“ A practical building is able to be beautiful only if the architect has a subconscious sense for beauty—that is, if he is a creative artist. ”
–Eliel Saarinen at the 1931 AIA Convention in San Antonio, TX
106
AIA huron valley chapter board of directors, awards 2023 staff & jurors eliel saarinen, eero saarinen, and the legacy of modern architecture in michigan by jeffrey welch
The university of michigan campus a collection of thoughts on a collection of buildings & places
2023
Cover: Adapted from artwork by Eero Saarinen, 1925 Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan
Left: Original drawing by Eliel Saarinen, 1926 Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives
2022 president Anne Cox, AIA
past president Anna Anderson, AIA treasurer Kevin Adkins, AIA
continuing education director
Theresa Angelini, AIA
emerging professionals director Jason Ennis, AIA
vice president & president elect Scott M B Gustafson, AIA secretary Kelsey Montgomery, AIA
aia michigan director Damian Farrell, FAIA
media director Davy Shellabarger, Associate AIA
media director—support Cara Mitchell, AIA
managing editor Bradford Angelini design director Davy Shellabarger
cover design & artwork Emily Kiblawi
editorial director
Martin Schwartz
production manager & editor Kelsey Montgomery artwork Karissa Mazzara
Elisa Ahn, AIA
Tim Gordon, AIA
Han-Mei Chiang, AIA
Jennifer Wright, AIA
Erica Dunn, AIA
On behalf of the 2022 Board of Directors of the Huron Valley Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, we are pleased to present the sixth edition of our annual Awards publication. The publication was fi rst developed in 2017 as a way to celebrate and share the wonderful contribution of our chapter members and of our invited authors. This year’s publication continues this tradition.
Our publication will feature exceptional achievements in residential and commercial architecture. Projects were considered for awards in categories for new construction or renovation. As a means of recognizing extraordinary work, all projects could also be considered for Community Benefit, Aspirational Work, Sustainability and Equity and Inclusion.
We have continued our tradition of original content, with articles written specifi cally for our publication. This year we have a feature article written by Jeff rey Welch, “Eliel Saarinen, Eero Saarinen, and the Legacy of Modern Architecture in Michigan”. We also will feature a series of article case studies written by various authors on University of Michigan Buildings. All of the authored work has been created just for our publication, so we would like to thank all of the authors who contributed this year. As in past years, all entries for this year’s Awards and highlights of the winners are also included in the publication.
AIA Huron Valley has been a sponsor of the A2ZERO initiative to support Ann Arbor’s transition to community-wide carbon neutrality by 2030. We have continued our education on this issue by sponsoring our on-line carbon neutrality series with The Washtenaw Contractors Association and The Ann Arbor 2030 District. We sponsored a booth at the 2022 Ann Arbor Green Fair and continue to participate in the A2AERO Collaborators Round Table. We look forward to continuing this effort and continued participation in the years to come.
A special thank you goes out to all of our sponsors. The support of the publication is greatly appreciated. Please take a moment to review our sponsorship section. We would also like to extend heartfelt thanks to our editorial board Brad Angelini and Martin Schwartz. They have continued to pursue excellent original articles and content for our publication. And lastly, thank you to our publication board of Kelsey Montgomery and Davy Shellabarger. Their graphic excellence has greatly enhanced the quality of the publication. We hope that you enjoy reading this year's edition.
Sincerely, Anne M. Cox, AIA 2022 Chapter President, AIA Huron ValleyEliel Saarinen (1873-1950) and Eero Saarinen (1910-1961), father and son, led the Modern movement in the United States from 1922 to 1961. Their architectural solutions looked forward not backward, and neither adhered to anyone's school, architectural style or practice but their own. The Saarinens' designs pleased their clients and each design represented an advancement in their creative processes. The Cranbrook Museum and Library (1942) for Eliel, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis (1948) and later the TWA Flight Center (1962) for Eero, and their collaborative work on the winning design for the Smithsonian Art Gallery competition (1939, unbuilt) typify this synthesis of originality and fulfi llment of the client's interests and desires. In their example of an active "search for form," the Saarinens, and particularly Eero Saarinen, were models of independent practice for architects in Detroit and southeastern Michigan.
Eero's American story begins with a competition won by his father. Most students of architecture know of Eliel Saarinen's acclaimed submission to
the Chicago Tribune Tower competition in 1922. His drawing won the second prize of $20,000. This money enabled him to move his family and his practice to America. Perhaps not quite so well known, his competition drawing had an immediate infl uence on the design of skyscrapers, as is visibly plain in subsequent works by Raymond Hood, winner of the fi rst prize in the Chicago Tribune competition, and in the work of other architects. When Eliel agreed to teach a one-month course in architectural design at the University of Michigan in 1923, he was a leading advocate for modern (as opposed to eclectic) architecture. Professor Emil Lorch, dean of the College of Architecture, wanted this aesthetic brought into the classroom at Michigan. An unexpected boon for Eliel was discovering at Michigan the lasting satisfaction of combining teaching with his own practice. 1
1. Michigan Technic 37, 4 (May 1924), p. 6, published student work that also was featured in a traveling show at the Akademie der Kunste zu Berlin. See Nancy Ruth Bartlett's monograph More Than a Handsome Box: Education in Architecture at the University of Michigan 1876-1986, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning, 1995, pp. 60-61.
Almost immediately, he was encouraged to stay on. In December 1923, Saarinen was approached by the Detroit Chapter of the American Institute of Architects to design a war memorial auditorium and a government-business complex along the river at the foot of Woodward Avenue. This commission had been arranged by two powerful Detroit leading men—George G. Booth, publisher of the Detroit News, and Albert Kahn, owner of one of the largest architectural fi rms in the country. The careers of both Eliel and Eero Saarinen were infl uenced by these fi gures. Eliel's proposal for the Detroit riverfront appeared in the Detroit News in June 1924. His design included a tall building for government offices, a
monumental memorial auditorium, the inclusion of an underground parking structure, and below-ground-level throughways for traffic. Though this proposal went unbuilt, Eliel continued to be involved in Detroit City planning. Later, in 1947, his and Eero's plan for the Detroit Civic Center guided development along the riverfront in the 1950s. 2
The rapid production of the drawings and the exceptional beauty of the riverfront design greatly pleased George Booth. He
2. For example, a photo of the Veterans' Memorial Building in the Civic Center, taken from the eagle side, appeared on the cover of the October 1950 issue of the Monthly Bulletin of the Michigan Society of Architects An auditorium and convention center would soon follow, all part of the Saarinen plan for the site.
eliel and eero saarinen outside of cranbrook academy museum & library bldg, 1941 Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives
9 Eliel Saarinen, Eero Saarinen, and the Legacy of Modern Architecture in Michigan
model of riverfront memorial auditorium & civic center, 1924 Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives
eliel saarinen's aerial drawing of cranbrook campus, 1926 Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives
enlisted Eliel's participation in a deeply contemplated project for his large estate at Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills, some 20 miles north of Detroit. Here was the perfect match of client and architect, as Booth had no less an aspiration than to recreate the American Academy in Rome on his Michigan property, a plan that Saarinen not only comprehended but also trusted Booth to carry through to its conclusion. By spring of 1925, Eliel presented to him designs for the Cranbrook Academy of Art, including a scale model created by his wife, Loja. Eliel worked out a vaguely collegiate Gothic architectural style for the art academy with his students at the University of Michigan, turning the classroom into a laboratory for collaborative work. Later on, he used the same educational approach at Cranbrook. George Booth's son, Henry Booth, at the time an architectural student at the University of Michigan, participated in this ferment, and at the time of his graduation in 1924, Henry joined with his close friend and fellow student, J. Robert F. Swanson, to initiate the fi rm Swanson and Booth. Swanson and Booth were needed at
Cranbrook to handle the increasing number of building projects there. They would be designing ancillary buildings for the Gothic church that was already being built on the Booth estate and there was an increasing demand for residences for family and friends on the Boothowned properties adjacent to it.
Eliel Saarinen took up residence in Michigan at an auspicious time for George Booth. Booth had been working out his ideas for an art academy with Marion LeRoy Burton, president of the University of Michigan (1920-1925). Their deep friendship grew initially out of conversations involving the feasibility of developing an art school to augment the architecture program at the University of Michigan, but the advent of Eliel Saarinen altered the dynamic of his thinking, and the entire concept was altered further when President Burton was stricken with heart trouble in November 1924 and died in February 1925. As a result, Booth adjusted his plans by putting aside the art academy until he had a better sense of how to administer and staff it. In the meantime, he had given the contract for
robert swanson with eliel and eero saarinen viewing their smithsonian model Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives
the broadcaster staff Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan
the Cranbrook School for Boys to Swanson and Booth in May, and it was J. Robert F. Swanson who was the go-between, negotiating with Eliel Saarinen to join Swanson and Booth as a consultant on the school project.
Eero Saarinen moved with his family to Cranbrook in the fall of 1925. He was just fi fteen and he was still learning English. His struggle with the language did not deter his enthusiasm for America, however. In fact, as an eighth grader in Ann Arbor, Eero had been art editor for his school publication, The Broadcaster, at the newly opened (1924) experimental University High School. 3 His drawings show a young man of talent who identifi ed with the mission and spirit of his school. He brought this same readiness to the new environment at Cranbrook. In 1926,
3. The Broadcaster published six issues in school year 1924-1925. As art editor, Eero produced original linoleum cuts and drawings for each issue. His work was noticed in the May 23 issue of The Michigan Alumnus in an article that praised the student staff Eero's portrait of President Burton was used as the centerpiece in a second article in the same issue of The Michigan Alumnus about Burton's last report on the State of the University.
"aim high", the broadcaster, 1925 Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan; original image by Eero Saarinen
his father took over planning for the boys' school after the fi rm of Swanson and Booth was dissolved on June 1. J. Robert F. Swanson's marriage to Eva Lisa "Pipsan" Saarinen in May set him on his own extraordinarily successful career. By 1927 he had built his own house, Tower Knoll, on fi ve wooded acres about onehalf-a-mile from Cranbrook. The senior Saarinens and Eero moved in with the Swansons in October 1927 and stayed until Saarinen House was fi nished in mid-1930.4
As work progressed, the newly formed Cranbrook Architectural Office hired Douglas Loree and Ralph Calder, both former students of Eliel's at the University of Michigan. Once the designs were well along, Eliel invited his Hungarian architect friend, Geza Maroti, to help him with the sculptural ornamentation of the buildings. Maroti encouraged young Eero by putting him to work designing animal forms for metal gates, ceramic
4. "'Tower Knoll,' Bloomfi eld Hills, Michigan. J. Robert F. Swanson, Architect." Architectural Record ,64, 1 (July 1928), pp. 49-54. See p. 49.
Saarinen, Saarinen, and the Legacy of Modern Architecturetiles depicting athletes in poses,5 a crane design for the dining hall chairs, and for the exterior of Page Hall Common Room, a series of grotesque faces and abstract designs for its porch columns. Eero designed ceramic tiles for Swanson's residential commissions, and furniture for the master bedroom and ceramic tiles for the back patio at Saarinen House. This accomplished, youthful work attracted attention. In 1930, George Booth arranged for Eero to design all the furniture for the Kingswood School Cranbrook building, including its public spaces, classrooms, offices, dining hall, auditorium, library and dormitory rooms. In a gesture unique for him, he gave Eero a share of any profits derived from the commercial production of any of these
5. One of his terracotta tiles, "The Wrestlers," was included in the International Exhibition of Ceramic Art, sponsored by the American Federation of the Arts and circulated to eight major art museums east of the Mississippi, including Detroit, from October 1928 to September 1929.
designs, essentially turning Eero into an industrial designer.
This work at Cranbrook does not present a complete picture of Eero's ambition or his expertise in these years, however. He had won a matchstick design contest and an award for soap carving, but readers of the Michigan Architect and Engineer magazine (published by the Detroit Chapter of the AIA) might have been astonished to learn that Eero Saarinen, at the age of fi fteen, had entered a national competition sponsored by the American Gas Association. Eliel had taught Eero how to prepare the necessary drawings and had vouched for his readiness to master the technical details involved in designing and installing a gas system for a six-room house. Nine prizes and four honorable mentions were offered but (unusual for him) Eero did not place in this competition.6
6. Michigan Architect & Engineer8, 8, (August 1926), p. 101.
"our shop" the broadcaster, 1925 Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan; original image by Eero Saarinen
portrait of president burton, 1925 Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan; original image by Eero Saarinen
Eero Saarinen's chief infl uence on Michigan architects was his perspective on contemporary architectural history. He understood the trends in modern architecture thoroughly, in part from personal experience, and he could express their implications with a persuasive simplicity of language. His lecture to the gathering of members of the Michigan Society of Architects and the Detroit Chapter of the AIA in 1950 was a model of tact, lucid terminology and common sense. Even better, it confi rmed for this group that they were all on the right track as practicing architects.
His informed perspective had been solidified by events during a complicated four-year period from 1928-1932. In these years, he graduated from high school, studied sculpture in Paris, returned to design furniture for Kingswood, and enrolled in the Yale University School of Architecture. At Yale, he completed the fi ve-year course in three years and carried away the highest prize at his graduation in 1934, the Charles O. Matcham Fellowship that funded eight months of travel in Europe. However, it was during those four crucial years that European modern architectural ideas established a beachhead at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Eero was just the right age to benefit from the intense controversy that erupted at the founding of the Museum of Modern Art in 1929. Eero was at the center of this controversy because, at this time, his father was the leading representative of modern architecture in the country.
It was not an accident that the Museum of Modern Art curators, when introducing the concept of an "International Style" in architecture in 1932, selected Eliel Saarinen as their point of attack. He advocated for the broad, progressive American architectural tradition that prized technical innovation, experimentation with materials, and the constant development of new methods of building. His widely reported views
and the immediate impact of his Chicago Tribune drawing on skyscraper design made him the logical target for these New York intellectuals. To introduce the concept of an "International [meaning European] Style" in architecture to Americans, the principal fi gures at the Museum of Modern Art, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Philip Johnson and HenryRussell Hitchcock, had to undermine the achievements of the traditionalist American architects, and at this time Eliel Saarinen was very much in the forefront of this group.
By 1928, Eliel's Cranbrook School buildings were attracting wide attention for their originality, delicacy of design, masterful use of materials, and craftsmanship in construction. His work led to an invitation from New York to join the committee then planning the 11th Industrial Arts Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This exhibition set a high mark for its time, because it was a culmination of a long eff ort at the Metropolitan Museum to join interior design with industrial production.7 The chosen architects, who were also designers, were asked to take responsibility for the total environment of their designated "room" (a woman's bedroom, a man's den, a dining room, and so on), arrange the fabrication of all the objects to go in it, and supervise the installation. Eliel had been doing this kind of total design routinely from the beginning of his career in Finland in 1896.
He was commended, also, for his cordial committee work behind the scenes. He had proposed the overall layout of the nine rooms (unanimously accepted), led the planning sessions (described as
7. See Richard F. Bach's "American Industrial Art," pp. 19-29, among the introductory materials of the exhibition catalogue. "The Architect and the Industrial Arts: An Exhibition of Contemporary American Design: The Eleventh in the Museum Series, New York February 12 to March 24, 1929," New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1929.
chicago tribune tower drawing, 1922 Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives
focused and purposeful), and was the fi rst to present a plan for his (dining) room to the planning group. The exhibition was so popular that the closing date was extended to September 2, and the dining room proved to be among the most admired of the rooms, ahead of rooms created by exceptional architect-designers like Raymond Hood, Ely Jacques Kahn, and Ralph Walker.8 The show also had a direct impact at Cranbrook. In mid-1928, George Booth rearranged the building schedule so that Saarinen could design a house on the campus for himself to accommodate the dining room from the Met show.
And there was yet another recognition, this one of an international scope. In 1929, Eliel Saarinen was called to act as a juror for the international competition to design a memorial lighthouse for Santo Domingo that was also meant to house the bones of Christopher Columbus. For the fi rst round, he traveled to Madrid to join the other jurors, Raymond Hood and Horacio Acosta y Lara. For the second round in 1930, he traveled to Rio de Janeiro, this time with Frank Lloyd Wright, who had replaced Raymond Hood. His encounter with Frank Lloyd Wright was the beginning of an enduring relationship of these architect-designer competitors and academicians when Eliel Saarinen became president of the Cranbrook Academy of Art and Frank Lloyd Wright began his Taliesin fellowship in 1932.
Eliel's involvement with the Metropolitan Museum's exhibition committee brought him into a friendly relationship with members of the Architectural League of New York, the elite practitioners among architects in the country. Ely Jacques Kahn invited him to design the facade and interior spaces for the Richard Hudnut Salon, a six-story office building on Fifth Avenue (for which Loja Saarinen designed area rugs). Even further, the Architectural League of New York, whose
8. "The Architect and the Industrial Arts," by Helen Appleton Read, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 24 , 5 (May 1929), pp. 146-147.
president was Raymond Hood,9 awarded Eliel Saarinen its gold medal for the year 1930 for his work on the Cranbrook School for Boys. He was invited to mount a one-man show in New York and feted at a banquet in March.
