Main concepts of planning remain con-
staiit over the years. A student today can
walk no faster, gets no less tired on three
f li hls of stairs, becomes no less drenched
in a rains/orm than in 1837,
-William Johnson
Landscapq Architect
Y
Seventy-Four Years of Editorial Freedom
:4Iait1I
Planning is not trying to Impose 'd Pre-
scription of the campus, but rather is con-
cerned with balancing such elements as
scale, composition, order, function-allow-
ing plenty of room for adjustment.
-John McKevitt
assistant to the vice-president for
business and finance
1
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN, WEDNESDAY, 13 JANUARY 1965
SECOND SECTION.
SPECIAL
SECTION
R
0
By LAURENCE KIRSHBAUM
The graduate of 1965 who returns to his old stamping
ground several decades hence may view the growth and
development of the Central Campus with amazement.
Students will be rushing to their nine o'clocks over
broad, leafy academic avenues. If they are in the literary
college, their classes will be scattered in a host of new and
remodelled buildings which will have blossomed across the
central 40 acres of the campus and beyond. For a quiet
hour of study, the students will retire to a massive library
complex stretching from the General to Clements libraries
to the UGLI, intertwined around an elaborate open plaza.
However, today's graduate will find tomorrow's campus
filled with familiar sites. He will remember the venerable
diag lined with placards and jammed with people. He will
recognize the plush green mall stretching between the
General Library and the Rackham Bldg. He will see that
Hill Add. is still a focus of culture for the University and
the world.
1980 drawing depicts
the campus at age 53.
View from the south-
east shows it still con-
fined to its original 40-
acre square. The main
building was domed
K t University Hall along
SState St. An early ver-
sion of the Diag is al-
r:ready apparent.
development to alleviate
North Campi
CentralCam
By KENNETH WINTER
Managing Editor
While University planners wrestle with the problems of a
crowded and confusing Central Campus, a huge tract of land many
times its size lies a few miles to the northeast-almost empty but
not forgotten.
This is North Campus, a740-acre site which will be the key
to University expansion for many years to come.
Until recently, North Campus was almost exclusively a research
center. Not many students-scarcely any undergraduates- had
reason to go there, except perhaps to tour the Phoenix Project's
nuclear reactor, one of the first installations on the site.
But a University which expects to be housing and educating
50,000 students 10 years from now cannot do it on a Central
Campus already hemmed in on all sides by the city. And so, while
continuing to nibble away at local property around Central Cam-
pus, the University has begun to plan extensive facilities for
North Campus.
Music: Here; A&D: Coming
Already the Music SchoolBldg. is in olperation there, and an
empty field bears a sign promising that the architecture and de-
sign college will soon join it. All of the University's ambitious
student-housing programs are for this area. A student-faculty
center is already under construction.
In short, the days when student life at the University had one
geographical focus are passing. For many undergraduates of
1975, the Diag will be a sight as foreign as the Phoenix Project
is for today's students.
The structures on North Campus are still rather scattered,
and aside from two architecturally interesting buildings, they are
not particularly striking. But the planners already can give
some idea of the character of the future North Campus.
Like Central Campus, it will probably have a major focal point
-somewhere in the central plain between the Music School Bldg.
and the Phoenix Project. The nature of this focal point, however,
will be virtually the reverse of the Diag, the focal point of Central
Campus.
Contrasts for Clarity
The foca1 point must be not only a campus crossroads but an
area which is different from the surrounding area. A person ap-
proaching Central Campus comes through a densely populated
area; buildings are close together and give an urban impression.
The Diag works as a focal point because it is a relatively large
open area. But most of the approaches to North Campus are rural,
and the campus itself is nearly wide-open. To get the contrast
needed for a focal point, planners envision a "high-intensity cen-
ter," where buildings clustered together will have a relatively closed
feeling.
Like Central Campus, North Campus will also have minor focal
points, again organized on this reversed theme. According to John
O McKevitt; assistant to the vice-president for business and finance
who oversees campus-planning operations, these will be organized
on "the court idea: planned spaces between buildings which are
pleasant to walk through."
Form follows function, however, and academic organization
will be more important than esthetics in shaping North Campus.
In deciding what to build where, University planners will go
by one general concept: move the specialized schools and colleges
away from the heart of Central Campus and let the literary college
fill the vacated space there. Thus Central Campus will become the
liberal-arts center, while North Campus will be a collection of
smaller schools and colleges-music. architecture and design, engi-
'eering and pcssiby others.
