Correction appended: The first version of this story misspelled the name of Douglas Kelbaugh. It also said Kelbaugh is the dean of the School of Music, Theatre and Dance. He is the dean of the School of Architecture and Urban Planning.
Engineering Dean David Munson wants to add something to North Campus to make it more appealing. He’s just not sure what.
That will be will be decided in March, when judges choose the winner of the WorkPlay Competition, a contest to design something to increase North Campus’s appeal.
The winning team will earn a $10,000 prize and help install their design in the open space to the west of the Duderstadt Center near Pierpont Commons and the Walgreen Drama Center. The runner-up will receive a $5,000 prize.
The contest is sponsored by the deans of five schools on North Campus – the College of Engineering, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, the School of Music, Theatre and Dance and the School of Information – and Arts on Earth, a University initiative to promote and increase art on campus.
WorkPlay is an abstract challenge. There are no restrictions placed on what type of project is submitted, only that project’s budget must be no more than $500,000.
Teams must also consist of at least two students from different participating schools but can have unlimited number of students, staff or faculty from the University.
One of the contest’s coordinators, Casey Jones, who graduated from the College of Architecture and Urban Planning in 1992, said that requiring the teams to be are interdisciplinary, organizers hope to foster a sense of community on North Campus.
“Part of the intention of the project is to create a greater sense of community up here,” Jones said.
Entries must be submitted to WorkPlay by Feb. 8. A jury composed of the participating deans, a North Campus student and Campus Planner Sue Gott will select the winner this spring, and the project will likely break ground several months later.
Some consider North Campus an unattractive place. Munson, one of the contest’s backers, said the contest’s goal is make North Campus more appealing to all of the University, not just engineers.
“We have hopes of creating a destination of North Campus,” he said. “We don’t have very many focal points up on North.”
The only real rule for submissions is it should be something that would make people want to go to North Campus. Munson said the winning project might not even be something he had in mind, like an art installation or sculpture.
“A vision I have for this thing may not be the winning one,” Munson said.
It can really be anything, even something that doesn’t last through the seasons, said Douglas Kelbaugh, dean of the College of Architecture and Urban Planning.
Architecture Prof. Steven Mankouche said he likes this aspect in particular.
“I like the fact that though they’re encouraging more temporal things, that things that aren’t necessarily permanently there,” Mankouche said.
Not all entrants have a specific concept in mind. Art and Design senior Ronen Goldstein said his team plans on incorporating the outdoor surroundings into their design.
“We have a long list of ideas,” he said. “We went online and looked at various installations and artists. I want to do something with maybe data and manipulation of it or somehow taking information of the surroundings and materializing it in some way, if not visually, auditorily, or with texture.”
Whatever he comes up with for the competition, Architecture graduate student Brian Trump says that North Campus needs help.
“It is pretty exciting because North Campus is pretty desolate,” Trump said. “It’s a good idea.”