In further recognition of Eliel Saarinen's genius and prominence, he was invited to address the American Institute of Architects' convention being held in San Antonio, Texas. Many were curious about Cranbrook, but they also wanted to hear his views on contemporary architecture. In his address to the convention on April 15, 1931, 10 he explained how the creative art educational atmosphere at the Cranbrook schools and the Cranbrook Art Academy would attract talented young artists from across the country and from around the world. In regard to the subject of "our contemporary architecture," he made two points. First, quoting his fellow architect, Ralph Walker, he affi rmed that the truly creative artist had to fi nd his own way:
Recently we had a dinner at the Architectural League in New York. Ralph Walker made a speech. He spoke about the individuals who do research in contemporary architecture. He explained how they go diff erent ways, how they solve their problems diff erently, and how they look upon things from diff erent angles. He said: "We need those individuals. They are our leaders. They try to fi nd the way for us."
Second, he called upon architects to create new forms for the new times. Past ages—Greek, Roman, Romanesque, Renaissance—had realized fundamental forms for their times, and the same held true for architects today. "This fundamental form is the attractive power which leads the art development towards a coming style," Saarinen
9. J. Robert F. Swanson said that Raymond Hood came out to Cranbrook "many" times. See the Interview with J. Robert F. Swanson, 1980, Cranbrook Archives, Bloomfi eld Hills, Michigan.
10. "Address of Eliel Saarinen," in The Octagon 3 , 4 (April 1931), pp.6-13, a verbatim report of the address of Eliel Saarinen, Member of the Institute and the Detroit Chapter, at the Sixty-fourth Convention, San Antonio, Texas.
15 Eliel Saarinen, Eero Saarinen, and the Legacy of Modern Architecture in Michigansaid. Some architects seemed to better intuit the fundamental form of the time than others, but it was only active and experienced practitioners that could approach it. In his view, the leaders of the International Style had not yet shown any persuasive evidence of feeling the fundamental form of their time. Their architecture was functional, with an identifi able list of shapes and materials, but it had not yet reached beyond a basic practicability. From his point of view, much further experimentation was needed before the International Style achieved a requisite level of maturity:
But, says someone, why all this talking about deep thinking?
Our time is practical! We have to build in a practical way.
Practicability has to decide the form of our architecture.
If a building is practical, it is beautiful. This is what they say.
But I wonder! I wonder if it is so, because we so often see very, very, practical buildings, practical from every angle, practical in every point, and they appear so terribly ugly. They have no proportions, no rhythm, no balance of masses. The color is terrible, the treatment of materials is terrible.
So, I don't think we can say that if a building is practical it is beautiful.
But I think we could say, or rather, I do think we should say that a building has to be practical to be able to be beautiful.
And further: A practical building is able to be beautiful only if the architect has a subconscious sense for beauty, that is: if he is a creative artist.
As to the beauty of architectural form, Saarinen identified the point of difference between the established contemporary American architects (he preferred the word "contemporary" to "modern") who were seeking each in his own way to express the spiritual aspirations of the time, and the European functionalists who were seeking to reduce architectural expression to a functionalist esthetic.
The question was: who was closer to the fundamental form of the 20th century? Who were the creative artists?
It was natural and timely for Saarinen to be appointed to be president of the Cranbrook Academy of Art in June 1932. He was already designing its built environment and he understood better than anyone else the art educational philosophy that needed to prevail there. Ironically, however, his appointment at Cranbrook occurred at just the same time as the "International Style" exhibition opened (February 9-March 23, 1932) at the new Museum of Modern Art in New York. Alfred H. Barr, Jr., the museum's fi rst director, wrote the Foreword for this show's catalogue in which Eliel Saarinen was disqualified from inclusion among the list of International Style architects. Saarinen was a Finn and there were already too many Europeans working within the International Style, whereas none of the Americans was producing anything of quality. Barr enlisted Raymond Hood and Frank Lloyd Wright as his primary American proponents of the International Style, although neither's buildings made a very good fit, and the claims he presented for their inclusion were vague at best. One could say almost anything about Frank Lloyd Wright and be plausible. Practically speaking, Barr's gesture rescued Frank Lloyd Wright at a time when his career had fallen into desuetude. Raymond Hood died of rheumatoid arthritis in 1934.
Barr distorted the facts to make his brief. He denied that Saarinen's Tribune Tower drawing had any beneficial infl uence on skyscraper design. Raymond Hood immediately changed his approach to skyscraper design after the 1922 Tribune competition, but Barr ignored this, saying instead that Saarinen's design had misled American architects by encouraging them to build exuberantly ornamented Art Deco skyscrapers. Barr's second thrust was to claim that Saarinen's ideas for
the Tribune Tower derived from Louis Sullivan, and that his ornament on the building was not only less inventive than Sullivan's but also not even equal to Frank Lloyd Wright's ornamentation from before 1910. Barr's claim that Saarinen had copied Louis Sullivan and did it badly, could not stand scrutiny. The issue of the comparative originality of ornamentation, drawn from a decade or more in the past, was, at best, indeterminate.11
Eighteen years later, Eero Saarinen addressed these false claims in a lecture in Detroit, as will be shown. But for these events in 1932, there is no record of his reactions to this extraordinarily public attack on his father and his father's colleagues and friends. Still, he was twenty-two years old, in his fi rst year at Yale, and as active and competitive as ever. He was glad to be away from home, but studying to be an architect among teachers vastly less experienced than his father.
11. Alfred H. Barr, Jr., "Foreword," Modern Architecture; International Exhibition, New York, Feb. 10 to March 23, 1932, Museum of Modern Art New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1932, pp. 12-17, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp. 39015006734241&view=1up&seq=5&skin=2021
Between 1936 and 1942, Eero worked with his father on a series of innovative buildings: the Cranbrook Institute of Science (1935-1937) the fi rst fl at-roofed building at Cranbrook; the Fenton, Michigan, Community Center (19371938) the fi rst small town community center in the country; the Tanglewood Music Shed, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Lenox, Massachusetts (1936-1937); Kleinhans Music Hall (1938-1940) in Buff alo; the Crow Island School (1938-1940) in Winnetka, Illinois; and the Cranbrook Museum and Library Building (19371942). For these projects Eero performed varying roles: site architect in Fenton, designer of the two-level public area for the Kleinhans building, and furniture designer with Charles Eames for both the Kleinhans and Crow Island projects.
In addition, in the late 1930s he entered a series of competitions. In the Wheaton College Art Center competition, Eero Saarinen placed fi fth behind Walter Gropius's and Marcel Breuer's second place entry. In the Goucher College campus development plan and library competition, Eliel and Eero took second place. In February 1939, Eero Saarinen, Ralph Rapson and Frederic James placed fi rst in the William and Mary College
Saarinen,
Saarinen, and the
of Modern
model of the smithsonian art gallery, 1940 Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives
Festival Theatre and Fine Arts Center competition, winning with a modern design. Had this design been built, in 1939-1941, "it would have won for the college the distinction of being the fi rst to institute Modern design in this century."
The Smithsonian Gallery of Art competition for the Mall in Washington, D. C., could not have been missed by any breathing architect in North America. This time, Walter Gropius was on the jury. Winners were announced on June 29, 1939: fi rst place went to Eliel and Eero Saarinen and J. Robert F. Swanson. The winning proposal stirred up significant controversy, and had it been built the design would have brought the fi rst modern building to the mall of the capital city. This recognition identified the Saarinen team as easily the foremost proponents of modern design in the country. One further anecdote illustrates the respect accorded to the Saarinens' design proposal: The Museum of Modern Art sponsored an exhibition in 1944 to
12
track architectural progress since 1932. Titled Built in U.S.A. 1932-1944 , the editorial modus operandi allowed for the inclusion of only those buildings that had been built—but with one exception. According to the Foreword, "It was also decided that the Saarinens' winning project for the Smithsonian competition should be illustrated in the book even though it was not eligible for inclusion among the actual selections." 13
12. "College of William and Mary: Competition for a Festival Theatre and Fine Arts Center: November 1938-February 1939," by James D. Kornwolf, pp. 125-175. Modernism in America 1937-1941: A Catalogue and Exhibition of Four Architectural Competitions, edited by James D. Kornwolf, Williamsburg, VA: Joseph and Margaret Muscarelle Museum of Art, College of William and Mary, 1985. See p. 142.
13. Built in U.S.A. 1932-1944 , edited by Elizabeth Mock, Foreword by Philip L. Goodwin, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1944. p. 7. The Smithsonian Art Gallery competition may well have occasioned the fi rst Ann Arbor Conference in February 2-3, 1940. The key draw in the decision to invite the leading architectural educators in the country to Ann Arbor was Eliel and Eero Saarinen. The chief speakers at the conference were Walter Gropius, Eliel Saarinen, Joseph Hudnut and William Wurster. Alas, no records exist of these presentations. Joseph Hudnut, dean at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, became a fi xture at subsequent conferences, and he wrote glowingly of Eliel Saarinen's Kleinhans Music Hall and Crow Island School projects. He kept the model of the Smithsonian Art Gallery competition in Robertson Hall at Harvard from 1941 to 1945. One assumes that the University of Michigan's Dean Wells I. Bennett, the host of the Ann Arbor Conferences, worked closely with Joseph Hudnut. One last anecdote: Robert Swanson has said that Joseph Hudnut visited Cranbrook both to see it and to ask Eliel Saarinen's advice regarding bringing Walter Gropius to Harvard. Saarinen told him Gropius was the right choice. On the subject of the Ann Arbor Conferences, see Deirdre L.C. Hennebury, “Unconventional Convention, The Ann Arbor Conferences , 1940-1954,” Awards 2022, No. 05 , fall 2022, Ann Arbor: Huron Valley Chapter American Institute of Architects, pp 26-35.
ann arbor conference participants visit cranbrook to see the smithsonian model Courtesy of Cranbrook ArchivesCharles Eames arrived at Cranbrook in 1938, invited by Eliel and fi tted with a scholarship to study with him. Eames joined the art academy faculty the next year, but by that time he had already befriended Eero, and the two of them worked together to design furniture for the Kleinhans Music Hall and the Crow Island School. This partnership, augmented by the arrival of Ray Kaiser, Eames' future spouse and design partner, in 1940, led to Eero and Eames winning the top two awards in the Organic Design in Home Furnishings competition in 1941. Eliot Noyes, director of the department of industrial design at the Museum of Modern Art and the organizer of the competition, wrote that their winning design was revolutionary: "In the case of chairs by Saarinen and Eames, a manufacturing method never previously applied to furniture was employed to make a light structural shell consisting of layers of plastic glue and wood veneer molded in threedimensional forms." 14
A second experience may have been signifi cantly formative. Somehow, in the midst of architectural projects and competitions, Eero found time in the spring and summer of 1938 to work with Norman bel Geddes on the design of the General Motors Pavilion that housed the Futurama exhibit, for the 1939 New York World's Fair. This immersion in practical futurism and closeup exposure to concepts of streamlining in industrial production also put Eero in touch with the corporate views of the General Motors and Shell Oil corporations as regards the planning of cities, highway systems, and suburban areas in relation to automobile and air travel. In the Norman bel Geddes offi ce, records indicate that Eero was a highly paid designer and draftsman. And, according to Oliver Lundquist, an industrial designer and architect, and Eero's colleague in the Offi ce of Strategic Services, Eero Saarinen was practically
14. A Note on the Competition," by Eliot F. Noyes, Organic Design , New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1941, p. 4.
eames and saarinen testing the strength of leg joints, 1940 Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives
responsible for the design of the General Motors Pavilion. 15
During the war years, Eero worked in Washington, D. C., in the Offi ce of Strategic Services, which later became the Central Intelligence Agency. Ostensibly, he was responsible for designing materials for display in the White House situation room. At the same time, he was working with Eliel and Robert Swanson, using his Georgetown house as the fi rm's Washington offi ce. He was involved in designing wartime housing in Centerline, Michigan; at Willow Run in Ypsilanti, Michigan; and for Lincoln Heights in Washington, D. C. In 1943, he and Oliver Lundquist, placed fi rst in the competition sponsored by the California Arts and Architecture magazine to design a portable modular house. Eero continued working with Charles Eames on the California Arts
15. "'A Few Years Ahead': Defi ning Modernism with Popular Appeal," by Jeff rey L. Meikle, in Norman Bel Geddes Designs America , edited by Donald Albrecht, New York: Abrams, 2012, pp. 115-134. See p. 131.
Eliel Saarinen, Eero Saarinen, and the Legacy of Modern Architecture in Michiganand Architecture Case Study House Program, designing houses 8 and 9 in 1948 and 1949. In 1947 he developed the Womb Chair for the Knoll furniture company. Eero was uncannily adept at fi nding his way to the center of richly rewarding architectural and industrial design challenges, which often involved collaborating with brilliant partners.
The most opulent architectural project in American history up to that time, the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, came to Eero through his father. GM executives wanted a campus-like arrangement for centralizing and relating all the groups—research, engineering, styling, manufacturing, and service—responsible for creating products for future consumers. Initially, the budget was pegged at $30,000,000 but once underway the company dedicated $125,000,000+ to this extraordinary investment in the future of automobile design and production in the United States and abroad.
After winning the initial contract on September 19, 1945, Eliel asked J. Robert F. Swanson to call Eero home. But post-war labor problems delayed the project, and when it fi nally came to Eero in 1948 (he was 38, his father was 75) to close the deal with the GM board, he explained to them that they did not want a Cranbrook-style campus plan. Instead, they should build a research complex that strengthened their corporate identity, principally by replicating in the buildings the industrial materials and precision processes used in the design, the engineering, the styling and the manufacture of automobiles. Once this idea took hold, he pursued it relentlessly, fi nding ways to integrate imagery and new materials in the service of strengthening GM's corporate identity. He used metal, glass, ceramic, thin curtain walls, synthetic seals for curtain wall windows, primary colors, precision sculpture (staircases inside, objects outside), large sculptural forms (stainless steel water tower, Alexander Calder fountain, metal dome for the circular showroom, and so on), all in keeping with GM's creative spirit and future-oriented
approach to engineering, styling, and sales. Soon after the dedication of the GM Tech Center in May 1956, Eero Saarinen was featured on the cover of Time magazine. This success brought him a flood of commissions and quadrupled the size of his fi rm.
From 1945 to 1950, Eero Saarinen received little attention in the Weekly Bulletin of the Michigan Society of Architects. The GM Tech Center project was still below the radar. Very much in the news was his father's leadership in planning the Detroit Civic Center. While a brief item did take notice of the competition in St. Louis for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in 1948, the subsequent lack of action to build it rendered Eero's sensational design for the Gateway Arch a thing of passing interest. But Eliel's death on July 1, 1950, seemed to release him to circulate more freely among the Detroit, Ann Arbor, and University of Michigan architects. The Detroit Chapter of the AIA voted to make him Vice President of the chapter in September 1950 and he was appointed to serve on the committee on architectural competitions. At the invitation of the Metropolitan Art Association of Detroit, he delivered an address in the commodious Detroit Institute of Arts auditorium on November 29, 1950, to a full house. 16
The best way to understand the present situation in architecture, he said, was to look at the creative leaders fi rst, and then to the philosophical, social, and economic issues they were responding to and interpreting in their work. The creative leaders, including Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Mies van der Rohe,
16. Eero's very well-received presentation was printed as "Trends in Modern Architecture," in the Monthly Bulletin of the Michigan Society of Architects 25 , 2 (May 1951), pp. 11-15. Joseph Hudnut's lectures at the University of Michigan in May 12-16, 1952 were published as The Three Lamps of Modern Architecture, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1952, reiterated and affi rmed Eero's thesis that the forms of modern architecture were still evolving.
all Europeans, were seeking "a common denominator" for an architecture meant to serve an industrial society. Their eff orts had produced the concept of functionalism: "It was," according to Eero, "a doctrine that form in architecture can only be created by function. This portrayed architecture as a very humble servant of society—a follower, not a leader. It was a very negative approach, but it served a certain purpose in cleaning house." He noted that the work of their followers came to be labeled the "international style."
A second trend appeared in the United States. It began with the Chicago Tribune Building. The competition was held, "and my father's second prize design infl uenced the skyscraper design to a point where it permanently broke with eclecticism. Raymond Hood's Rockefeller Center was the result of that break. Soon to follow in 1925,” Eero said, “the Art Deco show in Paris became the turning point for American interior design. Then, in rapid succession, several things happened—the establishment of [the design schools at] Cranbrook and Taliesen, the bringing of Gropius to Harvard, the beginning of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the appearance of [Richard] Neutra, of [William] Lescaze, of [Antonin] Raymond, of [Marcel] Breuer. Gradually the arena moved over here."
A third approach noted by Eero was represented by William Wurster, the California architect whose modern designs incorporated the California tradition of craftsmanship in residential building. "It was not an architecture that heralded the coming age of the machine. It was an architecture that recognized the fact that the building industry is a handicraft industry." This movement posed a real challenge to the "powerful infl uence the Harvard School of Architecture, Gropius, and Breuer had had on the young architects of the East. This was good, because the followers of Gropius and Breuer had built up certain sets of rules and dogmas on design that endangered their growth."
In an interesting salute, Eero's fourth trend involved "Mies and Structure." The buildings for Mies' new campus for the Illinois Institute of Technology "were electric in their importance. Out of the simplest possible steel frame he constructed buildings. The walls were treated as panels within the frame. He achieved a spare, classical beauty by elimination of all superfi cial eff ects. It was the same beauty and structural logic that Sullivan had strived for in the same city fi fty years earlier." Mies, he said, had inspired a renewed interest in the "structural clarity of a building."
