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BIOGRAPHY
1.
“Outdoor memories are very poignant,” says Johnson of his childhood. From the Grand River, the Oldsmobile plant and his hobby of collecting discarded matchbook covers, Johnson got to “know [Lansing] intimately by walking through it.”
2.
While in the fifth grade, Johnson discovers the power of painting to impact his life and others’ after vandalizing a school desk.
3.
A Quonset hut on the Michigan State University campus in Lansing housed the design program, where the 14/15-year-old Johnson saw “beautifully rendered sketches.” He discovered that designers used “art to … solve” problems.
4.
Here Johnson develops a strong interest in an analytical approach to design that was informed by the site, rather than what he calls a “pre-determined solution.”
5.
A multi-university design competition gains Johnson attention, awards and a fateful visit from landscape architect Hideo Sasaki, who ultimately convinces Johnson to attend graduate school at Harvard.
6.
Faced with being drafted to Korea, Johnson instead joins the ROTC and is stationed in Postwar Europe. Here he travels around in his red MGTF and sees how garden and park making was integral to Postwar reconstruction. After being drafted during the Korean War, Johnson joins ROTC and is stationed in Germany.
7.
Johnson studied under Hideo Sasaki, whose critiques were “quiet and devastating” – and ultimately very helpful. He also savors the collaborative approach that encouraged cross-disciplinary student groups. While at Harvard, Johnson meets Norman Newton, Walter Chambers, and Hideo Sasaki.
8.
Peter Walker is the first student Johnson meets at Harvard; they become close and work on a thesis project together. Walker also gives Johnson a piece of advice that becomes integral to the latter’s professional activities.
9.
Johnson and his older brother, Carl, go into business together. Though peers, the brothers were on occasion rivals, a situation mediated by business partner Clarence Roy. The firm they created was Johnson, Johnson, and Roy (JJR).
10.
Soon after arriving to teach at the University of Michigan, Johnson is approached by the administration to outline a vision for the future growth of the university. A subsequent five-minute sketch based on a year’s study affects the campus’ next twenty years.
11.
After some hesitation, Johnson agrees to become Dean. He finds that his core design principle, which sought to find common ground but celebrated differences, applied well in academia.
12.
Following his time at JJR and in academia, 60-year old Johnson and former Harvard classmate Peter Walker launch a business partnership created to last five years.
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DESIGN
1.
Early in his JJR’s history, Bill Johnson determines that design is at the center of a tripartite system composed of natural sciences, the arts and social sciences (including architecture).
2.
Johnson cites JJR’s strategic approach – get involved early enough in a project in order to have maximum leverage in making and managing core design decisions.
3.
Johnson cleverly and entertainingly illustrates the rigidity of the Michigan Department of Transportation’s public input process, and devises an approach that is both more efficient and can impact design decision-making.
4.
Johnson says focusing on the fundamentals, which he calls “framework thinking,” is essential to a successful project. Otherwise, he warns, “You can make big mistakes.”
5.
“Drawing is a language,” Johnson asserts, and it’s a “dialogue inducer.” Listening to a client and then sketching out their ideas is very powerful – the process “brings their ideas to the forefront before their very eyes.”
6.
Understanding the significance of natural systems – whether from a design standpoint or from a policy perspective – is essential to planning. Landscape architecture, Johnson says, “has a sense of the big picture.”
7.
Campus design, like community planning, relies on carefully created connections. The “flow of people is essential,” Johnson observes, and it informs other core planning issues.
8.
Johnson says, “Listening is an initiative, not a passive thing.” He adds, “The key is to decide to listen and know how to listen – that’s what brings creativity to the [design] process.”
9.
Johnson talks about the power of visual understanding and illustrates the point by discussing three, well-designed items.
10.
“Fun,” Johnson opines, is “cathartic,” it’s “medicine,” and it increases “motivation, joy and pleasure, and creativity.” He recalls the unusual results from a design exercise in which he has students create something from a pile of found objects.
11.
Painting, a personal love of Johnson’s, is the starting point for observations about landscape architecture, which he calls a “thinking field,” and the benefits of “wrinkling” one’s brain and “wondering about things.”
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PROJECTS
1.
Johnson returns after 50 years to see how his 1963 central campus expansion plan holds up.
2.
Johnson facilitates the renaissance of a low-income neighborhood in Ann Arbor, Michigan slated for demolition to make way for a shopping center.
3.
Johnson discusses the origins and challenges of planning and designing an iconic and influential resort on Hilton Head in the low country of SC.
4.
JJR developed overarching design guidelines for 27 miles of Chicago’s Lakefront. Significantly, their work insured the lakefront itself would not be developed as anything but parkland.
5.
For the creation of a new university campus, JJR and Johnson find inspiration in the ravines of the Grand River valley as their design centerpiece.
6.
A design competition brings Johnson and Peter Walker to the Tokyo area where a famed local shrine becomes the inspiration for their winning design.
7.
In the mountains of Japan, Johnson and Peter Walker use the roads as the connecting tissue for a new science community.
8.
Johnson convinced municipal officials that the key to creating a city center was the removal of an above ground parking garage. The result, the Snohomish County Campus, is a new park over an underground garage, and a complex that visually unites the historic city hall and library.
9.
Looking to the future, Johnson shares the vision of his community where the new energy plant has become the impetus for a new park centered on the Macatawa River, and a broader mindset focused on green energy.
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