How This Indiana City Is Trying to Redefine Architecture—and Itself

If you’re into design, you’ve heard of architects like Eliel and Eero Saarinen, I.M. Pei, Alexander Girard, and Kevin Roche. But it’s only if you’re really into design that you’ll also have heard of Columbus, Indiana, where those midcentury masters carved out a capital of modernism. 

For those unfamiliar (including myself a few months ago), Columbus tells a great story. Joseph Irwin Miller, the chairman of local engine company Cummins, was unimpressed with the public buildings throughout the city. So in 1954, he inaugurated the Cummins Foundation, which offered to pay the architect fee for any public project if the architect chosen could be found on his list of pre-approved modernists. Because of Miller, Columbus is freckled with architectural gems.

While many of the public facilities are still in operation today—take Kevin Roche’s post office, for example—the Landmark Columbus Foundation carries the torch forward with Exhibit Columbus, a biannual exploration of architecture, art, and design that’s distinctly forward-facing while referencing its backdrop of midcentury masterpieces.

For its fourth cycle, the exhibition turns its focus on Columbus’s population itself with Public by Design, where four firms, seven university research fellows, and one student group settle into the downtown area with projects that aim at urban regeneration. The theme flips the traditional architectural process—in which austere architects serve up a design for the people, but not by the people—instead carving out space for community input. As Chris Marcinkoski of PORT puts it, each installation can be considered an "instrument of engagement"—an addendum to the city written by the community.

In a city with such a historic pedigree, the temporary installations act as distinctly forward-thinking counterpoints. Take Echoes of the Hill, designed by Harlem-based Studio Zewde. After asking community members to identify their favorite spaces in town, the team noticed a hotspot on a man-made hill in Michael Van Valkenburgh’s Mill Race Park, where a Stanley Saitowitz-designed amphitheater stands. Studio Zewde’s red bamboo structure sits in the field below the hill, intending to pull the community outward to expand the utility of the 85-acre green space. Perhaps most interesting, principal Sara Zewde served as a teaching assistant for Van Valkenburg, and reconnected with him during the design process. As we near the park’s 30th anniversary, the field seems a good place to start designing its future.

Travel a few blocks into downtown, and you’ll reach The Commons, a glass-fronted structure completed in 2011 by Koetter Kim but based on a preceding 1973 design by Argentine architect César Pelli. First, however, you’ll pass under InterOculus, another contemporary intervention that resurrects formerly overlooked public space. Designed by PAU, the massive steel frame and connective tissue provides something necessary to all public spaces in states like Indiana: shade. It also gifts the city another gathering space, as each of the four perpendicular streets can be closed off to traffic. With a relatively simple shape and Koetter Kim's structure as backdrop, PAU’s installation provides a flexible and effective space for the community. Although the exhibition will only stand for three months, PAU’s structure makes the case for more permanent interventions.

Although Studio Zewde and PAU’s interventions felt the most impactful, each of the 12 installations focus on Hoosiers themselves, demonstrating the age-old argument: Good design can improve our lives. It’s a message that flows through the streets of Columbus thanks to a history of investment in architecture. And clearly, Exhibit Columbus believes it’s worth teasing out every two years. With this year’s exhibition, the city’s lineage of impactful architecture is joined by another generation that hopes to bridge the gap between public spaces and the people that occupy them. But thankfully, it’s no new idea to Columbus.

Exhibit Columbus is free and open to the public, and this year’s exhibition will be on view until November 26. Travel and accommodations for this story provided by Exhibit Columbus.

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