Summing up, Saarinen assured his audience that a new architecture was coming into being. "I do not feel that we in any way are running into the danger of a style congealing on us too quickly." One reason was the variety of directions already being pursued, but the chief reason involved what the "architect calls concept ." Eero pointed out that Frank Lloyd Wright thinks of his building's situation in the natural setting fi rst; while Le Corbusier thinks, because his building is man-made, it is separate from nature and should sit on stilts. Additional concepts, like "structure," "plan," and "form," also infl uenced the architect's judgment as to what gives "the building a wholeness." Yet another reason for pluralism in modern architectural design involved less developed considerations, such as city planning, the design of outdoor spaces and the employment of the other arts. These "neglected" areas, he said, needed to be explored and strengthened.
As for what to expect in the future, he identifi ed two basic approaches to architectural thinking: The Classical and the Romantic. In this duality, the Classical approach held that there are "certain universal laws of proportion, lines, and aesthetics that are larger than the individual;" while the Romantic approach held that "the solution of the problem must come out of the problem itself and the personality of the one who creates the solution. The lasting value lies in the enjoyment of the personality
21 Eliel Saarinen, Eero Saarinen, and the Legacy of Modern Architecture in Michiganof the artist." He placed Mies on the Classical side "with Corbu and Gropius more into this group than into the other." In the Romantic group he placed Frank Lloyd Wright, Alvar Aalto, Eliel Saarinen, William Wurster and Oscar Niemeyer. "Both poles are necessary for the progress of developing the form of one's time. The Classic alone has a tendency to congeal too quickly; the Romantic are the more experimental." Finally, he noted that in the present day the Classic approach had made "great progress in larger buildings" while "the Romantic approach had made great strides in the smaller buildings, residential work in particular, where perhaps we as a society are protesting against the industrialization of our culture."
In the context of the times, these remarks offered a sane and enlightening gloss at just the time of transition from BeauxArts practices to modern ones. It was a temperate stance that looked far ahead in anticipation of future synthesis and reconciliation. At the University of Michigan, a number of young teachers were being brought onto the architecture school faculty, including Walter Sanders (a practicing architect from the East), Edward Olenki (a Miesian), Joseph Albano (also a Miesian), C. Theodore Larson (to head architectural research) and William Muschenheim from New York (one of the architects involved in the Museum of Modern Art activities from 1931 to1932). Veteran faculty members were equally engaged with how to adjust to the new trends. Professor George Brigham, an eclecticist in California, came to the University in 1930, designed an outstanding Art Deco house in Ann Arbor for Walter Badger (former professor turned Vice President at Dow Chemical Co.) in 1936, and then invented the typology for the Ann Arbor mid-century modern house in 1953. Professor Ralph Hammett, originally an architect of large apartment houses and public buildings in Chicago, also came to the University
in 1930, lived for over 20 years in an early 19th century house that he lovingly restored, became the chief architectural historian in the department, and in 1954 moved across town to live in a delightful mid-century modern house he designed for himself. These details indicate the intense sensitivity to changing ideas endemic in the progressive educational setting at the University of Michigan, and they highlight the need among faculty to determine what to present to students who were themselves seeking to understand the direction of architecture.
The architecture students at midcentury were similarly caught up in the controversy. Robert Metcalf (the chief mid-century modern architect to practice in Ann Arbor) had worked with George Brigham as a research assistant on the study of a demountable small house (called the Youtz Unit House) and as the chief draftsman in Brigham's architectural practice for over four years. In 1952, Metcalf started his own office, served on the UM architecture faculty, and was appointed dean of the University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning in 1974. Another gifted student, David Osler, worked with Douglas Loree for eight years before starting up his own office in 1958. Charles Lane17 also worked in George Brigham's office and laboratory, and then after the war began his own practice in Ann Arbor with a focus on schools. His fi rm, Lane, Riebe, Weiland, designed the Huron High School (1969). James Livingston won the Booth Traveling Fellowship in 1952 before setting up his office in Ann Arbor and contributing many attractive mid-century modern residences and apartment houses in the fast-growing city. Charles W. Moore, who graduated from the architecture school in 1947, made note of the fact that, at that time, there was very little of the "Krautish persuasion" evident in the architecture program at
17. Charles "Wes" Lane was proud of having won a fellowship to study with Eliel Saarinen. The coming of war prevented it. Biographical essays on George Brigham, Ralph Hammett, Robert Metcalf, David Osler, Charles Lane, James Livingston and other Ann Arbor architects can be found at https://a2modern.org.
UM and that some of his professors were "woodsy Finns."18 Moore's comment drew attention to the indigenous landscape, to Frank Lloyd Wright's respect for nature, and to Eliel Saarinen's love of brick and color, and suggests why white boxes on stilts were thought to be less suited for building in Ann Arbor's wooded, riverine, and seasonal Michigan setting. Eero Saarinen's view of the architectural trends strengthened these romantics, who wished to keep hold of color and indigenous materials, even if in doing so they went against the prescriptions imposed by the adherents of the "international style" of modern architecture.
In May 1950, Eero became president of the Detroit Chapter of the AIA when the acting president died unexpectedly. He was not the right person for this masterof-ceremonies role, being busy with his own practice and an inveterate traveler. The Detroit Chapter understood this and soon released him to freedom. But through his stint in local leadership, he became an identifi able, approachable, and romantic fi gure, and his comings and goings and achievements were tracked and reported, as were the activities of his office and of the men and women employed by him. In addition, the association with Cranbrook and Cranbrook artists, like Harry Bertoia, Marshall Fredericks, Marianne Strengell, and Maija Grotell, and the doings of the Swanson family, including his industrial designer sister, Pipsan, altogether created an extended aura of creative interaction, productivity, and reach of infl uence. The Saarinen-Cranbrook-Swanson triumvirate provided an ongoing spectacle of achievement and leadership.
Selected from a list of six contenders, Eero Saarinen and Associates (ES&A) won the contract to plan the new University of
18. More Than a Handsome Box, by Nancy Bartlett, Ann Arbor: The College of Architecture and Urban Planning, 1995, p. 72.
Michigan North Campus in June 1951. The struggle with North Campus planning lasted long after the fi rm withdrew from active involvement in 1958, but Eero's participation brought prompt and comprehensive results. By 1953, the basic elements of the North Campus plan were largely determined. Fred Mayer, the longtime campus planner for the University, described how subsequent building was guided by Saarinen's decisive layout of North Campus:
The School of Music, the School of Art and Design, and the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning are shown on their present sites. The Engineering College is shown in the northeast sector of the academic core. Buildings are shown on the sites now occupied by Pierpont Commons, the Chrysler Center, and the Duderstadt Center; housing is shown in the Bursley/ Baits area and family housing in the Northwood area. In addition, the basic road system is shown in the core area, and the intent to preserve existing stands of mature trees is clearly evident. 19
Saarinen's plan was a sound one, certainly, and it stayed operative even with dramatic surprises. For example, after 1953, the state moved Highway 23 several miles to the east from its original route along what is now Huron Parkway. Second, Bonisteel Boulevard was to continue east to (then close-by) Highway 23 after a local cemetery was removed, but University efforts to acquire the cemetery land were stymied by families who refused to cooperate and then sued. An additional problem was lack of consistent funding to build. These kinds of snags would always be part of the job, but it was another matter that encouraged Saarinen to withdraw. In the years between 1948 and 1959, Eero underwent a refi nement in his thinking about the essential elements in any planning effort.
19. Frederick W. Mayer, A Setting for Excellence: The Story of the Planning and Development of the Ann Arbor Campus of the University of Michigan , Forward by James J. Duderstadt, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, Volume I, 2015; Volume II, 2017. See Volume II, p. 49.
Eliel Saarinen, Eero Saarinen, and the Legacy of Modern Architecture in MichiganHe got a taste for this while collaborating with Harley Earl at General Motors, but it was his work for Eliot Noyes and IBM, starting in 1956, that greatly advanced his understanding of the need for the total integration of corporate mission with the corporate look.
In his mandate to rebrand IBM, Noyes had changed the IBM logo, redesigned the look of printed materials (catalogues, public relations materials), and changed the look of the computing machines. He wanted to help the public feel better about these mysterious boxes that nobody understood. Noyes created new public showcases for exhibiting and selling the IBM computers, and he initiated a worldwide architectural look for IBM offices, research facilities, and factories. When Eero Saarinen was brought in to design a factory in Rochester, Minnesota (and later a research building in Yorktown, New York), he was not designing standalone buildings but rather buildings that were to be a highly conscious part of a global network. His factory building in Minnesota, in fact, was "the company's fi rst important work of architecture,"20 because it established the look of all the buildings to follow. Noyes brought in Saarinen, he said, because he knew he could trust the integrity and the modern look of the building. Of course, these IBM buildings had to be good neighbors, and they were in their local settings, but they also had to interface with other IBM buildings regarding look and color. A curtain wall for IBM had to correlate with the thin metal walls of IBM computers as well as with curtain wall designs and color of other IBM buildings to come. Even the GM Tech Center work did not demand this consciousness of an international network of buildings. Eero's work for IBM, in other words, brought him into the center of a planning idea whose logic and scope could only cast a dim light on the developmental impediments at the University of Michigan. These were troubles he identified in his presentation to the
20. Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future, edited by Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen and Donald Albrecht, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006, p. 281.
Regents in 1958, and they were difficulties no one could remedy. As he pointed out, many obstacles militated against an effective and comprehensive master plan for North Campus: the shifting politics of administrations, opportunistic donors, strong and weak departments, confl icts between architectural fi rms invited to build, the problem of fi nding an objective consultant, and the contest between traditional and modern looks for the college campus. Overall, however, the chief issue involved asserting a strong, long-term control over the look of the brand as conveyed through architectural design. Eero told the Regents that his ideal would be for "one architect to make the working drawings not only for the present or for the next decade but for years and years ahead."21
In the midst of North Campus planning, the University contracted with Eero Saarinen and Associates to design a building for the music school. An original estimate of $8,000,000 in 1955 was pared down to $4,500,000 and the contract let in late September 1956. At just this time (July 2), Time magazine featured Saarinen's portrait on its cover. Inside, an eight-page article cited the “Twentieth Century Form-Givers:” Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer, Richard Neutra, Wallace K. Harrison, Gordon Bunshaft, Philip Johnson, Minoru Yamasaki, I. M. Pei, Paul Rudolph, Buckminster Fuller, and Eduardo Catalano. "Sure sign of the healthy state of U.S. architecture is the large number of promising younger talents. And of the whole U.S. cast of modern architects, none has a better proportioned combination of imagination, versatility and good sense than Eero Saarinen, 45, son of late great Finnish-born Architect Eliel Saarinen." Happily, the university obtained a major building from a celebrated architect that was fully supported by the legislature. In its original conception, the music school had been fitted with a large, domed, circular building set close to the curving
21. See Frederick W. Mayer, A Setting for Excellence, Volume II, pp. 51-53.
entrance road, to act as a landmark, a sculptural presence and a welcome. The revised design took advantage of the rising ground. Perched on a ridge overlooking a pond, the central block (administration, classrooms, and library) joined spreading wings to the north (practice rooms) and to the south (recital halls) along the ridge, making future expansion in either direction a simple matter.
The Michigan Society of Architects
Monthly Bulletin 22 provided a range of articles and updates to architects across the state. Each month, as a major feature that brought forward doings in regional areas, it published a portfolio of work by a fi rm or an offi ce (for example, the North Campus project was featured in the September 1954 issue). The articles dealing with accounts of meetings, new methods of construction, new materials, obituaries, bowling scores, and so on, created collegial solidarity. Accounts of conventions and meetings included numerous photographs of the participants to highlight the social vitality of the profession and make familiar the faces of the leadership and the active society members.
Taking 1956 as typical, almost every issue included a reference or references to Eero Saarinen or his fi rm or the Saarinen-Cranbrook-Swanson doings, and listing some of these notices here will indicate the sense of what the Bulletin felt architects might like to know. In January, Eero was named consultant to the City Planning Commission. An article about thin-shelled structures in the U.S. featured ES&A's MIT auditorium building; a notice that Progressive Architecture had given a "top design award for higher education" to ES&A's proposed Concordia College project; and a note that Eero was one of four jurors
22. There was an active collegiality among the practitioners, educators and the material suppliers across the state due to the enlightened editorial policy at the Monthly Bulletin of the Michigan Society of Architects. This publication was easily the best of state architectural journals in this era. The Bulletin changed from weekly to monthly publication in September 1950.
eero saarinen receiving the m.s.a. gold medal, 1959
Courtesy of Michigan Society of Architects
for the Sydney Opera House competition appeared in the February issue. In March, ES&A won an award for a girls' dormitory at Drake University and learned that its plan for the $3,000,000 embassy building in London had been chosen by the State Department. In April, Aline Saarinen was appointed to a committee to plan a meeting between the Society of Architectural Historians and the College Art Association in Detroit. Oddly, the only official mention of the GM Tech Center the entire year was in this April issue, as GM president, Harlow H. Curtice, announced the opening ceremony coming up in May. The September cover sported a drawing of the TWA Terminal, and this issue also featured a fi fteen-page portfolio of work by the fi rm Smith, Hinchman and Grylls (consulting engineers to the GM Tech Center). October brought readers a look at artwork employed by architects in schools, shopping malls and civic spaces over seventeen pages: artists included Cranbrook's Harry Bertoia, Lilian Swann Saarinen, Marshall Fredericks, Marianne Strengell, Zoltan Sepeshy ,and Eva Lisa "Pipsan" Saarinen Swanson. Also, in this issue, the Civic Design Committee of the MSA endorsed ES&A's proposal for the development of the Detroit Civic Center
25 Eliel Saarinen, Eero Saarinen, and the Legacy of Modern Architecture in MichiganPlaza. And, in December, mall developer Victor Gruen and Eero Saarinen spoke before the Detroit Economic Club. This low-key drumbeat of reporting continued steadily through the following years up to 1961.
In March 1959, the Michigan Society of Architects awarded Eero Saarinen its Gold Medal. The citation, redolent with the understandable pride of the local architects, pointed to something many architects were feeling at the time: Eero Saarinen was bringing into being a new and farsighted style of architecture.
Distinguished son of distinguished parents, Eero Saarinen, a leading architect of his time, a perfect spokesman for a generation that has consolidated the gains of great revolutionaries who have made our country the birthplace of modern architecture. His work will take its place with the Greek, the Gothic and the Renaissance. He has refl ected great credit on the Michigan Society of Architects. As a symbol of the preeminent place our nation holds in modern design, his creative architectural talent has played so important a part that no other has gained more worldwide distinction. For these and other valuable contributions, the Society is proud to award its 1959 Gold Medal. 23
As pointed out by Ralph Hammett in a lecture to the Society of Architectural Historians in 1957, 24 Eero Saarinen had become the central architectural fi gure in the American modern movement. Hammett's premise held that modern architecture in America began with Albert Kahn of Detroit and continued into the present time through Eero. Hammett began by tracing the generally accepted history of architecture up to 1800, but then made an unorthodox turn in his view of what followed next. He divided the fi fth age of architectural history, "The Age of Machine Craft," into three phases:
23. Monthly Bulletin of the Michigan Society of Architects, 33 , 4 (April 1959), p. 33.
24. Ralph Hammett, "Detroit's Machine-Age Architecture," Monthly Bulletin of the Michigan Society of Architects 31 , 3 (March 1957), pp. 49, 51, 53.
1. the phase of cast iron, 2. the phase of steam, 3. the phase of automation. In the "phase of automation," he included the advent of women's liberation, the creation of Albert Kahn's assembly line factories, and the development of relative parity between labor and management. In his reckoning, 20th century innovations had brought about an aura of real democracy in America. Hammett saw in Eero Saarinen's then-recent work at the GM Tech Center the legacy established by Albert Kahn's factory buildings. He asserted that real modernism in architecture had originated in Detroit with Kahn's designs for open space with curtain wall sash, which had been resolved without any infl uence from the "International Style" architects. For his part, Eero had always maintained that the inspiration for the buildings at the GM Tech Center came from Albert Kahn's factories in Detroit and not from Mies. 25
In 1959, Eero Saarinen prepared to move his practice to New Haven, to be closer to his commissions and closer to the center of architectural innovation. The Dulles International Airport (Chantilly, Virginia, 1963) was evidence of his professional maturity and the quality of his work sufficed to answer his critics. His Irwin Union Bank in Columbus, Indiana, (1954), for example, might be seen as a response to Philip Johnson's glass house; vertical granite shafts rose out of bedrock beneath the CBS Building (New York, 1965), so that they carried the weight of the building and opened up unobstructed interior space; it answered the largely horizontal, floating feeling of Lever House (Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, New York, 1952) and the later Seagram Building (Mies van der Rohe with Philip Johnson, New York, 1958); Eero's TWA Flight Center (John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, 1962), with its great concrete shells resting on four points, had dared more than any architectural project in America. The Gateway Arch (St. Louis, designed in 1948 and completed 1965), the fi rst architectural form to acknowledge
25. "Eero Saarinen's Proudest Achievement," by Joy Hakason, Detroit News, June 26, 1966, pp. 12-19. See p. 19.
1966, construction complete, cranes coming down off the arch Jefferson National Expansion NPS, used under CC BY 2.0 , Cropped from original
the coming Space Age, was in the process of being engineered for building now that federal money had been appropriated and the structural mathematics was catching up with the design. The Arch asserted that Eero Saarinen was more closely in touch with the fundamental form of his time than any other American architect then or since. That his design was preferred over his father's design meant, 26 not a vanquishing of the father, but rather just the opposite, proof that he was his father's
26. The gist of this story: Both Saarinens entered the Jeff erson National Expansion Memorial competition. At the end of the fi rst round, the Saarinens received a telegram saying that E. Saarinen had made the cut. Everyone celebrated Eliel's preferred design. When news arrived saying that Eero not Eliel had made the cut, everyone celebrated Eero's preferred design. The Gateway Arch: A Biography, by Tracy Campbell, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013. See pp. 71-72.
best student. Now moving east with 40 of his associates, he was entering a new relationship with the most powerful architects in the world and the new horizon was waiting for his leadership.
