ALUM NI
A Career Shaped by Love and Love of Country From a girl to his “beloved” Ann Arbor to a religious homage to a democratic Nicaragua, José Terán, B.S. ’56, M.Arch ’58, has followed his passions BEFORE BECOMING NICARAGUA’S most famous architect; before building a multimillion-dollar empire, losing it all in his country’s civil war, and starting over in the United States; before a call from the White House, José Terán stepped off the train in Ann Arbor with no idea where he would lay his head that night. Like other moments when Terán faced uncertainty in his life, he found a path forward. After walking up the hill, past downtown, and to campus, he found a place to stay — and an experience that would change his life. “I was immediately overwhelmed, in the most positive way, by Ann Arbor,” says Terán, B.S. ’56, M.Arch ’58, whose diverse interests were satiated by the campus’s endless cultural and intellectual pursuits. “I was always discovering.”
As a boy in Nicaragua, Terán excelled in an array of subjects. As he poured over volumes in his school’s library, he discovered, through the ancient Greeks and Romans, his career path. “I was drawn to architecture because it is oriented toward solving social problems,” he says. Because Nicaragua had no architecture schools, Terán came to the United States. In Washington, D.C., where his brothers lived, he took prerequisite courses before arriving in Ann Arbor to enroll in the architecture program. Beyond the plethora of activities that enthralled him, Terán found a way to embrace his lifelong interest in publishing at U-M. With a group of classmates, he launched an annual publication of architecture students’ work. Now known as Dimensions, the group originally gave it a singular title: “We were dogmatic,” he says. “We believed there is only one dimension.” Terán’s academic experience was shaped by some of the architecture program’s legends. He calls Professor William Muschenheim a second father. Professor Walter B. Sanders hired him for summer work on the Unistrut framing system that he was developing. Gunnar Birkerts, the chief designer for Minoru Yamasaki, helped Terán join Yamasaki’s firm after Terán earned his master’s degree. While working for Yamasaki (who later designed the twin towers of the World Trade Center), Terán set off on another trip that changed the trajectory of his life. Stepping back from the grueling work for the up-and-coming Yamasaki, Terán drove from his suburban Detroit home to Managua, Nicaragua — a nearly 3,500-mile trip — to take a break. At a New Year’s Eve party, in a scene straight out of a movie, he spotted a pretty girl across the crowded room. The rest was history. “I told Yamasaki, ‘I’m sorry, but I believe that I’m not coming back,’” Terán says. “And he said that if it was for love, then he supposed it was all right.”
40
SPRING 2020 TAUBMAN COLLEGE