Definitive Areas
Within North Campus, the idea of functionally grouped areas
(a key concept of the Central Campus plan) will be followed. The
research structures in the southeast corner of the site, at North
Campus Blvd. and Beal St., have begun to establish a physical-
science area, and the Music School Bldg. is the first part of a
finearsareaa roumi th southwest entrance, the road from Cen-
is
)US, crowding
as
1u r
expands
What the returning alumnus will not see is the slow,
tedious process of research, evaluation and decision-mak-
ing which has led to what he does see. In the deans' offices,
in the office of business and finance, in the Regents' cham-
bers, in faculty building committees, in the plant depart-
ment, in architects' and contractors' offices, countless de-
cisions will have blended to create the campus panorama
before him.
This is the process of planning, the painstaking at-
tempt to take the disordered array of buildings, walkways
and streets which history has left and develop them into
a more orderly, efficient and esthetic unity.
From 1838
Campus planning is not a new idea. It began here in
1838 when the University had been settled in Ann Arbor for
less than a year. Yet for a process which is so old and in-
volves so many, planning is a much misunderstood term.
To the layman, the term planning means the art of
designating specific sizes and places of buildings. Experts
here strongly disagree with this view and try to clarify
what it means to them.
To John G. McKevitt, assistant to the vice-president for
business and finance, planning serves a "contributory not an
appropriative function. It is not trying to impose a prescrip-
tion of the campus, but rather is concerned with balancing
such overall elements as scale, composition, order and
function-allowing plenty of room for adjustment."
To Prof. Herbert Johe, chairman of the faculty's Cam-
pus Planning and Development Committee, planning is
necessary to grapple "with the almost insuperable prob-
lems of growth since World War II" that have hit the Uni-
versity.
"When one takes into account the University's" size,
its diversity of academic and service programs, its un-
precedented growth in research, and its responsibility in
maintaining the highest standards in professional train-
ing, it is easy to understand that the outstanding success
of its building program could only have been achieved
through the combined efforts of administrative officers,
faculty and students."
To William Johnson, a local landscape architect and
the University's chief planning consultant, "the planning
concept for a major University's future is not a rigid Grand
Design, showing precisely what will, happen, or exactly
which structures will be built in the next 10 or 50 years.
"Rather, it is a well conceived idea of a changing
situation that can develop over the years, preserving the
Central Campus, and weaving its physical design and
facilities into the fabric of the changing academic life and
physical needs of a 'dynamic University."
To Prof. E. Lowell Kelly of the psychology department,
chairman of the literary college long-range planning group,
campus planning is the attempt to create "a package of
compromises" necessary because some professors need lab-
oratories, others need computer facilities, still others pre-
fer classrooms-and all these .needs may clash with the
dictates of esthetics.
All agree that, like the University, planning techniques
have come a long way since 1838. The first plan proposed
that the 40 acres of farm land constituting the "campus"
be lined with seven buildings along State St.
The idea was scrapped for lack of funds to carry out the
recommended construction. Later plans were only partially
realized because, as McKevitt observes, they tried to lay
out buildings in specific locations rather than establish
general principles for development.
Requirements Change
Since the interval between planning a building and
constructing it can be a decade, the requirements for, the
building as well as its once-preferred location may change
in that span, McKevitt says.
But there are other reasons for the planning revolution.
Today's campus is 4000 acres and its plant value is nearly
$300 million. More than seven new buildings come off the
drawing boards each year and previously-planned struc-
tures are regularly discarded or revised.
Thus, planning techniques have modernized to meet
these complexities. In recent years, long-range planning
has taken on a more theoretical outlook. It focuses on what
is called "conceptual development": planners try to deter-
mine the general types and placement of campus features
-walkways, buildings, parks and streets-which will blend
with and beautify the existing features of that campus.
Johnson, Johnson and Roy, a local site-planning firm,
has recently studied the North Campus and Medical Center
Continued on Page 2
An aerial photo from the west captures the campus today. Al-
though University Hall has been replaced by Angell- Hall and most
of the other 1890 structures have been demolished and the cam-
pus has expanded far beyond its original square 40 acres, the
Diagonal remains as a major element of campus design. Another
campus tendency is the contrast between high density building
areas such as the Angell-Mason-Haven Hall complex and the
open spaces of the Diag. Planners hope to capitalize on these
themes in setting guidelines for future development.
Bend Housing and other residences will be arrayed less densely
around the outskirts, mostly to the north and west.
In planning all of this, the University hopes to learn from its
experiences with planning (and not planning) Central Campus,
McKevitt said. "Almost all development from here on in will be
guided by planning concepts."
There is no detailed blueprint like the Central Campus Plan ,to
guide North Campus development. Two less detailed plans, how-
ever, serve as working papers.
The first is a series done by the late architect Eero Saarinen in
the early and middle 1950's. It was Saarinen who first'conceived of
the functional groupings of buildings and the "high-density cen-
ter."
He designed the Music School Bldg. and his influence can
be seen on several North Campus structures. McKevitt explained.
As an architect, Saarinen was oriented towards designing and
locating specific buildings.
To supplement this, the University wanted a broader perspec-
tive. relating North Campus to the city, to Central Campus. to