© Jeff rey Welch,All Rights Reserved, July 30, 2022
27.In March 1961, Eero began experiencing symptoms of what became an inoperable brain tumor. He died on September 1. His doctor, Edgar Kahn, son of Albert Kahn, was considered one of the best neurosurgeons in the United States. In a letter to Loja Saarinen (September 5, 1961) he wrote: "I do want you to know how badly I felt about Eero. From the onset of the fi rst symptom nothing could have been done with our present knowledge to stop the growth of this type of tumor. On the one chance that we might have been wrong in our diagnosis, we operated only to fi nd that we had not been in error as to the location and type of the tumor."
Saarinen, Saarinen,Recently retired to Ann Arbor, Jeff rey Welch was a teacher at Cranbrook Kingswood School in Bloomfield Hills, MI, for almost forty years. The incomparable architectural atmosphere at Cranbrook and living in and working in buildings designed by Eliel Saarinen have led to a book on the founding and history of Cranbrook. A graduate of Harvard College in 1971, he received a Ph. D. in English from the University of Michigan in 1978. His ongoing research now includes the career of Emil Lorch, the fi rst head of the University of Michigan school of architecture, and topics related to Midcentury Modern architects and architecture in Michigan.
Image Credit: Kevin Adkisson
south pond and arch, 2018
Jefferson National Expansion NPS, used under CC BY 2.0 , Cropped from original
We don’t believe that it would be out of line to assert that Ann Arbor is one of a few very fi ne small cities in the U.S. 1 And of those, there must be even fewer of its size that play host to a major educational and cultural institution. The active, if condensed, version of urban life in the city attracts people even if they are not directly connected with the University of Michigan: the university is the reason we have gathered here. The presence of the university’s main campus, interwoven as it is with downtown, makes its buildings and spaces into public places, possessed by all of us because they are so accessible. As a result, Ann Arbor is one of the few small towns that have a large collection of significant, if not uniformly distinguished, buildings and places as part of its everyday urban existence.
The individual buildings and spaces clearly have meaning for us—and that’s true even for the duds, of which there are several. In some cases, they carry strong personal associations while for others there may be less of an emotional attachment, but an intellection or professional admiration. But the importance of these places calls for us to understand them.
In some cases, the short appreciations collected here are quite obviously personal; in others, the buildings are the subject of some detached, professional curiosity. In a few essays there is both. But this seems appropriate to the range of the structures, built over many years, for many purposes, re-used for new purposes, designed to impress, designed to function, designed to house, to learn, or, as with the duds, just to get along. It therefore seemed right to offer the opportunity to write about these places to a similarly broad range of authors. The editors of Awards No. 6 thank the membership of the Huron Valley Chapter of the AIA and friends for their thoughts and the effort expended to put all that into words. We have barely covered the campus buildings and places that deserve attention: we might do this again.
1. “The 25 Best Places to Live in the U.S. in 2022-2023,” VRBO, https://realestate.usnews.com/real-estate/ slideshows/25-best-places-to-live-in-the-us?slide=16, retrieved August 10, 2022
18
1 university of michigan law school
2 university of michigan law library addition
3 lorch hall
4 the clements library
5 the president's house
6 university of michigan museum of art expansion
7 fleming administration building
8 kelsey museum—william f. upjohn exhibit wing
9 the diag
32 (discussed in tandem with gerstacker grove)
10 hill auditorium
11 burton memorial tower
12 modern languages building
13 alumni center
14 power center for the performing arts
15 university reformed church
16 university of michigan natural history museum
17 alexander g. ruthven museums building
18 detroit observatory
19 taubman college of architecture and urban planning—addition
20 the earl v. moore building—school of music, theater, and dance
21 gerstacker grove
(Not Pictured) (discussed in tandem with the diag)
Image Credit: Brad Angelini
Image Credit: Martin Schwartz
architects: York & Sawyer, 1924-33
Hartman Cox, 2012
Grace ShackmanThe University of Michigan Law School looks like it belongs in medieval England, not the twenty-fi rst century American Midwest. Using British universities Cambridge and Oxford as inspiration, New York architects Edward York and Philip Sawyer designed the four buildings that make up the quadrangle, between 1924 and 1933.
The project was dreamed up and funded by successful New York lawyer, William W. Cook, an 1882 graduate of the UM Law School. He worked closely with York and Sawyer, reviewing the details as each building was designed. Only the fi nest of fi ne materials, Weymouth granite, quarried in Massachusetts, trimmed with Indiana limestone, were used to create the look of medieval stonework.
The Law Club (1924) that faces South University was built as living quarters for law students. An archway that leads to the grassy interior court was decorated with gargoyles of past university presidents. It was followed in 1930 by the John P. Cook Residence Hall, named after William Cook’s father.
The gem of the project was the 1931 Cook Legal Research Building, a library built in the shape of a cathedral, but with the entrance on the side. The cathedral motif continues inside with a high coffered ceiling, oak paneling, and cork floors. Rather than saints, the large stained-glass windows depict the coats of arms of other law schools.
The last of the group, the 1933 Hutchins Hall, is named after the then-president
of the university Henry Burns Hutchins, also a law school graduate. It replaced the original law building on the northwest corner of the original 40-acre campus, containing classrooms, seminar space, and offices. Its most interesting feature is tinted glass windows with scenes satirizing legal terminology. It was a fairly modest building as the 1930s Depression was making even Cook’s fi nancial assets less lucrative.
In the 1970s, when the Law School needed more library space, it hired Gunnar Birkerts to design an addition. When other plans were rejected, Birkerts realized that they didn’t want an aboveground building and instead designed it underground, but with light wells that brought light from above. Officially named after former UM president Allen Smith and his wife Alene Smith, it is more commonly called the Underground Library. (The design process for this structure is described in the next essay.)
The most recent building in the Law School complex is across Monroe Steet from the original quadrangle. Designed in 2012 by Hartman Cox of Washington, D.C., it was fi rst known as South Quad but renamed Jeff ries Hall in 2018 to honor major donors, Lisa and Christopher Jeff ries. Designed to emulate the forms and materials of the original Law School buildings, it is clearly newer than the others but is expected to fi t in better as it ages.
Grace Shackman is a writer and local advocate for architecture.
Image Credit: Martin Schwartz
Fifty years ago, as a recent graduate of Syracuse University, I started working with Gunnar Birkerts in Birmingham, Michigan. My initial assignment was as part of the design team for a new museum for the Corning Glass Company (New York), a project that took the better part of six years. Overlapping this project was the design for the underground library addition for the Law School, begun in 1974 and completed in 1981.
The Law Library Addition was unique in many ways: it was on a historical site and expanded the existing facility fi fty feet below grade. It required maintaining a quasi-religious, collegiate gothic building—the original Law Library— from collapse during construction, and connecting the new library structurally with neighboring buildings, all with diff erent foundation types. Because of the importance of the project and community fondness for the Law School building, the client—the University of Michigan— charged us to prepare several diff erent designs, not multiple designs for the same site, but for multiple sites and their potential relationship to the main Law Quadrangle.
As part of the design team, one of my roles was to design a freestanding library across Monroe Street on the block sided by State and Monroe Streets and Oakland Ave. (where Jeff ries Hall stands today). The four-story building design, matching the height of Hutchins Hall, was an opaque square with a quarter circle cut out for light. The square was crossed diagonally at 45 degrees by a path from State thru to the Law Quad and the main campus beyond. The design included elements from Le Corbusier, I.M. Pei, and Louis Kahn, leading architectural icons of the time. I also developed a second design which
used the block south of Monroe for book stacks, but then extended diagonally northwest over Monroe to the north end of the reading room. The upper fl oor of this building contained the people spaces, offi ces, and study carrels. At the north end of the reading room the building became earthbound and connected to the underground spaces being developed by Gunnar.
While I was working on these designs and their requisite cardboard models, Gunnar was developing both the underground concept that was eventually built, as well as a double story “halo” scheme of offi ce spaces that would fl oat three stories in the air and frame the existing Reading Room on three sides. Clad entirely in refl ective glass, the “halo” eased out on the quad side at both the north and south ends of the Reading Room and continually refl ected the gothic detail of the original building.
These designs were a year in development and critiqued by the client during multiple evening meetings in our basement “war room” in Birmingham. These meetings were attended by the dean of the law school, the law librarian, and most of the faculty. Try convincing 20-30 lawyers of anything after dinner. The log jam of architectural ideas and lawyer opinions was fi nally resolved when the Law School leadership determined that it wanted all the functions located on the quadrangle block. They also didn’t want any modern development that would block the view of the Reading Room from the ground level to the towers. Today, you’ll notice that even the guard rails around the library lightwells are glass to let that view take place.
Anthony C. Gholz, Jr. is an architect and former senior associate with Gunnar Birkerts and Associates.
Formerly Known as the Architecture and Design Building
architect: Emil Lorch, 1928
37 The University of Michigan Campus Image Credit: Brad Angelini Anne M. CoxCourses in architecture were fi rst offered at the University of Michigan in 1876 and taught by architect William Le Baron Jenney. In 1906, Emil Lorch was hired as the fi rst chair of the architecture program, within the Department of Engineering. Architecture classes were taught in the West Engineering Building and continued there until 1927, when students and faculty moved into an almost fi nished ‘Architecture Building’. Construction of the ‘L’ shaped, four-story, brick-and-slateroofed building was completed in 1928.
Emil Lorch and Associates prepared the plans and specifications for the new Architecture Building, and longtime Detroit architect, George D. Mason approved the drawings. Lorch and Mason had been campaigning for a new architectural building for many years. Post war enrollment at the University had led to a huge increase in admissions to the program, so this new building dedicated to architecture was planned.
Built to the specifications for art and architecture study, the L-shaped building was originally envisioned as a quadrangle. It has a prominent tower on the northeast corner of the building, with wings running east-west along the border to the Martha Cooke Dormitory gardens, and northsouth along what used to be Haven Avenue. Haven Avenue was supposed to be the ‘street’ access for the building, but soon after completion, Haven was closed off and became a pedestrian way.
The brick masonry building has strong piers and a steel structure that provides the support for the four-story structure. Slate roofs cap the sloped roof sections of the building, and limestone bas-relief medallions decorate the exterior of central tower. The theme for the limestone panels includes symbols related to art and architecture. Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Titian, Ictinus, Phidian, and Vitruvius make appearances. The weathervane on top of the central tower, meant to look like a ship at sea with full sail, is actually an
artist’s palette, the mast is a brush, with a T-square for the hull. (A drawing of the weathervane appeared on the cover of Awards No. 03)
The interior of the building has mosaic tile in the main hall with the University seal, completed by the Flint Faience Tile Company. A large auditorium and library, along with drafting rooms, classrooms and administrative offices were planned for the building. Large windows along the north face of the east-west wing were designed to bring ample light into the large drafting rooms on each level of this wing.
The land that was not used to complete the quadrangle of the building, was turned into a formal garden, with architectural fragments for sketching and a sunken area in the middle. The exterior of the garden was hedged in, to create a wonderfully green area of respite and study. Emil Lorch’s children have fond memories of playing in the garden, when they would visit their father at the school.1 In 1954, when Buckminster Fuller toured the country visiting architecture schools to promote his dymaxion dome, one was built in the garden as a demonstration project for the school.
In 1974, the College of Architecture and Design was reorganized to become the College of Architecture and Urban Planning and the School of Art. A new Art and Architecture Building was built on North Campus, and Lorch Hall became known as the Old A&D building. It was used for various classes, and administrative purposes, including CRISP (Computer Registration Involving Student Participation) until 1986 when the Economics Program was located in the building. It was renamed Lorch Hall to celebrate the fi rst dean of the College of Architecture and Design.
Anne M. Cox is an architect and principal at A3C Collaborative Architecture in Ann Arbor
1. Author's conversation with Connie Lorch Osler, 1986
Image Credit: TheresaAngelini
architect: Albert Kahn, 1923
Why are we architects fascinated by the design opportunity to design a small elegantly decorated box with a simple building program? After an extensive career and the design of many buildings, Albert Kahn wanted to be remembered specifically for just this: the design of the Clements Library.
Think of the pleasure Kahn took in using the classical language of architecture for the original design of this library! The front elevation with the tripartite central loggia and perfectly proportioned symmetrical wings faces South University, adjacent to the president’s house. The two-story reading room determines the building height on the
front façade while the east and west sides of the building feature large tripartite central windows in the adjacent secondary reading rooms, with the collection in stacks attached as a bustle to the back. Even the front entry doors are decorated with architectural ornament: scrolled ivy leaves, nautilus shells, and acanthus flowers, symbolic of fidelity, order among chaos, and immortality. All four sides of this building are designed as thoughtfully and thoroughly as a jewel box.
Kahn was inspired by Vignola’s Casino at Villa Farnese in Caprarola, Italy, most specifically the memorable tripartite arched loggia within an elegantly symmetrical box of similar proportions. However, unlike Vignola’s Casino, Kahn’s library is set on a low welcoming plinth, which is elevated at the top of a series of imposing garden parterres, stairs, and fountains. Kahn’s siting of the building on a balustraded terrace, raised six low steps above the lawn parterre and then another six low steps to the loggia, with one additional raised threshold into the building, is not handicapped accessible. As a result, the front façade with beautifully detailed paired Corinthian columns framing the pedimented entry door, within the tripartite loggia of limestone Doric pilasters, is now only a stage set. It is no longer an entry: it no longer elevates the scholarly experience of measured steps taken up to the crossvaulted loggia, opening the weighty wrought iron and glass doors to enter the sacred, hushed, wood-paneled library reading room with the treasured adjacent collection of stacks.
Instead, one now hikes around the building to the north side, descends an exterior ramp, and enters the basement through a simple glass box addition, as if through a loading dock. Instead of ivy, nautilus shells, and acanthus flowers, one faces a solid stainless-steel door. Glass roof and walls are an exercise in making the walls and roof invisible, in deference to the original building. Buttglazed corners and expanses of glass require bits of yellow and black caution tape to identify surface planes for the
William L. Clements Libraryoccupant’s safety. Rather than elevating the opportunity of visiting this sacred collection of historical documents, we are reduced to a descent below grade to enter the basement through a utilitarian back door. The glass box is meant to be an homage to the original stone structure, intentional in its difference, stating the obvious that it is a later addition. Both the original building and the recent glass box vestibule are carefully and thoughtfully designed and crafted. Yet, one soars while the other retreats.
But why not design an addition in the vocabulary of Albert Kahn, respecting and complementing rather than contrasting with the original design intention? Why should historic preservation standards dictate that additions be obviously different, rather than skillfully complementing and harmonizing with the original design? Why can’t we solve today’s challenges for accessibility, climate control, and security in the same architectural language of the original building? We mourn the loss to access this celebrated building through the arcaded loggia and cross the threshold through doors embellished with meaning and history.
Theresa Luthman Angelini is an architect and partner at Angelini and Associates, Architects.
builder: Harpin Lum, 1840
Anne M. CoxWhen the University relocated from Detroit to Ann Arbor in 1837, there was no president to govern the new campus. Instead, a Faculty Committee was in place, and four houses were commissioned to house them. The current President’s House was one of these four original houses. All were built as two-story homes, a similar floor plan on each level, with a central hall and two rooms on each side of the hall. Two of the houses faced onto North University Ave. and two onto South University Ave. The President’s House is the only remaining one of these four original structures and the oldest building on campus
In 1852, Henry Philip Tappan, became the fi rst president of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; he and his family moved into what we now know as the President’s House, as it was vacant at the time. Simply due to his presence, this was the fi rst time that the house became known as the President’s Residence. Tappan added gas lighting and a third story to the home. Erastus Otis Haven became President in 1863 and a kitchen was added. When James Angell became President in 1871, updates included a furnace, updated fi nishes, and water closets with hot and cold running water. These renovations were agreed to as part
41 The University of Michigan Campus Image Credit: TheresaAngelini
of the formal negotiations to bring him to Ann Arbor. His family was living in Boston and had never been without these conveniences and did not intend to accept the position without them. After much negotiation, the updates were agreed upon and Angell and his family moved to Ann Arbor. During Angell’s Presidency, from 1871 to 1909, the home was substantially altered. A west wing that included a semicircular library and more bedrooms was added. And one very modern convenience was added: the house was wired for electricity. The grounds of the home had a barn, an orchard, and a vegetable garden. The pear trees and grapevines were said to be of particularly fi ne quality.
Harry Hutchins was president from 1909 to 1920 and did not live in the President’s House, preferring to live in his own residence. The house was used during WW I as a volunteer center for female student service activities. In 1920, the house was renovated for President Marion Burton, and he and his family lived there until 1925. C.C. Little, had a fairly short presidential tenure at the University, from 1925 to 1929 and did ‘little’ to the house. Alexander Grant Ruthven, who served as president from 1929 to 1951, added a private study and a glazed plant room. Harlan Hatcher, serving from 1951 to 1967, updated the fi nishes in the house, and added a glazed porch and a stone terrace. Robben Fleming, who led the university from 1967 to 1979, made few updates to the home during his tenure, but many university events were held in the home. Many articles were written about the receptions held in the house, and this is when people began to understand that the house had both public and private functions. The main floor served as the ‘public’ area of the home and the upstairs became ‘private’.
Heading into the 1980’s, major renovations were needed, and one was planned during the fi nal months of Harold Shapiro’s tenure, 1980 to 1987.
