the first phase, which Scott Brown calls "once round lightly," basically fact finding. They are gathering all the information they consider relevant, such as topography of the land, transportation routes, building uses, and talking to a wide range of people on and off the campus (environmental specialists, community leaders) as well as corresponding by e-mail. They then put information on computer-generated maps to see what patterns emerge.
Asked how they can create a master plan when most of the buildings are already in place, Scott Brown replies, "A plan is not just buildings, it's systems, open space, roads, campus activities, residence halls--or even subsystems such as dining as a subsystem of the residential hall system. And buildings are subject to change. The old ones have had various lives depending on uses, philosophy of education, lifestyle and other demands, and this will continue in the foreseeable future."
Venturi says that he is encouraged by the fact that Central Campus buildings have escaped what he sees as perils of modernism. "Central campus has generic loft-like buildings with interiors that are not too specific," he says. "Modernism's emphasis on designing for specific interior functions creates problems." Scott Brown further explains, "It's like a glove versus a mitten. A mitten is open inside, the hand can grow and move around within it, or it can be used by different hands. The glove's form places more limits on its use and adaptability."
Integrating North Campus with a Central Campus almost two miles away is one of the most challenging possibilities VSBA have been asked to consider. Many students hesitate to enroll in classes on both campuses because of the time entailed in walking, biking or riding the free U-M shuttle buses back and forth. The steep bluff up to Central Campus can be particularly daunting on hot or icy days. Scott Browns calls the short jaunt "a real problem exasperated by the difficulty of conceptuality." Venturi adds, "Why, in Venice, will people walk the equivalent distance and it doesn't seem onerous?"
Scott Brown cites the example of the London Underground: "Although you couldn't walk it, you can conceive it. Maybe the walk to North Campus needs points along the way that people can conceive of." Other suggestions include a covered walkway, and making the transportation more attractive than the "ugly smelly buses" now doing the job, although she warns that the most exciting alternative, a monorail, may be prohibitively expensive and that smaller buses, that would be "quainter and more friendly," would have higher labor costs to operate.
Another problem with North Campus is that students who live there often feel cut off from the social life of Central Campus, or as Scott Brown puts it, "They feel rusticated. The architects feel this particularly, although others on North Campus may be happier."
She contends that the North Campus's new, technologically sophisticated Media Union, although meant to be "the yeast that leads to a blending of the North Campus constituencies," is not yet doing the job of "building vitality on North Campus." She wonders whether it would be possible to create smaller, more welcoming spaces within North Campus's main public areas and would like to encourage retail shops to locate there.
Other initial thoughts include increasing pedestrian access to the Medical Center to lessen the effect of its being, in Scott Brown's words, like a "walled city," because it is separated from part of the University by a steep grade. She has also pondered whether at some point the University should rent office space close to the center of town, bringing some administrative functions closer to other University offices and at the same time improving town/gown relations by putting the properties back on the tax rolls.
VSBA is concerned that the Huron River flood plain be taken into account and suggest that it is not a good spot for locating buildings or parking structures.
Not all of VSBA's observations are negative. "The campus image is not fully separate from the town," Venturi says approvingly. "It's similar to Europe, where the town and the institutions meld. You come out of class in a European university and go to a café right across the street." They cite the café-rich South State and North University area as a perfect example of what they are talking about. They like the way a tower (Burton Tower), rather than a gate, defines the University, showing in a symbolic way how the town and gown are interconnected.
While praising Central Campus they add that its assets reflect one of the serious problems with North and Medical campuses--the lack of enough nearby commercial businesses.
To work on landscape and transportation, VSBA have brought in consultants whom they think highly of and have worked with previously. Andropogon (named for a common American grass), a national leader in the movement for sustainable use of the environment, is developing landscape plans. Scott Brown says of the landscape, "It's not a question of coming up with tastefully matching patterns, but of understanding the ancient topography, of making natural and urban systems work together." Venturi adds, "Its not just prettification, although pretty is valid."
For transportation, they've enlisted consultant Robert Morris of Bethesda, Maryland. Scott Brown explains, "It's a question of how best to use today's natural systems. Instead of planners who tackle problems by running highways through delicate areas, I prefer the darners and menders." She defines transportation as a "set of systems, one of the most important of which is the pedestrian system. Snowplows, wheelchairs and bicycles, must be considered as important as cars and trucks."
VSBA is not the first nationally prominent architectural firm to work on a University plan. Predecessors include such notables as Alexander Davis, the Olmsted firm, Eero Saarinen, and Johnson, Johnson and Roy. But VSBA is the first to be asked to deal with all six campuses at once and come up with a unifying concept that also will take into account the surrounding community.
In addition, Bollinger has asked VSBA to look at the future, "to take a long view, to consider what our University Campus might be like, what its character should be, one hundred years from now."
Asked if this is possible, Scott Brown replies, "We don't claim to have a crystal ball. We don't know what will happen 100 years from now, but what we build now will be there 100 years from now. Much of what any plan calls for is likely to be abrogated in 20 years time, but the first built increment of such a plan can last centuries, so it should be planned as a beautiful and appropriate contribution to the campus for today, but one that leaves options open for the future."
As to the immediate future, the plan is to finish the first phase of the report about the middle of May. After that Bollinger says "We'll step back and see what is next."
Grace Shackman '65, '68 M Ed., of Ann Arbor writes and teaches about local history. She reports that VSBA is featured in the February issue of Architectural Record.
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ee Bollinger is prepared to think the unthinkable," says Denise Scott Brown of 
t is too early to tell what VSBA will come up with, but in an interview in December they shared some of their first impressions. Scott Brown, her South African background discernible in her speech, has a no-nonsense demeanor that was reinforced by her style of dress, a simple gray suit, and short hair. Bob Venturi wore a professorial blue blazer and brown corduroy trousers. Scott Brown did more of the talking, although they obviously agree with each other and can finish each other's sentences even when it involves completing a complicated analogy.
BA work will be informed and supported by a Campus Plan Advisory Committee chaired by