Before removal, UW-Madison’s engineering hall statue was historic campus symbol

The Máquina statue went through two periods of disrepair before being removed on Aug. 19

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Máquina — a word which means machine in Spanish — couldn’t be missed: a 4,500 pound, 18-foot tall statue of two stainless steel arcs separated by a sliver of air, which adorned the lawn of UW-Madison’s Engineering Hall from 1994 onward. Even more striking was that, for most of its time on campus, the statue sprayed water from an internal fountain. 

The water ran dry in 2014 when replacement parts were no longer available. 

But the statue remained on the site. For 10 more years, in fact, until university employees quietly removed it on Aug. 19. Lori Wilson, a spokesperson for UW-Madison’s facilities and planning department, says it was a necessary action in preliminary work toward building the school’s long-awaited new engineering hall. 

What happens next is anyone’s guess. University officials have not found Máquina a new home. A search has been ongoing since 2022, when the statue’s removal was first planned; Wilson says the statue is currently in off-campus storage and that, currently, “we don’t have any plans for reinstalling the sculpture.”

“We are grateful for the education and enjoyment the Máquina fountain brought to our campus community, and we remain hopeful that, with our partners, we can find a new home for this piece,” Wilson says. 

In the removed statue’s wake are rubble, exposed pipes and decades of campus history.

William Conrad Severson, Máquina’s sculptor, said the statue represents “the engineer’s tools, their aesthetics, and the engineer’s role in creative problem solving.” A Madison native and 1947 UW-Madison alum, Severson was called an “internationally known” sculptor in his 1996 obituary in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, with works on display in 28 states and Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Russia. 

Severson designed Máquina with then-College of Engineering Dean John Bollinger, who wanted it to be a “vehicle for practical design experience.” Due to Severson’s longtime connection to Madison, he donated the fountain to UW-Madison in 1994 in memory of his father, UW-Madison alumni and WKOW-TV cofounder “E.C.” Ole Severson. 

His timing couldn’t have been better. As university officials in May 1994 rushed to have an “Engineering Mall” redevelopment project — transforming what was once a drab parking lot outside Engineering Hall into a green space for students to study and relax — ready for the November Engineering Expo, they saw the statue as a crucial component. 

In a 1994 funding request to the Board of Regents, UW-Madison officials pitched Máquina as a chance for students to “conduct instructional and research opportunities” and to increase the mall’s aesthetic appeal. “[The statue will provide] an artistic centerpiece for the Engineering Campus that will portray an aesthetic image of the engineering profession in the 21st Century,” the officials wrote.

If their aim was to establish a symbol for the college, they were successful. By many accounts, the statue’s silhouette became synonymous with the College of Engineering.

“Visit any of the computer labs throughout the Engineering campus and not only will the background have a picture of Maquina, it will also likely be featured on the mouse pad,” a 2004 article in Wisconsin Engineering Magazine claimed. “Maquina is a symbol of the College of Engineering linking alumni, current and future students.”

But with time, what was once a hallmark of the college fell further and further into disrepair. 

While operational, Máquina was considered an exemplar for student contributions to UW-Madison’s campus. Bollinger planned that students in engineering classes would tend to the fountain as part of their coursework. When he resigned as dean in 1999, it was intended that academic staff would take over the fountain’s maintenance and student oversight. But the statue was neglected.

In 2004, a new student organization, Enlight Fountain Control Group, took over maintaining and cleaning Máquina. The club continued to do so until 2014.

“You gotta clean that whole thing, and the only way to clean such a monster is with 12-molar hydrochloric acid,” Dustin Passaforo, head of engineering for the club, told Enlight member Katie Anderson in a 2011 documentary she filmed. 

Anderson follows the club’s members throughout their work, and the students eventually find themselves climbing down a nearby sewer grate to clean the fountain. Navigating a series of tunnels underneath the fountain, Passaforo guided new students through the club’s work.

“Go ahead,” he advised a new student, who then turned a valve that drained one of the fountain’s pools. 

Maintaining the fountain was not easy. The work could be dangerous, Passaforo said — one shot cuts to Passaforo pouring the foaming hydrochloric acid on a scummy drain. “It’ll eat your face off,” he added. But caring for the fountain gave students responsibility and real-world experience.

“We sense when things are wrong. If it’s something we can manage, we fix it right off the bat, and the university doesn’t even know about it,” Passaforo said in the film.

But two years after Passaforo graduated in 2012, the statue’s fountain components were shut off. UW-Madison College of Engineering Dean Ian Robertson told the Wisconsin Engineering Magazine in 2020 that its components were outdated, damaged or in need of replacement. Robertson added that, even if the components were fixed, modern safety regulations would prevent students from working on it without safety training.

“The idea of letting students work on it would be a challenge these days.”

Passaforo, now 12 years after graduating from UW-Madison, lives in Minnesota and is a software engineer for Adobe. He was surprised to receive a voicemail asking for an interview — “How did you find the number?” he asks.

He warns that he might have to interrupt the interview to respond to a friend; they’re planning a night of eating pizza and making 3D-printed models. Passaforo isn’t the only Enlight member who found work at a large tech company — off the top of his head, he rattles off three Enlight members who ended up at Microsoft.

Passaforo says he was in the club all four-and-a-half years of his undergraduate education at UW-Madison, from 2008-2012. The statue was an enormous presence in his life, he says. 

He recalls one Thanksgiving break when he didn’t go home.

Campus was dormant. Passaforo loved the fact that he could wander around the empty streets. But amid the silence, the Enlight member who taught him “everything I knew about the fountain,” Chris Meyer, who went on to found Madison makerspace Sector 67, told him that they should adorn Máquina with Christmas lights. The pair decided to fashion a lighting controller that would live inside the fountain.

“We built it in his basement and installed it later that night,” Passaforo says. “And there were lights in the fountain, and we used it for a good number of years.”

When I ask him how he feels that the statue was removed, he takes a moment before fully answering.

“That's wild. Okay, I… wow, that's recent,” Passaforo says. He says the removal makes him reflect on change: “Even the biggest things that seem like icons are still impermanent — even if it's made out of stainless steel and concrete — nothing is impervious to this slow, healing or destructive march of time.”

But it makes him hopeful for the future, too. 

“I can't wait to see what new icons UW-Madison and the College of Engineering come up with,” Passaforo says. “Whoever comes up with the next symbol of the College of Engineering…holy crap. Pick something cool, because the fountain was awesome.”