President James Duderstadt’s family, in residence from 1988 to 1996, endured months of renovation that included new heating and cooling, fi re suppression, fi re detection, a barrier-free ramp, and a fi rst-level barrier-free bathroom. The
150-year-old, 14,200 square-foot home also received new fi nishes throughout, as the major renovations had touched much of the house.
Lee Bollinger, president from 1996 to 2002, invited ‘a peaceful mob of students’ into the home after the November 8, 1997, Michigan football victory over Penn State, and little damage, beyond stolen beer from the president’s refrigerator, was noted after the event. Mary Sue Coleman, president from 2002 to 2014, 2022, also invited students for ‘snacks’ each year; before she moved in, $1 million infrastructure improvements were completed. Serving from 2014 to 2022, Mark Schlissel had a rocky presidency that was punctuated by protesters camping on the front lawn of the home. A $15 million renovation that will preserve the historical character of the home, while updating security, safety, and accessibility, will be undertaken and completed by February 2023.
The original 4,800 square-foot house, built in 1840, with its four additions, has been increased to 14,200 square feet over the years. This historic private residence, with a very public presence and functions, has been cared for, lived in, and visited by both students and dignitaries over the years. Serving as a home, it is interesting to note that the state of the living conditions has been questioned and improved over the years, sometimes as a bargaining chip for securing the job. Serving as a reception hall for the university, it is equally interesting to note that when a new family moves in, ‘permanent furniture’ and a main hall that serves as a gathering place for the university, come with the house. Turned from a home with a barn and orchard in the backyard to a public venue with the eight-story Hatcher Graduate Library shading the home, the current renovation will continue the legacy of this building as the historic ‘home’ of the University of Michigan. Accordingly, the President’s House is listed on the National and State Registers of Historic Places.
Anne M. Cox is an architect and principal at A3C Collaborative Architecture in Ann Arbor
architect: Allied Works Architecture, 2009 (Museum expansion and renovation of Alumni Memorial Hall)
The Allied Works 2009 addition to the University of Michigan’s Museum of Art completed the University of Michigan’s State Street façade. Extending the museum towards the iconic columns of Angell Hall, UMMA’s Frankel Wing brought the museum into the 21st
century with the addition of a 275-seat auditorium at the lower level, a café with inside and outside eating areas, object study classrooms, conservation gallery, museum store, and two floors of linked galleries. The theme of connection was the primary guiding force for the Allied
Image Credit: Martin SchwartzWorks designers who sought to balance the “historic character of the university with the desire to create profound new connections between art, the landscape and the community” (alliedworks.com) The soaring new interior spaces pair with the expansive glass walls of the new entry and project gallery to invite the gaze in and up and up.
In contrast to the entry of the original Alumni Memorial Hall building which requires the visitor to mount a set of stairs and walk through an opaque, neoclassical temple-front, the Frankel Wing’s entrance pavilion is at grade and broadcasts an invitation to enter at its glazed façade. Meeting new code requirements, the new entry sequence and addition also allowed UMMA to correct the accessibility issues of the original structure. The materiality of the new and old is coordinated through the application of stone cladding panels on the addition, and the matched cornice lines draw the two structures tidily together. But while Alumni Hall is windowless, the new wing features strategically placed glazed areas throughout. The windows foster visual invitations and permit linkages that were not possible in the original structure. Stylistically, the original art museum, the neoclassical Alumni Memorial Hall, is now paired with a steel and glass curtain wall, with the beige stone serving as a unifying feature tying the old and new together.
Inside, the path is choreographed to allow the various sections of the building to operate on different schedules. From the Frankel foyer with its large, glazed wall permitting views of the courtyard behind, the visitor moves right to access the Alumni Hall galleries or turns to the left to the museum store, project gallery, café, or to the elevators that ascend to the galleries on the second and third floors. Through the center of the new wing, the Vertical Gallery connects sight lines across the new museum spaces and is a creative reimagining of the apse in the original building. The second floor
is connected between the old and new wings, though the Vertical Gallery offers some wayfi nding challenges with the addition of mezzanine staircases and spatial overlooks. Notably, the visual connections along the interior path are refl ected in the gallery fenestration decisions, as well, where floor-to-ceiling windows and well-placed chairs invite the visitor to enjoy not just the works on display but also the views of the UM campus. Inside and out, UMMA invites the casual eye, as well as the intense gaze of aesthetic engagement.
Deirdre L.C. Hennebury, M.Arch, MUD, PhD, is associate director of the Museum Studies Program at the University of Michigan.
“The Fleming Administration Building, designed by Alden B. Dow and completed in 1968, is a six-story, brick-clad building with limestone trim, centrally located on the campus of the University of Michigan. The building was named for Robben Fleming, the ninth president of the university, to house its administrative offices. It is square in plan, with projecting façades floating above a recessed ground floor with low, roundarched entrances. The façade treatment, with vertical and horizontal bands of limestone and windows of varying sizes arranged in an asymmetrical grid, was reportedly inspired by the paintings of Piet Mondrian.” 1 Additional confl icting myths and rumors have persisted throughout its existence. One is that the fortress-like exterior was a design response to the student activism of the late 1960s; the other rumor is that the narrow windows were intended to be energy-efficient. None of these have been substantiated, but they enhance its fl eeting mystique.
Alden B. Dow is noted for his contribution to “Michigan Modern” architecture and was named architect laureate of Michigan shortly before his death in 1983. Interesting to note is that no one else has since received this honor. Dow designed six buildings for the University of Michigan, along with several other commercial and civic buildings in Ann Arbor, including the Guy C. Larcom, Jr. Municipal Building, also known as Ann Arbor City Hall.
The Fleming Administration Building was scheduled for demolition during the fall 2022 semester. Administration offices were relocated to the newly renovated Alexander G. Ruthven Museum Building
1. “Fleming Administration Building, University of MI,” Vertical Access, https://vertical-access.com/ projects/fl eming-administration-building-universityof-michigan/
on Geddes Avenue during the winter 2022 semester. The University currently has no future plans for the site other than to remove the building and erase this piece of history.
Ilene R. Tyler is an architect with special expertise and interest in historic preservation.
Fleming
architect: HBRA, 2009
I attended the Regent’s meeting when they approved the design of this addition to the Kelsey Museum. The drawings of the austere box showed no attempt to blend or live with the original Richardsonian structure. I could not believe the Regents would approve such an insensitive design solution. I thought: "At least the addition is behind the museum, so it will be out of view."
I may have been mistaken.
The Kelsey Museum of Archaeology on the campus of the University of Michigan resides in historic Newberry Hall, designed by Spier and Rohns and built 1888 to 1891 for the Students’ Christian Association. Built of polychromatic
Image Credit: Martin Schwartzstone1 in the Richardsonian Romanesque style and featuring a large stained-glass window by Louis Comfort Tiff any, it faces Angell Hall and the campus center across State Street. The University leased Newbury Hall for classroom space in 1921, and in 1928 began to house a collection of ancient artifacts there. The University purchased the building in 1937.
In 2009, the Museum expanded the exhibit, study, and storage space with a 20,000 square foot state-of-theart addition, the William F. Upjohn Exhibit Wing, designed by the Chicago architecture fi rm HBRA. When they considered how to add to the Richardsonian Romanesque building, the architects felt the original structure was a fi nite object and the addition should be quiet and not replicate or compete with the elaborately decorated original structure: they envisioned an austere cubic volume. The only reference to the original design was the selection of multi-colored, granite stonework at the exterior. Due to the complexity of the original stonework, the new stonework required thirteen rules for the fabrication and installation, regulating the size, color, percentage of color, and location of each stone. The result is a simple rectangular structure that lives in contrast, and is yet balanced with the original building.
With the addition, the Museum now has two fronts. The original building faces east on State Street and, extending through the city block, the addition faces west on Maynard Street. The addition has a spare, geometric, wrap-around arcade attached to the granite box on the west and south sides. This arcade serves four purposes. It is a combination pedestrian path, protection from the weather when student groups arrive by bus, an indoor/ outdoor exhibit space, and gateway to the symbolic and historic center of the University of Michigan’s campus, the Diag. It is the function of gateway that elevates the design to a larger role in the campus plan.
1. Author's conversation with Chris Fein, the project architect with HBRA for this project.
Visitors to the Museum now enter from Maynard Street and encounter a raised plinth with four concrete piers separating the stairs into three sections that are dramatically oversized considering the modest scale of the building and the number of visitors that will arrive at the building. At this point you understand that the stair and arcade have a grander purpose.
The southern length of the arcade frames fl oor-to-ceiling views into the new exhibit space. During the day, the view is obscured by sunshades, but in the evening the light of the interior bathes the arcade; the glass and pottery exhibits from Cyprus, Greece, and Italy are in full view as one walks its length. This is in contrast with the original museum experience where the collection was hidden behind thick granite walls.
The William F. Upjohn Exhibit Wing, a simple box with an attached arcade, is an example of how thoughtful design can work at multiple levels contributing functional, aesthetic, and ceremonial concepts. This addition, with its arcade, is both an architectural and campus design solution; it creates a public space from which to view the museum’s collection and a path connecting the edge of campus to its center.
Bradford Angelini is an architect and partner at Angelini and Associates, Architects.
Image Credit: Martin Schwartz
These observations by Peter Osler were excerpted from a conversation and edited for length.
The Diag’s landscape is typical for an American campus—while there are shrub and bedding plantings, lawn and trees dominate, and it’s virtually fl at. But it benefi ts from a number of signifi cant attributes. One is the rather subtle overlapping of diff erently-scaled spaces. Some of the spaces on the perimeter are more intimate and they blend in nicely with the larger main space. There aren’t legible rooms defi ned by discrete thresholds like you see at English colleges with their distinct courtyards. This is one of the things that I admire about the Diag.
Another thing that’s hard to ignore about the Diag is its history—all the events that have happened there, both public and personal. There are memorials and monuments, and gifts from honor societies or the class of this or that year--plaques that few have ever read, or a stone bench that’s seldom, if ever, occupied. Even so, you move through that space and there’s a rich sense of history. Of course, that plays out in the vegetation, too, you know, its very tall, mature, mostly deciduous trees. Here, change mostly takes place high above your head, in the canopy. The open, paved space in the middle, bounded by the graduate library and its monumental stairs comfortably accommodates all kinds of events, which is great. It's the go-to place for demonstrations— fantastic! When I was growing up in the 60’s, the hash bash was really amazing. We’re talking the entire Diag packed with people doing illicit things. It just resonates. Other than that, there isn't a lot there. It's a very domesticated landscape, but it's not intensely designed. No big signature moments. And that's good, too, in many ways.
Gerstacker Grove, the open space on North Campus, doesn't have a long
history. It just doesn't. It hasn't had enough time to gestate and acquire a maturity, nor its own history. It takes a long time for trees to grow to the point that they “hold” the landscape while providing enough shade that promotes gathering. Give that space 40 years. I think it'll be pretty amazing.
Gerstacker is a huge table that’s carved out of a substantial slope, and as buildings are added, they have to dig more, which is kind of interesting. So, one of the instigators, maybe the main instigator, for the redesign of Gerstacker was problematic drainage. Recently, there was a huge project done in front of Angel Hall on State Street. They dug a cavernous hole for underground stormwater tanks, and all that excavated earth had to be hauled off site. You could never do an infi ltration or open retention basin at the Diag; actually, you could, but people would freak out. And all the underground utilities—can you imagine? It would be very diffi cult, expensive, and controversial.
All that water, at Gerstacker, wants to move downhill to the Huron River as it did before North Campus was built. Before the North Campus, this land was agricultural—orchards, I think. I know there’s a lot of sand in that area, and in terms of drainage, it probably worked pretty well. But having built all those impervious buildings, streets and parking lots, what’s to be done with all that runoff ? While there’s some underground storage in the space, the bulk of the runoff is handled by a series of infi ltration or retention basins. Overfl ow reconnects to off site stormwater networks that conduct runoff toward the Huron River.
But the other thing which I think is quite good is that it is a “performative” or “informative” landscape in that it
Image Credit: Brad Angelini
looks the way it does because of how it’s intended to work. Remember the question about excavated earth in the Diag? At Gerstacker, there’s a reciprocity between subtraction and addition of earth that’s shaped into an unusually active topography—unusual, at least, compared to most college quads. And, I assume, very little earth was hauled away or imported. Then, in terms of planting, Gerstacker is quite lush and mostly native, and very rich in terms of texture and scale. Not a lot of mowed lawn. Instead, there are large expanses of no-mow grass one can lay down in, like a feather bed.
In contrast to the Diag, Gerstacker is programmed. It’s got specific uses: the planted water management basins, volleyball, the directed paths, and a couple of other things. But it's not about axial planning nor the shortest route between A and B reflecting “desire lines.” Paths meander, constrict and swell, and along with plantings and topography, views are obscured then gradually revealed. Think of the European cities described in Gordon Cullen’s The Concise Townscape, but utilizing landscape as punctuation rather than buildings. As both the understory and overstory trees mature it’s going to become a more nuanced, compelling space, especially the relationship between the Lurie Tower and the landscape—it will be a lot richer. And as the landscape matures, I’ll be interested to see whether the tower becomes a better social attractor, rather than merely an object to ponder from afar. The aesthetic tenor of Gerstacker is one of integration and flow. Seating, drainage, planting, curbs, walls, and topography are synthesized, reflecting the emergence of contemporary parametric modeling and fabrication technology. In that aspect, the Diag and Gerstacker are completely different--appropriately so.
The Diag, on Main Campus, sits within a bustling commercial district. You have a higher number and a better mix of people than on North Campus. Few go to North Campus unless they're there for class. It's all students and faculty and staff . So, the role of the landscape is very different
at Gerstacker than at the Diag; if there aren’t people and events animating the space, perhaps landscape can assume the role of intensifier. I think that’s a fantastic proposition.
I would commend the university for hiring a landscape architect like STOSS, who have high ambitions about what the landscape can achieve. It seems to me that’s what a world class university should aspire to in everything it does, including how its physical environment is shaped. I also think it's great that the open spaces on the two campuses aren’t the same. It’s nice—and logical—that they’re different.
One more thing that entered my mind: There is a lot of land—both city and university owned—between the two campuses and the two open spaces. Is there a way a more coordinated, intentionally designed landscape could both strengthen the relationship between the two while also celebrating their differences? It would defi nitely be better than what we have now—two disparate campuses separated by parking lots and huge playing fields.
Peter Osler is an architect who specializes in site design, and currently is a visiting professor at Washington University in St. Louis.
of the Diag, my slow meandering took me north and west toward the sights and sounds of State Street.
Moving diagonally, I was soon greeted by an expanse of open space and seating. Choosing to continue along my path, a botanical conservatory was not to be ignored — beckoning me closer with its completely glassed massing and canopy. As I moved nearer, a small oasis of various plant flora was vividly revealed. Then almost magically, the conservatory simultaneously began to yield and recede, acting as a kind of anchored and opulent guide through the cut corner of an otherwise four-square mass of building.
Once beyond the conservatory and the four-story mass of the Natural Sciences Building — its southwest corner creatively cut for the campus diagonal walk — I caught my fi rst revealing glimpse of ‘Hill.’
At fi rst glance, given its identical terra cotta trim, reddish-brown brick massing, and repetitive limestone accents, it had the look of a four-story twin to the Natural Sciences building.
However, looking full-face at Hill’s south façade (as I do now, fi fty-plus years later), an elegant band of limestone frames four, massive Doric columns and fi ve, fl anking pockets of entry, leaving little doubt that the Natural Sciences Building is a notable ‘Hill neighbor’… not a twin.
More importantly for this 2022 (re)review, Hill’s welcoming procession remains as direct and inviting as ever. Starting and ending with a full width plinth, softly floating between two, full width bands of shallow, four and fi ve-step risers — essentially creating a squared, brickpatterned plaza, fl anked by mature shade trees, grassy aprons, and ever-green foliage. A ‘lawn for all seasons.’
Yet, as splendid and arresting as Hill’s processional welcome has become, it never comes across as pretentious. Above all, Hill Auditorium reflects the practical genius of its principal architect, Albert Kahn. As noted in several historical accounts, Kahn thought of the UM Hill commission as the design and crafting of a superb acoustical environment, set
within a polished, well- appointed box for seating.
One hundred nine years after its June 1913 dedication, I join countless other audience goers, and legions of musicians, artists, performers, and noted speakers, who collectively share the assessment that Kahn’s vision for ‘Hill’ has come amazingly close to full fruition. Given such master work, Hill Auditorium has undergone few renovations. The most signifi cant repair and renovation occurred over an eighteen-month span, starting in May 2002. This task (re)tapped the talents of Albert Kahn Associates in collaboration with Quinn Evans Architects.
Now, here in late-summer 2022, moving through its ribbon of generous door openings, I am drawn into what I have always described as a kind of ‘spacious cocoon’; more so, as I allow myself to be warmly embraced, yet again; stepping (seemingly) ‘into’ a highly polished terrazzo walking plane within an encircling vista of sconce-lighted wall surfaces; all of which flow into an elegantly carved vaulted ceiling, generously bathed with ornate hanging lamps and wall-to-wall cove lighting.
Continuing beyond the fi rst plane of greeting, I move through one of four generously padded (sound-stopping) doorways into a relatively deep, fully carpeted, wrap around edge; yet another elegant threshold functioning essentially as a ledge of entry into the grand hall itself.
