Jože Dekleva sent me a mobile-phone text-message yesterday evening to the effect that Braco Mušič had died. Although his first name was Vladimir, everyone knew him by his nickname, which means something like “little brother.” I immediately checked my Residua on the World Wide Web to see what I had written about Braco over the years, and I found only one piece from 2001, which happened to have been a dream (“Bare and Exposed,” June 9, 2001). I was stunned. Braco was an important person in my life, and especially in the Seventies. How is it possible that my first boss is nearly absent from my life’s record?

Braco was one of the best-known urban planners in Yugoslavia while I was studying architecture in the Sixties. He was the director of the Urban Planning Institute of Slovenia in Ljubljana. Having learned that he got his masters in urban planning from Harvard, I contacted him in the late Sixties. We hit it off from the start, and he wrote me a strong recommendation letter that went to a number of universities in the States, where I wanted to continue my education. When I got admitted to Harvard, I thanked him for his help. “Don’t thank me,” he replied. “Just join me in the Institute when you graduate.” And this is what I did after I got my master’s from Harvard and doctorate from MIT.

Soon after I came to Ljubljana, Braco gave me a team of architects, geographers, and planners. A mathematician versed into computers joined us soon. I started something that we called Systems Approach to Spatial Planning. Jože became my partner at the helm of the team. I brought to the Institute the approach I learned from Carl Steinitz at Harvard. The system we developed was a precursor of what later became known as a geographic information system. The team became quite visible in Slovenia and the rest of Yugoslavia in a year or two. Braco was quite pleased with our progress, but this was the beginning of the end of our relationship.

Tall and portly, knowledgeable and witty, Braco was used to being at the center of everyone’s attention. He was the star wherever he went. Slowly but surely, Jože and I got on his nerves. Unable to partake in our work, which was technologically sophisticated for its time, he let us go our own way. By and by, he started shunning us. By the time I left the Institute in the late Seventies, Braco and I had become quite estranged. Ever since, we met only once, and even then we met entirely by chance. In the meanwhile, Jože and I remained close friends, and we went to the Alps together almost every summer for many years in a row. He was with me when I almost met my end in the mountains.

Born in 1930, Braco was eighty-four when he died yesterday. And I will miss him. Regardless of our estrangement, he comes to my mind often enough. Looking back, my early years are unimaginable without him. I have never seen his recommendation letter, but I can imagine that it was on the strong side. An exceptional individual, he recognized me as a future partner after the very first contact. Amazingly, that was the time when I was preoccupied with the design of human settlements under the sea. My application to Harvard was about the design of human settlements in space. And Braco must have relished my unusual zeal. Back then, there was no way of stopping me. Rest in peace, little brother!

Addendum (December 4, 2017)

This piece ended up in the memorial publication celebrating Braco Mušič, which was put together by the Urban Planning Institute of Slovenia.[1] A copy of the book arrived in this morning’s post. Large and bursting with photographs and drawings, it is quite impressive. My piece, a short biography of mine, and my photo appear together with similar contributions by about twenty others.[2] For some reason, Jože Dekleva is not among them. Leafing through the book, I spent a lot of time staring at photos of so many people I knew well in the late Seventies, when I used to work at the Institute. After some forty years, I would not be able to recognize a single one of them! Only their names remain etched in my mind. Yet another awkward goodbye…

Footnotes

1. Mihelič, B., editor, Vladimir Braco Mušič 1930-2014, Ljubljana: Urban Planning Institute of Slovenia, 2017.

2. Op. cit., pp. 56-57.