At this point of sequence, I am reminded each time of how personally greeted and welcomed I felt the very fi rst time. And each time, my eyes are drawn fi rst to the sparkling pipes of the Frieze Memorial Organ; then up, up, up, and around into a rich polychromatic wash and sparkle; a paint palette of blues, warm grays, blue-grays, green-grays, golds, and deep red-browns, melted into ever-rising, concentric bands of luminous pearl lighting globes…all, dimming as the “curtain in our imaginations rise.”
James Chaff ers is an active emeritus professor of architecture at the University of Michigan and president of his fi rm, jChaff ers • Architect.
architect: Albert Kahn, 1936
Image Credit: Martin Schwartz
No one standing at the base of a tower and looking straight up ever fails to experience that rush of awe that built height calls forth. Towers have power. Many towers are also graceful and made necessarily more open because of the presence of bells. These towers often contain a thoroughfare of stairs that lead to a look-out that produces both panoramas and protection. Other towers are inhabited, by day and/or by night, be it by humans or ghosts.
Burton Memorial Tower is one of the rare collegiate towers that exhibits all of these aspects. Also known as Burton Tower or Burton, it is a 212-foot-high, Art Deco/ Art Moderne, limestone-on-concrete, campanile designed by Albert Kahn, with echoes of a 1920s scheme by UM visiting professor Eliel Saarinen. It has a visually solid, streamlined base emphasized by vertically repetitive windows and shallow buttresses, and an open, stepped top with a large chamber that holds a clock, a grand carillon, and an observation deck. Burton can be seen and heard gracefully and powerfully throughout campus and downtown, and it has become a landmark that is almost as well-known as the Big House (UM’s football stadium).
Surprisingly for a bell tower, Burton’s approximately 42-foot-square floor plan contains not only a continuous stair and elevator, but also classrooms, offices, and short hallways. The University Musical Society occupies the fi rst three floors of the building (the only ones equipped with AC to this day). Classrooms and faculty offices for the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance are located on floors 4 through 8. Offices have 13- or 14-foot-high ceilings and unusually thick walls, and in these spaces, professors enjoy long and exciting views toward the city.
The main classroom on the fi fth floor is surprisingly large, as it seats about 45
students. There is no clock in this room, but it is not needed: Burton chimes every quarter hour, and at 12 noon the carillon starts playing on academic weekdays, making it difficult to lecture even fi ve floors below.
On the ninth floor, accessible only by stairway, is the offi ce of the university carillonist. By climbing one additional floor up, via an internal metal staircase, one reaches the 45-ton, 53-bell Charles Baird Carillon in the tall, open top of the tower. For visitors there, the bells and the panorama are stunning. Viewed from the ground, rainbow colors from Burton’s bicentennial LED lights accentuate the transparency and drama of the tower’s upper level at night.
Aside from a minor renovation about ten years ago, Burton has remained essentially unchanged since its inauguration. It is this quality of age that makes Burton’s interior so appealing. A medieval monk or embattled noble would feel protected and at home here. The rooms are spartan, with painted concrete block walls, original deep-set metal window frames and grills, and heavy wooden doors. Pipes and electrical raceways are exposed everywhere. The stairway lumbers up with its original metal risers and balustrades. To some, it may appear brutal, but to us the interior of this ivory tower’s iconic tower is exactly as it should be.
Karin Deam-Mengozzi, MA, MArch, is a registered architect and practicing paralegal. Stefano Mengozzi, PhD, is an associate professor of musicology at the University of Michigan, specializing in Renaissance music.
Kahn
Image Credit: Martin Schwartz
It is not a building I remember fondly, for its austere and cold exterior. I always felt as if I was swimming upstream, consistently fi nding myself on the exact opposite side of the building from the classroom, going against the flow of exiting students. However, there is one secret special space, magical for its oddities and the work that takes place inside its walls.
I fi rst met the Modern Languages Building (MLB) as a student, trying to remember French conjugation and gendered terms in the basement, a windowless classroom. So, when I was told I would be learning the language of architectural drawing in this same building, it seemed somewhat cruel. However, this room was the exact opposite of my other MLB experiences, it was the magical room of the basement. Its location was ideal, conveniently located at the end of the corridor, at the bottom of the stairs, almost like having a private entrance for toting a gigantic portfolio of drawings. The double-height space opened to tall clerestory windows at grade, bringing much-needed daylighting into the classroom from the north.
The room was fi lled with tall wooden desks, creaky and old, covered in mint green drawing covers. Each drawer was adorned with a lock for storing supplies, architectural scale, pointer, graphite, adjustable triangles, French curves, and erasers. The storage rooms at either end of the room lacked a ceiling, which proved beneficial for exiting due to accidental locking, as well as for hanging T-squares to guard over the works in progress by night. Two nooks opposite the clerestory windows housed shelves for cleaning supplies, the occasional models and books, and served as instructional zone and snack zone after-hours. [As you wouldn’t want to munch over a drawing you spend so much careful time on.] A chalkboard took up most of one nook:
this is where I fi rst learned to construct drawings, and later taught others the magic of space through drawing and orthographic projection (with an imprecise piece of chalk).
The magic of the space has something to do with both the ideas generated and knowledge shared across the mint green drawing tables as well as those odd clerestory windows. The windows are held back from the sidewalk behind a railing and a sloped roof. Occasionally, this allowed for much-needed mental breaks from the drawing board and task at hand, to people-watch or to see what was happening with the weather. At night, as the building was open after hours as a studio space for drawing. It became a beacon: suddenly able to see into this space from above, raucous party goers would stop and wave as they moved off to their next party. The clerestory also became a substitute doorbell of sorts, as day turned to evening and the classroom was turned over to students. The exterior door was often locked or the broken concrete block prop removed, so someone could scramble over the railing, ungracefully slide and side step down the slope to stand at the glass, knock, and offer a trade for being let in to join in the collective creative hum of learning through making. Desk-critiques, moldy orange peels, perspectival projection, idea exchange, and midnight conversations all hang within the air of this strange space. Clerestories, daylighted doubleheight spaces, and the odd vantage point of viewing the movement of campus from below instilled conversation and built a strong studio culture.
Kaleena Quinn is an architect who has taught architecture courses at Lawrence Technological University and the University of Michigan.
Like a wolverine, the Alumni Center at the University of Michigan projects strength and presence beyond its relatively small footprint. Sited strategically at the north end of the Ingalls Mall that emanates from the iconic Diag, the architecture weaves seamlessly into the fl agship campus. A diagonal pathway embedded in the building terminates on the historic Burton Memorial Bell Tower and forms
a south courtyard with the historic Michigan League building and entry to the Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre. Four monumental chimneys line the north face of the building along Washington Street like sentinels guarding a bygone era. The exterior of the Alumni Center is clothed in the brick and limestone of Collegiate Gothic, and mirrors the gabled countenance of the Michigan League. Both buildings host vines of
architect: Hugh Newell Jacobsen, 1982 59 The University of Michigan Campus Image Credit: Brad Angeliniivy to comfort expectations that the institution be considered the Ivy League of the Midwest. Robert A. M. Stern, who subsequently designed two buildings for the University of Michigan, wrote a letter to Jacobsen about the Alumni Center saying “this is the only building I’ve seen at Michigan that looks like the architect actually visited the site before designing it.” 1
The architect Hugh Newell Jacobsen, who passed away in 2021, was a prominent and recognized second-generation modernist whose work was infl uenced by the regional vernacular building typology of New England. He was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1929, fi rst studied architecture at the Architectural Association in London in 1954, then at Yale University under Louis Kahn, where he received his graduate degree in 1955. He worked briefl y for Philip Johnson, then opened his own architectural practice in Washington D.C. in 1958 at the age of twenty-nine. A Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, he was renowned for designing large residential compounds of village-like massing for celebrity clients such as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Meryl Streep, and James Garner.
His obituary in the New York Times noted his outsized personality and style, a man who was “blunt, confi dent, patrician and witty, wore exquisite clothing and had a dominant sweep of hair.” 2 His son noted that he was often mistaken for the writer Tom Wolfe. 3 Jacobsen was quoted as saying ““Good architecture never shouts. It is like a well-mannered lady, kind to its neighbors. It takes a double take to know that she is there at all.”4 It is hard to
1. Sandomir, Richard, “Hugh Newell Jacobsen, Famed Modernist Architect, Dies at 91,” The New York Times, original publication March 21, 2021, https://www. nytimes.com/2021/03/21/obituaries/hugh-newelljacobsen-dead.html.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Orton, Kathy, “Hugh Newell Jacobsen, award-winning modernist architect, dies at 91,” The Washington Post , original publication March 4, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/ hugh-newell-jacobsen-dies/2021/03/04/262f64c2e118-11e7-89e8-edec16379010_story.html.
imagine he would be commissioned by the Regents of the University of Michigan to design a building in 2022, though this must have been considered appropriate forty years ago.
In 2019 the Regents approved a renovation and addition to the Alumni Center building, hiring the architecture and interiors fi rm Integrated Design Solutions along with the design fi rm of Jack Porter, which specializes in branding and experience. The Porter website summarizes the challenge and opportunity stating that “the Alumni facility struggled to attract visiting graduates…Furthermore, the building’s experience and graphics did not accurately refl ect the values, goals and vision of the Michigan brand. A long-awaited renovation…provided the opportunity to transform the building into a must-visit destination that inspires pride, invites nostalgia, and—most importantly—encourages connection.”5 The Alumni Center now includes two new entries and completely redecorated interiors that include a requisite parametric wall of wood slats and integrated LED light display, along with a material and furnishings palette sure to please students, alumni, and donors with equal aplomb. The interior and exterior of the Alumni Center now perform in two diff erent worlds and times, driven by human desire. Perhaps this is the greatest power of architecture, to transmit the record of history and human experience, as it transforms through time.
Ralph Nelson is an associate professor in the College of Architecture and Design at Lawrence Technological University and principal of Loom, an architecture fi rm in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
5. Jack Porter website, “Creating a Home for Connection,” https://jackporter.com/portfolio/ michiganalumni/
architect: Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo, and Associates, 1965
Image Credit: Brad Angelini
My standard approach to the Power Center for the Performing Arts: 1) arrive close to show time; 2) head directly to the auditorium; 3) depart straight away. The lobby’s muted architectural fl ourishes don’t deliver an enticing See-And-BeSeen experience. When full of ticketholders, the long and quite narrow space has all the ambience of a transit platform at rush hour.
What does gives me strange joy is the stark contrast between the building’s front and rear exteriors. Located beyond the zone of classical campus site planning, the Power Center is not a freestanding secular temple designed to command in-the-round admiration. A large adjacent parking lot renders the back-of-house east side highly visible. The windowless enclosure makes the neighboring Central Power Plant look positively ornamental. Even so, the fl y space’s tall raw concrete volume is unselfconsciously monumental, and the blunt compound massing is thoughtful. The theater’s no-frills service face is almost elegant.
West side conditions are the complete inverse. Sited to preserve historic Felch Park, the Power Center’s main facade sits a whopping 260 feet back from Fletcher Street. Behind full foliage, the building almost disappears from view. But the real architectural vanishing act is made possible by the lobby’s signature mirrored glass envelope. A vast gridded looking glass by day, the Power Center’s two-story, 250-foot-long front wall transmits a giant moving image of life in and around Felch Park. Transparent by night, the lobby’s glazing gives the outside world an improvised show. The architecture actively plays with our perception of its presence. Important caveat: The design’s compassion score will improve meaningfully when bird collision prevention material gets applied to all that glass.
Currently, there is exactly zero synergy between the Power Center and Felch Park. Mature trees notwithstanding, the park is simply an amenity-free cut-though connecting Central Campus to the Medical Campus and beyond. Substantial mowed lawn and a continuous wide barrier of wood chips along the building’s entire main public face say “Keep Back (please).” This interface could be so much better.
There is untapped place-making potential in the west facade’s architectural articulations. Standing proud of the roof’s edge, six appealingly stout concrete columns sprout exposed steel beams that extend back to support a generous roof overhang. Clear glass infi ll set above the mirrored glazing completes the illusion of a fl oating roof. Two bumped-out cylindrical enclosures for the lobby main stairs send out playful distortions of the everyday world. The columns and bumpouts redefi ne the long west wall in terms of human-scale spaces. So, let folks come close and fi nd shade and shelter under the overhang, lean against the columns, play with the refl ections. Let this activity invigorate and populate Felch Park. Making the Power Center’s main frontage a genuine place for people would be an excellent way to kick off the building’s next half-century.
Margaret Wong is an adjunct professor of architecture at Lawrence Technological University and principal of Loom, an architecture fi rm in Ann Arbor.
Power Center for the Performing Artsarchitect: Gunnar Birkerts (Birkerts & Straub), 1964
The University Reformed Church is not really on campus, but nearly so: it’s just across the street at the northern edge of the main campus. But Its quality and location within sight of the other two, best post-World War 2 campus buildings, the Power Center (Roche and Dinkeloo) and the Alumni Association building (Hugh Newell Jacobsen) justify its inclusion in
this survey. This ensemble, accompanied by the dignified Rackham School of Graduate Studies (Smith Hinchman and Grylls, 1938), suggests how much the University could have achieved in campus architecture and planning in the late twentieth century, but didn’t.
The University Reformed Church—in its original form—was direct and minimal
Martin Schwartz
Now, Harvest Mission Community Church
Image Credit: Martin Schwartz
in the sense that there are no hidden materials or layers of materials. The concrete you see on the outside is the concrete you see inside. Those walls are structure, they defi ne space, they diff use daylight. The Church is a rethinking of the composition of planes that Birkerts explored in his earlier, unbuilt Albion Church project. At the URC, the planes are differentiated with reference to the varying roles they play as walls or beams. The stepped concrete planes establish symmetrical systems of east and west walls. As cold as the building might seem from the exterior, the interior was warmed by wood pews and paneling, daylight, and warm, incandescent electric light. Daylight entered where wall planes or beams are held apart. The spaces between the planes were glazed to become windows and skylights, enabling the planes to see daylight, and to reflect and diff use it before it reaches the congregation. Concrete is touched by light; wood is touched by the congregants.
The composition is a simple rectangle in plan, but highly articulated in section so that a nave and side aisles are defi ned by the cut-out planes, skylights, and zones of light between layered planes: it is a version of a basilica. The south elevation, the street front, suggests the symmetry of the aisles and seating, but the altar just inside of that plane is asymmetrical. The east half was a 10-foot-high wood panel, which formed a background for the lectern. At the west side, the panel dropped to become seating for participants in the worship service. The two halves were reunited by a cross that rose upward from the very center of the altarpiece. A central skylight delineating the long axis in the sanctuary and shown in an early, rendered sectionperspective drawing, was deleted prior to construction. This move, to bring light from the perimeter rather than along the center, contributes to the quiet unity of the space and maximizes the wonderfully unlikely perception that daylight somehow emanates from the thick, concrete walls. Short but deep concrete cross beams (stiffeners) at the exterior are seen on the long elevations to provide a
strong rhythm and diff use daylight into the skylights.
There are only subtle cues from the street as to the use of this building. There is a cross implied by the concrete formwork on the south façade, but you have to look for it. The building is introverted: the Church is a world apart and this effect is heightened by the austere, rectilinear planes of concrete and lack of conventional symbols. But ecclesiastical structures are commonly introverted. The internal focus on the sacred is secured by the elimination of street noise and views.
A few years ago, the University Reformed Church became the Harvest Mission Community Church and this is the reason that parts of this essay are written in the past tense; things have changed. When I last visited, the structure and space were intact. But the wood pews are gone, replaced by individual seating, the wood altar elements have disappeared. The skylights were obscured, somehow blacked out, and been superseded by electric, theatrical lighting suspended from light metal support trusses that cross the space. The now dark room has the appearance of a nightclub, a perhaps more fitting ambience for a young, contemporary spiritual experience. But I am not convinced: Let the sunshine in.
Martin Schwartz is an architect and associate professor of architecture at Lawrence Technological University.
Housed
design
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Image Credit: Brad AngeliniMuseum design in the 21st century has moved far beyond the dark, cavernous neoclassical structure of old. For the University of Michigan’s Museum of Natural History (UMMNH), their move in 2019 from the 90-yearold Ruthven Building to spaces in the newly constructed, seven-story Biological Sciences Building (BSB) was transformative. Located at the north edge of the UM central campus, the 300,000 square foot BSB also houses the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. The BSB is the fi nal piece of the UM life sciences precinct where a plaza-level Science Lawn connects the surrounding Life Sciences Institute and Undergraduate Science Building and forms an outdoor gathering area. Thoughtful pedestrian pathways and bridges, and new green spaces link the medical campuses with the university’s historic core.
The BSB façade, a screen of glass alternating with 38,500 German terracotta strips, forms a memorable skin that serves as a landmark for visitors seeking the museum. Currently animating the windows is a vibrantly colored 1700 square foot mural, “Unseen Worlds,” that depicts magnifi ed microorganisms created by UM Professor of Art and Design, Jim Cogswell. Even before entering the museum, the visitor’s interest is piqued with the art installation serving “as an invitation to discovery,” in the words of Museum Director Amy Harris.
From the plaza, the visitor enters one of two large, full height atriums that separate the three research towers. Called neighborhoods, these towers include labs and workspaces, support rooms, and other core facilities. With shared amenities spread between the three towers, the design team sought to
develop the best possible collaborative infrastructure. While most of these academic spaces are off limits to the public, some, like the fossil prep “become inside-out opportunities to engage the user community and to engage the public in the mission of science at the University of Michigan,” according to David Johnson of SmithGroup. The museum winds through the BSB, with the visitor moving from light to dark, open to closed, and from prehistory to current scientifi c explorations. The atriums themselves become immense vitrines with large scale exhibits, including the ever-popular Mastodon couple in one and the dramatic fl ying Quetzalcoatlus with its 35-foot wingspan in the other. The atrium displays are visible from many vantage points along the public museum path and also enliven the research and labs spaces.
With a mission that focuses on bringing students and visitors face-to-face with science and research, the new structure off ers bountiful amenities including a state-of-the-art planetarium, investigation labs for hands-on experimentation and learning, and a complete reworking of the museum collections into new interactive exhibits. The decision to interweave the academic departments with the museum has permitted the UMMNH to achieve its mandate of supporting public access to unfolding science. The new interactive exhibits were designed by Great Plains Exhibit Development Joint Venture led by Lord Cultural Resources, Xibitz, and Taylor Studios. The union of research and its public presentation is made possible through the architecture which supports a proximity with science through the remarkable transparency of the building.
Deirdre L.C. Hennebury, M.Arch, MUD, PhD, is associate director of the Museum Studies Program at the University of Michigan.
University of Michigan Natural History Museum
Image Credit: Martin Schwartz
architect: Alber Kahn, 1928
The Ruthven Museum Building honors Alexander G. Ruthven, who served as UM’s president from 1929 to 1951. Ruthven was director of the Museum of Zoology early in his UM career and oversaw construction of the building that would bear his name.
Ruthven was designed by noted architect Albert Kahn and constructed in 1928. It was home to UM’s research museums and the Museum of Natural History, which moved to the new Biological Sciences Building and reopened in 2019. Ruthven now houses the university administration.
A primary goal of the 2019 Ruthven renovation was to combine the university’s research, teaching and learning missions, along with its core administrative functions, into one complex. University Hall, a two-story multipurpose room that once held dinosaur exhibits, will now host Board of Regents meetings and other large events. It is 3,100-square feet with tall windows, drop-down projector screens and fl at-screen TVs. The Hall’s paneling is made of wooden doors from throughout the building that were salvaged during the renovation.
The most dramatic feature of Ruthven is the main entrance’s rotunda. The domed plaster ceiling, with carvings of delicate fl owers, monkeys, geckos, and swirling vines, is painted in shades of gold, pink, green, and cream. The original 1928
lantern hangs from a medallion in the center. Local conservators, Building Arts & Conservation Inc., thoroughly cleaned and repainted the ceiling and the balcony railings that ring the space and cleaned the travertine walls of the grand staircase.
Ilene R. Tyler is an architect with special expertise and interest in historic preservation.
Image Credit: Brad Angelini
Image Credit: Brad Angelini
architects: Unknown, 1854 Harley Ellis Devereaux (HED), 2019
Grace ShackmanDetroit Observatory is a brick-andmortar representation of the philosophy of Henry Philip Tappan, the University of Michigan’s fi rst president (1852-1863). Tappan believed that the University curriculum should include scientific studies, not just classical subjects like Greek and Latin. He had the Observatory built in 1854 on a deserted hill northeast of the original 40-acre campus. Reached by a footpath, users sometimes complained it was too far to walk.
The Observatory was designed in a mix of Greek Revival and Italianate styles, both of which were prevalent at the time. It has the tall windows and classic door columns of Greek Revival buildings, while the eave brackets are Italianate.
Like the 1840 President’s House, the only existing University of Michigan building that is older, the walls were made of stucco, painted and scored to look like stone. Originally known as the Detroit Observatory, the name honored the Detroit businessmen who raised money to build it, both to further research and to have access to the correct time.
The two original telescopes, the Henry Fritz Refractor upstairs and the Pistor and Martins Meridian Circle on the fi rst floor, are still in use, in their original mounts. The Refractor, when purchased by Tappan, was the third largest in the world. To buy the Meridian Circle, Tappan had to go to Germany since none were available in the United States. The observatory director’s office was across the hall from the Meridian Circle room.
In 1868 a director’s house was built next door on land that is now the site of Couzens Hall, just to the west.
The telescopes were used by astronomers and astronomy students until the mid1960s. Unused, the building went into decline and there was talk of tearing it down, but preservationists who appreciated it strongly objected and in 1994 the University agreed to restore it. When the restoration was completed four years later, they began hosting open houses. In 2019, the university built an addition on the south, designed by HED, to provide classroom and exhibit space, a new entry, and to make room for an elevator which made the building mostly barrier-free; the Fritz Refractor is only accessible by going up stairs. The Observatory has now been renamed the Judy and Stanley Frankel Observatory to honor the couple who funded the addition. The Observatory was closed during the worst of the Covid pandemic, but is now in use with a full schedule of classroom visits and public open houses, including night viewing through the Fritz Refractor telescope.
Grace Shackman is a writer and local advocate for architecture.
architect: Preston Scott Cohen,
architect of record: IDS,
Image Credit: Brad Angelini
Like an annoying sibling, I love our addition at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. When I am there, at every turn, this brick, sawtoothed character presents opportunities for growth and discovery. Its streaking shadows open morning eyes. My office perches on a precipice overlooking an exterior entry and, through my door, I can see the sweeping studio/commons space that connects to Bonisteel Boulevard. Just sitting there makes me feel powerful.
But this building also gets in my face every day, in ways that irritate. I swing under a rail, and over a ramp, to get to my office from drawing class. The proper path circumscribing the commons takes too long. I startle at the floor-to-ceiling glass, coming around the elevator corner. Toilets or exits? I still wonder, navigating a bifurcation of paths, going up to go down and circling around. Like it or not, welcome to center stage, as you move to your offi ce while below a streaming show fi lls the common space. “Pipe down,” I can hear my father saying.
Going up to go down, circling around. That’s what makes this addition a magnifi cent subject for my drawing classes. At best, architects animate the world of buildings through our analytical and conceptual vision. The Taubman stairs are an endless fascination. Unfurling like a tongue, the main stair presents itself as an angled plane, then an arm, twisting from fi gure to void, snapping in two and reconnecting. At any hour, someone is staring at the strange glass and wood details that keep us from falling.
Is it only architects who enjoy being caught in this swirl of seeing and moving? The circulation of our addition makes unwilling actors complicit and forces a publicness into the fi ne grain daily strolls. It is a long way, sometimes too far. Is this a clue that something is sacrificed? Interaction, dialog,
development? How would one measure such questions? Not certain, but I am certainly grateful for the minds who drew it, thought about it, and tried. It makes a daily difference.
Melissa Harris is an architect and associate professor at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning.
Image Credit: Brad Angelini
As a young teenager I used to make the short trek from my house, along Baits Drive into University of Michigan’s North Campus, down what was known in my family as Gershwin’s Gully, and into the School of Music to play on a harp in the small practice rooms on the lower level. At that time, I had no idea of the cultural significance of the building and I can’t report that it inspired me to become an architect or a musician for that matter! However, I remember being struck by the tall exterior windows, the interior brick fi nishes and the beautiful setting.
The School of Music building was designed by Eero Saarinen and opened in 1964. It was renamed the Earl V. Moore building in 1975, and in 1985 the Towsley family provided the funds for the addition of an auditorium which had been dropped from the original plans because of cost cutting. In 2015, the building was expanded with the addition of the William K. and Delores S. Brehm Pavilion designed by Ennead Architects and IDS.
Eero’s connection with North Campus did not begin with the Music School. Eero and his father Eliel were commissioned in 1951 to create a master plan for the newly envisioned North Campus. Their plan was never fully implemented and they later resigned, unhappy with “randomly selected architects, administrators, lack of coordination in planning and design, and insufficient funding that prevented the proper development.” 1
Eero Saarinen began designing the School of Music in 1952. A love letter from Eero to his future wife, Aline, in 1953, noted “the big push now is Michigan because we do want to come up with a good scheme on that.”2 The letter included a
1. Kathryn Bishop Eckert, Society of Architectural Historians, https://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/ MI-01-WA11
2. Eero Saarinen letter to Aline B. Saarinen, 1953, Aline and Eero Saarinen papers, 1906-1977. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
little sketch of the music building with a domed performance hall, which was eliminated as the design evolved. The design was approved in 1954 but funds did not become available until 1961. Unfortunately, Saarinen died in 1961 at 51 years of age, so he never saw the building completed, much less any of the additions.
The building is classic midcentury modern design composed of pre-formed concrete, beautiful brickwork, and paired, narrow windows reminiscent of the black keys on a piano. It is a clear geometric composition with a strong axis, integrated wonderfully into the natural surroundings.
It is notable that, according to an architect working at Saarinen’s office at that time, there was not a lot of excitement about the project in the office. 3 It was seen as a fairly ordinary building. This is reflected in its lack of inclusion in Saarinen’s important works and that little is written or published about this project. It is clear there was cost-cutting in the version that was built—for example, the initial removal of one of the three major blocks at the south end—and perhaps that infl uenced opinions.
However, having an Eero Saarinen building in one’s community isn’t ordinary at all and, to many of us, it is a building we are proud to call our own. In my case, it’s just a short walk away, down Gershwin’s Gully.
Tamara Burns is an architect and principal at HopkinsBurns Design Studio in Ann Arbor.
3. I heard this from a close family friend who will remain anonymous.
The following entries show that even within the constraints of a pandemic, architectural design can still thrive. The 2023 Honor Awards represent the many hours of work, creativity, and intelligent architectural solutions of the members of the AIA Huron Valley Chapter, with a total of 30 submissions from 14 different fi rms.
Special thanks to this year's jurors from the AIA Portland Chapter.
Elisa Ahn, AIA
Tim Gordon, AIA Han-Mei Chiang, AIA Jennifer Wright, AIA Erica Dunn, AIA
Commerce Township Fire Station #3 replaced an existing fi re station in the same location and provided a muchneeded improvement in function, inclusivity and aesthetics. This facility was designed to complement the
surrounding residential area comprising many larger and newer homes. With this new state-of-the-art fi re station, the township is ready to take on the continuing needs and rapid growth of the area.
Commerce Township, MI
Building Award – New Construction, Addition or Renovation
Image Credit: Howard Doughty, Immortal Images
The design for the MSU Federal Credit Union Headquarters Building 2 unifi es two diverging concepts: the necessity to refl ect the permanence and stability traditionally associated with fi nancial institutions, but also, to compete with new tech companies in attracting cutting edge IT talent. Unifying the two ideas
of tradition and innovation began by developing an employee-centric focus integrating the traditional, contextdriven aesthetic language of the two masonrywing “warehouses”, punctuated by the abrupt, contrasting gestures of the green-glass pie-shaped center-hub and stair towers.
Daniels and Zermack Architects Lansing, MI Building Award – New Construction, Addition or Renovation Image Credit: Mike Buck; Buck StudiosIn 2017, prior to the renovation of this 23,400 sf public library, the Architect was hired to produce a needs assessment and master plan. The board of directors wanted to spend $400,000 each year over a 5 yearperiod to address their strategic plan that included replacing the 20 year old roof, rehabilitating the parking lot and renovating the interior of the building. The exterior work was
completed in the fi rst year and then the interior renovation was phased to keep the Library operating during the renovation. The renovation and furniture purchases were spread over two fi scal years. The budget included $1M for the interior renovation and mechanical upgrades and $250,000 for new furniture and fi xtures.
Building Award – New Construction, Addition or Renovation
Image Credit: Mike Buck; Buck Studios
Daniels and Zermack Architects Brighton, MI
Following strong community preference to keep the new two-story library in its current downtown location, the library was sited on a small municipal parking lot parcel and a vacated portion of Fourth Street in front of the existing library, which was demolished to create
parking after the new library opened. The building design responds to the city’s DDA overlay design guidelines requiring signifi cant ground fl oor transparency and façade articulation to refl ect more of a downtown storefront aesthetic for this otherwise large-scale building.
Building Award – New Construction, Addition or Renovation
Image Credit: Mike Buck; Buck Studios
Daniels and Zermack Architects Belleville, MI
Shaped by place and mission, the Ford Robotics Laboratory (FRB) at the University of Michigan (UM) broadcasts the University’s recognition of the transition in STEM from cloistered to showcased from theory to practice while providing a new consolidated
home for the Robotics program on its engineering ‘North’ campus. With state of the art laboratories and fourth fl oor housing prominent autonomous vehicle researchers from Ford Motor Company, it places UM at the forefront of the intersection of academics and industry.
Building Award – New Construction, Addition or Renovation
Image Credit: Tom Harris
HED
Ann Arbor, MI
Grand Hotel fi rst opened its doors in 1887 as a summer retreat for vacationers who traveled to Michigan by train and came to Mackinac Island via steamer and boat. This National Historic Landmark has always embraced its rich history. That means today, guests
enjoy modern amenities while the hotel's original architecture and charm have been tastefully preseved all within the breathtaking experience of sitting in a rocking chair on teh world's longest porch with views of the Straits of Mackinac.
Building Award – New Construction, Addition or Renovation
Image Credit: Scott Baker
HopkinsBurns Design Studio + DTJ Design
Mackinac Island, MI
Image
Mercy Health Norton Shores is a 41,500 sf medical offi ce building located south of Muskegon and two miles from the Lake Michigan shoreline. This project is a result of the continued eff ort by the
parent medical group to consolidate local existing practices into one building and add common specialty services such as Urgent Care, Pharmacy and Lab to round out the convenient patient experience
IHA Chelsea is a 17,739 sf medical office building located less than a half mile from Chelsea’s main business district. This project is a result of the desire to consolidate three existing medical practices and place them in a centralized location to better serve the healthcare needs of the community.
Transforming an empty field to a new medical office building, IHA Chelsea has created a fresh, modern, and healing environment while also promoting health and wellness for an ever growing community.
Building Award – New Construction, Addition or Renovation
Image Credit: Lindhout Associates
Lindhout Associates Architects AIA PC Chelsea, MI
This 2-story, 21 000 square foot addition to Brighton High School is now the new home to a reenergized and reequipped science and creativity curriculum. Serving over 2,000 students, this facility provides access to professional tools, collaborative workspaces, and features countless didactic moments showcasing the function and performance of building systems
Brighton Area Schools’ award winning STEAM curriculum now benefi ts from being housed in an equally high tech center fi t for both eager students and seasoned industry professionals The vast space and functional improvements compared to the client’s existing facilities is immediately paying dividends.
Image Credit: Lindhout Associates
Lindhout Associates Architects AIA PC Brighton, MI
We see the identity of the Glen Lake Community Library coming from distinct qualities of light and shadow that are experienced by living with nature. Light, both natural and artifi cial, is modulated to enhance the local experience of this library and transform this experience over the course of a day to night and over the change of seasons.
This concept drove design decisions to not just add to the existing building but reimagine the whole library as a singular composition with a street presence that welcomes year-round patrons and summer visitors.
Building Award – New Construction, Addition or Renovation
Image Credit: Justin Maconochie
Quinn Evans Empire, MI
Focused on community connection and greater access to services, the North Branch of the Clinton-Macomb Public Library provides an anchor to the Macomb Township’s growing town center. In response to the local guidelines requiring the embrace of turn-of-the-20th-century architecture,
our team took inspiration from Carnegie Libraries while infusing new materials, technologies, and experiences.
The central domed community gathering space is a hub connecting active program rooms, collections, café, and staff services.
Building Award – New Construction, Addition or Renovation
Image Credit: Justin Maconochie
Quinn Evans
Charter Township of Clinton, MI
More than a food truck but less than a brick-and-mortar restaurant, FRITA AIR is a spatial brand expansion of Frita Batidos – a wildly popular fast-casual eatery based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It involved a complete teardown, refurbishment, and reprogramming of a 1971 Airstream International travel
trailer that was previously used for storage and coff ee service. The project took well over a year to complete. 4,800lbs later, and with help from expert restoration crews, FRITA AIR debuted in Detroit’s Midtown Dog Park in early 2020, just in time for the national COVID-19 shutdowns.
Building Award – Low Budget/Small Project under 3,500 SF and $1M
Image Credit: Neal Robinson
N_space Architectures Detroit, MI
Hot Seat is one discrete component in a larger, systemic series of passive solar interventions into a farmhouse in rural Michigan. At its most fundamental level, it seeks to incorporate a signifi cant chunk of thermal mass inside of the home directly adjacent to a wall of South
facing glazing. Consisting of reclaimed bricks and cast-in-place concrete while also surrounded by a slate tile fl oor to its South, the construct absorbs solar radiation and releases accumulated heat during the day and night as part of the house's passive heat convection loop.
Small Project – Furniture, Object, Architectural Design Element
Image Credit: Travis Williams
In Parallel Architects + Builders Grass Lake, MI
A glass and wood feature wall denotes the entrance to the public zone A translucent illuminated glass panel, signifying entry, is split by the full height glass entry system and morphs into a banded wood wall with a hidden door Distinctly coff ered ceilings and lighting defi ne this public space The feature wall required
extensive custom detailing and direct coordination with the selected millwork contractor. Unique features include backlit translucent panels, hidden door, and integrated horizontal banding that seamlessly straddles both sides of the glass entry.
Small Project – Furniture, Object, Architectural Design Element
Image Credit: Martin Vecchio Photography
Studio Ann Arbor, MI
This four-unit student apartment building combines a contemporary aesthetic while respecting the traditional neighborhood context. The tall gabled dormers echo the scale and forms of typical residential elements while the overall composition and details create a
modern expression of student housing. The four townhomes are arranged so that each occupies a corner, rather than a more typical rowhouse type of layout. This way, every unit is equal, and has access to two sides of natural daylighting.
Residential – New Construction
Image Credit: Lewis Greenspoon Architects
Lewis Greenspoon Architects Ann Arbor, MI
The project reimagines the experience within the existing footprint of the upper level by transforming the existing fl at ceiling to a vaulted geometry which also led to exposing structural collar ties. Additionally, the project includes the construction of one new dormer space
in order to provide for an entertainment nook to complement the rest of the upper level program with includes a master bedroom, bathroom w/ sauna, an open offi ce area, and a multifunction room that can be used as an additional offi ce or guest bedroom.
Residential – Addition or Renovation
Image Credit: Sean Carter Photography
Curved Entry is a mudroom addition with a deck for a growing family of fi ve. The intervention provides a new, more functional entry related to the existing garage while providing additional storage space for outdoor clothing and equipment.
The form of the new addition gently curves to provide generous natural light
and views to the deck and backyard. The new deck softly extends into the backyard landscape and integrates with the kitchen by retaining the existing exterior door. The deck is large enough to accommodate a generous table and grilling station for gatherings of family and guests.
Residential – Addition or Renovation Image Credit: Sean Carter Photography In Parallel Architects + Builders Ann Arbor, MIThe owners of this small 1912 Craftsman home in Burns Park loved the home’s location and the original windows and French doors. While keeping the charm, they wanted to update the F-shaped
kitchen overlooking the neighbor’s driveway, add a bathroom or two, and enlarge a bedroom to form a primary suite. They also wanted to add built-in bookcases to the living room.
Residential – Addition or Renovation
Image Credit: Laura McCaffery Photography
Studio Z Architecture Ann Arbor, MI
The owner of this 1950s ranch wanted to make her new home fi t her tailored style and needs, creating a home where she could age in place.
We reconfi gured the interior to create better fl ow throughout the home and added a guest bathroom and dedicated
laundry room. In addition, we chose all new fi nishes in the home to suit the homeowner’s taste. To create a home for aging, we designed zero threshold entries, curbless showers, and wider door openings.
Residential – Addition or Renovation Image Credit: Max Wedge Photography Hills, MIA member of our team needed to update her 1990s era bathroom. We came together to design a spa-like oasis. The original prefabricated shower was leaky and diffi cult to clean. The huge wall mirror was out of date and took up wall space that could be used to highlight the owner’s art collection. We removed
the soaking tub to provide space for a sit down makeup area and additional storage. We designed a beautiful new tile shower to replace the prior shower unit.
A 5' high wall separates the shower from the makeup area, replacing a full height wall that blocked light.
Residential – Addition or Renovation Image Credit: Laura McCaffery Photography Studio Z Architecture Canton, MINorthRidge Church retained our fi rm to continue work on the multi-phased master plan for their Plymouth campus. Phase IV called for the conversion of the chapel and activity center to a mainstreet gathering space, an extension of the upper level, the addition of a staircase and exterior curtainwall, as well as updated fi nishes throughout the space.
The design integrated natural materials and biophilic design elements to enhance guest experience. A variety of seating options provide space for diff erent group activities and postures.
Architectural Building Interior – New Construction or Renovation
Image Credit: John D’Angelo
Hobbs+Black Architects Plymouth, MI
Strata is a workplace that has both casual and sophisticated meeting rooms and collaborative offi ce space. The main corridor (main street) is expanded to make visual connections and inspire conversations. The executive board room is designed with hidden integrated
technology to host global industry leaders physically and virtually. The common spaces are designed with fl exibility to accommodate all hands presentations by hiding the kitchen components and can be opened to adjacent spaces.
Architectural Building Interior – New Construction or Renovation
Image Credit: Martin Vecchio Photography
Arbor, MI
The roof structure of the proposed yoga studio stretches its limbs as one would in the “Warrior I Pose”, soaring to acknowledge the nearby magnifi cent landmark walnut tree. The Owner wished to construct a two-car garage,
accessed from Fountain, with a structure above that could provide space for her dream of having a yoga studio with the fl exibility to also serve as an accessory dwelling unit.
Un-built Projects (client-supported)
Image Credit: Justin O’Connell, Project Designer
Architects
MI
Wrapped Dormer is a concise intervention into an Ann Arbor Historic District residence. The small home gains valuable space for livability and comfort with an attic conversion and dormer
addition to create a cozy master suite. A sleek, modern massing and a panelized cladding system create a striking exterior form visible from the backyard.
Un-built Projects (client-supported)
Image Credit: In Parallel Architects + Builders
Located in an existing low density residential development surrounded by the gently rolling hills of the northwest Indiana countryside, this home is a contemporary take on the Farmhouse typology Sited 4 miles inland from Lake Michigan, it is positioned to take advantage of stunning sunset views. Designed around a central Kitchen, Dining and Living Room space, the
heart of the home The vaulted ceiling of the Living Room connects visually and spatially to the covered rear porch, which functions as a three season outdoor room Flanked on the west by the Primary Bedroom suite and garage, and on the east by Secondary Bedrooms Simple gable roofs with deep overhangs shelter the home below.
Un-built Projects (client-supported)
Image Credit: Maison Orion North America, Inc.
Maison Orion North America, Inc. LaPorte, IN
This project renovates and enlarges a dilapidated, foreclosed home from the 1940's. Designed for a growing family of five, the project responds to the client and
the site with an unfussy massing and material strategy evocative of agricultural typologies of Michigan paired with elements of Mid Century Modernism.
Un-built Projects (client-supported) Image Credit: Maison Orion North America, Inc. Maison Orion North America, Inc. MI
A sukkah, often translated as "booth," is a temporary hut constructed for use during the week-long Jewish festival of Sukkot. It is usually topped with branches and often decorated with autumnal, harvest, or Judaic themes. The Book of Vayikra (Leviticus) describes it as a symbolic wilderness shelter commemorating the
time God provided for the Israelites as they traversed the desert moonscape after being freed from slavery in Egypt. Underneath the stars, it is/was common for Jews to eat, sleep, and otherwise spend time in the sukkah. This sukkah embraces the story of Sukkot but updates the characters and haptic city conditions.
Un-built Projects (client-supported)In a unique eff ort to sustain its members, Northville’s Downtown Development Authority created one of Michigan’s fi rst outdoor social districts. This district was created in September of 2020 after the Michigan legislature and governor passed a law allowing this creation in July, due to the shut down of businesses
during the Covid 19 pandemic of 2020. With Winter rapidly approaching, the DDA scrambled to identify a sustainable answer to create a business environment that allowed restaurants and bars to pivot to a take out and outdoor dining model for their businesses.
Aspirational Projects (Sustainability, Equity, and Community Benefi t
Image Credit: City of Northville DDA
MI
Cowles House is Michigan State University’s oldest standing building. Built in 1857, two years after the institution’s founding, it served as a faculty residence, offi cial president’s residence, and a hub for student life and interaction with faculty.
A major renovation and expansion was completed in 1949 by Architect Ralph
R. Calder. The Midcentury Modern movement was then in full bloom, with Michigan at its center and the renovation refl ected the infl uence of what has come to be known as “Michigan Modern” design, transforming the house into a mix of historic Italianate and carefully executed modern styles.
Historic Preservation (Any Building Type)
Image Credit: Ike Lea
HopkinsBurns Design Studio East Lansing, MI
Originally constructed in 1860 in downtown Detroit, the vegetable shed from the Detroit Central Market was fi rst saved in 1894 when it was relocated to Belle Isle, and then again when it was dismantled and stored in 2003. Few
buildings survive from this fi rst era of Detroit’s growth. Rebuilt in 2020 at Greenfi eld Village using original cast iron columns, timber framing, and replicated wood and metal detailing, the market has returned to life.
Historic Preservation (Any Building Type)
Image Credit: Justin Maconochie
Quinn Evans Dearborn, MI
Building Award – New Construction, Addition or Reno
HED Ann Arbor, MI
architectural team: Jeff Gaines
owner: University of Michigan contractor: Devon Industrial Group design team: HED—MEP HED—Structural PEA Group—Civil
image credits: Tom Harris
“ The beautiful gestural sweep of the building has a light and airy quality thanks to the two cantilevered ends.”
“ Very clear narrative and diagraming in the submission.”
Building Award – New Construction, Addition or Reno
architectural team: Ann K. Dilcher AIA, LEED AP, Principal owner: Glen Lake Community Library contractor: Hallmark Construction design team: GMB Architecture and Engineering—MEP, Structural, and Civil Gosling Czubak Engineering Sciences, Inc.—Landscape
image credits: Justin Maconochie
“ Drawing visitors in with its lantern-like quality the community facing façade so successfully blends the character of public and residential. ”
Building Award – New Construction, Addition or Reno
Charter Township of Clinton, MI
architectural team: Ann K. Dilcher AIA, LEED AP, Principal owner: Clinton-Macomb Public Library
contractor: McCarthy & Smith, Inc.
design team: Peter Basso Associates Inc—MEP SDI Structures—Structural Beckett & Raeder Inc.—Civil King & MacGregor Environmental Inc.—Environmental
image credits: Justin Maconochie
“ The palate of materials and the variation of scale for interior spaces is successful and gives the impression of a calm quality that will promote refl ection and study. ”
O|X Studio Ann Arbor, MI
architectural team: Robb Burroughs
contractor: PCI One Source Contracting
design team: MA Engineering—MEP
image credits: Martin Vecchio Photography
“ The warmth, craftsmanship the wood wall added to the Lobby, and even a sense of fun with the hidden door, was a standout among the entire group of submissions.”
Ann Arbor, MI
architectural team: Travis Williams and Kasey Vliet
contractor: In Parallel Architects + Builders, Kasey Vliet
design team: SDI Structures—Structural Ambient Construction—Rough Framing
image credits: Sean Carter Photography
“This project was a standout for me in the entire group of submissions. The amount of work, thought, craftsmanship, and design that went into this project is so clear. The spaces feel so dialed in from a modern design standpoint while still maintaining a warmth and sense of home. ”
Un-built Projects (clientsupported)
N_space Architectures
Detroit, MI
architectural team: Neal Robinson, Architect
owner: Downtown Synagogue, Detroit MI
consultants: Rabbis Ariana Silverman and Yisrael Pinson—Liturgical Consultant
image credits: N_space Architectures
“ This was by far the most cerebral design of the group. The skeletal structure felt almost anthropomorphic as if it could fold itself up and walk away. While the representation gave it a more post-apocalyptic feel rather than a celebratory one this ephemeral structure or temporarily joined collection of structures pulls one in and instills a desire to investigate and understand the design. ”
East Lansing, MI architectural team: Tamara Burns
owner: Michigan State University contractor: The Christman Company
design team: Peter Basso Associates Inc—MEP Robert Darvas Assoc.—Structural Fishbeck, Thompson, Carr @ Huber, Inc.—Civil
Planning Design & Construction Infrastructure Planning & Facilities—Landscape
credits: Ike Lea
pairing of traditional and
modern
architectural team: Ann K. Dilcher AIA, LEED AP, Principal owner: The Henry Ford
contractor: O’Neal Construction Inc.
design team: Strategic Energy Solutions Inc— MEP Fire Tower Engineered Timber— Structural Christian & Son—Timber Framing
image credits: Justin Maconochie
“ Huge kudos for the eff orts it must have taken to retain and reuse this historic structure. This is one of the best examples of blending old and new in a clear way that allows the original structure to retain its story and still function perfectly for the current times. ”
Benefi
Northville, MI
architectural team: Aaron Vermeulen, AIA
owner: City of Northville DDA
contractor: Construction Design Services, Inc.
design team: IMEG Corp.—Structural VanBuren Steel—Fabricator Cantelon Finishers—Furniture
image credits: City of Northville DDA
“ A clear, graceful design, simply executed with modular components, that provided much needed outdoor social space during the pandemic.”
Michigan Architectural Foundation
4219 Woodward Ave., Suite 205 Detroit, MI 48201
Contact: Damian Farrel damian@dfdg.com
Special thanks to MAF for their publication production support grant!
ARC Document Solutions
3940 Ranchero Dr., Suite 200 Ann Arbor, MI 48108
Contact: Bill Dunn bill.dunn@e-arc.com
Special thanks to ARC for supplying the Awards travelling exhibit display boards!
MA Engineering
400 S Old Woodward, Suite 100 Birmingham, MI 48009
Contact: Salim Sessine SSessine@ma-engineering.com
Quinn Evans Architects
219 N Main St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
Contact: Anne Dilcher akdilcher@quinnevans.com
Angelini & Associates Architects 200 Huronview Blvd. Ann Arbor, MI 48103
Contact: Brad & Theresa Angelini bangelini@angeliniarchitects.com
Centria centria.com
Contact: Brandon Kinsey bkinsey@Centria.com
Otto Custom Craftsmen ottocc.com
Contact: Connor Otto 734.646.9222
Peter Basso Associates, Inc. | Illuminart 5145 Livernois Rd., Suite 100 Troy, MI 48098
Contact: Julie Roop jroop@pbanet.com
PCIA
1127 S Old US Hwy 23 Brighton, MI 48114
Contact: Michael Cosgrove mcosgrove@pciaonline.com
275 East Liberty Ann Arbor, MI 48104
Contact: Paul Dannels paul@sdistructures.com
Steven L. Adams
Kevin Adkins
Mitchell Alfaro Anna Anderson
Dana J. Anderson
Timothy M. Andres Bradford L. Angelini Theresa L. Angelini
James P. Argenta Mary L. Bachelor Elizabeth Baird
Scott A. Barnes
Daniel J. Barry Donald F. Barry
Kevin Michael Bechard Matt Biglin Harold M. Boog Craig Borum Scott M. Bowers
Kurt Brandle
Kemba S. Braynon Brian T. Burkett
Tamara E. Burns Landon Carpenter
Gene A. Carroll Alexis L. Cecil James Chesnut Kenneth A. Clein Denise Close
Robert F. Cole Gary J. Cornillaud Andrew J. Cottrell
Anne M. Cox
George L. Craven Jan K. Culbertson John Culotta
Darryl H. Daniels
Paul W. Darling Christine Darragh Karl Daubmann Jaime DeJesus-Rodriguez
Ann K. Dilcher
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Tom Dillenbeck Kathryn Dobija Nathan T. Doud Huiting Du Frank W. Enneking Jason Ennis David Esau William P. Farrand Damian Farrell John J. Francey Charlotte L. Fuss Kelly Gawinek David R. Gebhardt Kristina A. Glusac Scott M.B. Gustafson Sharon H. Haar
James Hall Todd W. Hallett William Harvey Andrew G. Hauptman Joshua L. Hendershot Richard L. Henes Henry J. Henrichs Jennifer K. Henriksen Russell W. Hinkle John J. Hinkley William S. Hobbs Scott T. Hoeft Evan A. Holdwick Eugene C. Hopkins Carl O. Hueter Van R. Hunsberger Benedict D. Ilozor James S. Jacobs William L. James Catherine T. Jeakle Matthew M. Jogan Gregory A. Jones Steven C. Jones John J. Jourden George M. Kacan Susan R. Karczag Douglas S. Kelbaugh
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Michael J. Kennedy
Ann A. Kenyon
Kevin L. King
Michael S. Kirchner
Michael R. Klement Daniel E. Kohler Henry S. Kowalewski Anthony M. Kraatz
Julia M. Krieger
Timothy B. Landini Christopher Lattimer David B. Lewis
Heather Graham Lewis Xiaoye Li Zihao Li Ronald S. Lincoln William P. Lindhout Zhiyu Liu Laura L. Long Yao Ma
Donald D. MacMullan Jennifer L. Maigret Sadashiv S. Mallya Marc L. Maxey
Diane M. McIntyre
Julia H. McMorrough Mark S. Melchi
Jaclyn J.P. Melfi David C. Milling Stanley J. Monroe Kelsey Montgomery J. Bradley Moore
Victor A. Muñoz De La Cruz
Karin L. Neubauer
Michael P. Nicklowitz Jason R. Nolff M. Celeste Novak Kristen A. Nyht Tiannuo Ouyang Seth Penchansky Shannon Riley Perry David D. Pezda
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Lincoln A. Poley
Philip S. Proefrock Jessica G. Quijano Richard J. Reinholt Richard J.P. Renaud Connie Rizzolo Brown Patrick M. Roach B. N. Robinson David B. Rochlen Ariadne R. Rodriguez-Boog Marc M. Rueter Keith W. Russeau Warren Samberg Robert S. Saxon Bonnie Jean Scheffler Rebecca A. Selter Elizabeth Sensoli David Shellabarger Wayne G. Sieloff Maria Sinishtaj Shaun P. Smith Daniel Sonntag Karen Lee Souders
Jon M. Stevens Morley S. Stevenson Michael R. Strother Lindsey M. Suardini David A. Teare Benjamin Telian Ronald L. Thomas Brian K. Threet Anita M. Toews Ellison B. Turpin Ilene R. Tyler Michael T. Van Goor Adriaan N. Van Velden Elizabeth K. Vandermark Albert J. Vegter Ekaterina Velikov Aaron J. Vermeulen Kasey Vliet
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John L. Wacksmuth
Nicole Wallace
Keith F. Weiland
L. Welch
Donald Wesley Daniel E. Whisler
Ajae M. Whittaker Edwin R. Wier
Lanette V. Williams
Stephen M. Wilson Andrew Wolking Heather M. Woodcock Jacob B. Wright Walter P. Wyderko
Yidong Yang
Robert L. Yurk Jun Zhou Dawn Zuber E. James Zwolensky
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Adriano De Quesada Akash Dhanturi
Luba Mikhodsuik
Ziabao Zhu Jinto Zhai
Eric Moore
