[MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: When I think
about small town America, I don't usually
conjure a town that emerges from the
cornfields like this one. The small town I
imagine does not have a striking bridge
announcing your exit from the highway, nor does
it have populated sidewalks, filled parking spaces, and
pristinely maintained parks. And it certainly doesn't have
marvels of modern architecture interspersed with temporary
site-specific art and design installations. But if you drive an hour
south of Indianapolis, , you'll come across
Columbus, Indiana, which has all of these things. This place is thriving. But why? A good place to
start in unlocking the mystery of this place is
by visiting the former home of J. Erwin and
Xenia Miller, who commissioned famed
architect Eero Saarinen to design it in 1953. Dan Kiley was brought on for the
surrounding gardens, expanding on the geometries of
Saarinen's architecture and creating spatial
enclosures in the landscape like this allee of
honeylocust trees. A system of cruciform steel
columns supports the house and creates a grid that informs
the division of the interior. You enter to find an
open space containing the home's main living areas. Here you'll also find
the most magnificent of conversation pits, whose
pillows were changed seasonally according to the brilliant
and colorful interior design scheme and textiles
of Alexander Girard. A terrace overlooks
a sweeping lawn that leads to the Flat Rock River. The corners of the house
contain the more private areas, a kitchen, the master
bedroom, the kids' quarters, and a guest suite. Every part of the home
is rigorously considered, but still warm and inviting. It's a masterpiece of modern
architecture and design, the collaborative output of the
triumvirate of Saarinen, Kiley, and Girard, as well as
the visionary couple who commissioned and cared for it. J. Irwin Miller was the
president and chairman of Cummins Engine Company,
based in Columbus. And he wasn't just interested
in the design of his own home. He was involved in the decision
to hire architect Eliel Saarinen, Eero's father, for
the building of First Christian CHURCH in 1942, which was
Columbus's first building in the modern style. Adjacent to the church,
next to its sunken garden, is a temporary installation by
the architecture firm Studio Indigenous based in Milwaukee. Made of rebar and
copper mesh scales, the structure was inspired by
the dwellings of the Myaamia people indigenous to Indiana. Its vertical form echoes and
points to the church's tower, and is aligned to mark
the autumnal equinox. Wikiiaami is a welcoming shelter
with just the right amount of sun filtering through,
and with its careful siting next to the church,
helps me appreciate the many different
types of structures we humans construct to gather,
socialize, and worship. The installation is part of the
First Exhibit Columbus, which describes itself as an annual
exploration of architecture, art, design, and community. Last year there was a
symposium to kick off a discussion about the state
of architecture and design in Columbus. And this year
there's an exhibition featuring 18 outdoor,
site-responsive installations. You'll find another of these
across the street in front of the Cleo Rogers Memorial
Library, designed by IM Pei and completed in 1969. Boston-based firm ikd has
created the conversation plinth that encircles the Henry
Moore sculpture that sits in the library
plaza, a gift to the city from the
Millers, installed in 1971. Ikd's plinth is inspired
in part by the conversation pit we saw earlier, but rather
than sinking into the ground, it rises up, inviting new
ways to circulate around the sculpture and allowing
for views of the plaza from new heights. Like Moore's sculpture,
its curvilinear forms counteract the rigid
geometries of the buildings that surround it. From there we stopped
by the visitor's center, where we snagged an
Exhibit Columbus map and plotted our course. We passed the home and
gardens where Miller grew up. He came from prominent
Columbus stock, as you can probably
tell, from the family that owned the town bank. After studying at
Yale and Oxford, Miller returned and took
the helm at Cummins Engine, transforming the company
into a very successful one. In 1954, he established
the Cummins Foundation and made an open
offer to the city that the foundation
would pay all architects' fees for the construction
of new buildings so long as they
selected an architect from a Miller-approved list. And that's why
you'll find schools like Lincoln
Elementary, designed in 1967 by Gunnar Birkerts,
next to Central Middle School by Perkins + Will. In between the schools are
Exhibit Columbus installations by teams of students
and faculty from five Midwestern universities
with master's programs in architecture and design. One of these is Cloud Bank by
a group from the University of Michigan, a structure that
is playfully sprouting corn with pig benches
frolicking about its feet. I was especially drawn
to the University of Cincinnati's
contribution, made entirely of recycled and
repurposed materials, an enclosure that
from the outside presents the blank
backsides of tiles, and then reveals their
colorful faces within. This array of
handcrafted ceramic tiles was made by the Brookwood
Pottery Company based out of Cincinnati since 1880. Along this stretch you'll see
a wide range of approaches to this particular site
within this particular town, and impressive demonstrations
of material experimentation. We headed back
toward Main Street and passed the mirrored
glass facade of the 1978 AT&T switching center, admiring
the brightly colored stacks of the buildings HVAC system. A functional, oft disguised
aspect of a building is not only given
prominence, but made a hallmark of the design. Just next door we found
an installation outside of a historic post
office, this one created by a team of high
school students from Columbus. A series of panels strung
with vibrant plastic lacing with colors inspired by the
work of Alexander Girard vibrate in the wind
and are arranged into a maze-like structure that
can be explored from within. Washington Street is Columbus's
main commercial artery, and along it you'll
find charming shops like Baker's Fine
Gifts, where we witnessed an epic
showdown between the shop dog and a renegade bird. Spoiler alert, the bird escaped. You can buy Exhibit
Columbus t-shirts here, too. International design
galleries were tapped to create installations
along the street, including Cody Hoyt's Theoretical Foyer,
replacing existing sidewalk bricks with new concrete
ones, a pixelated version of a motif drawn from
Girard-designed seat cushions in Miller House. We passed a series
of concrete benches by Copenhagen-based
Pettersen and Hein, along with a subtle but
seductive progression of low lying circular elements
made by Mexico City-based Productora. We spotted one outside of the
Eero Saarinen-designed Irwin Conference Center, and
this quiet little form perched on the curb
drew my attention to the variety of textures and
details of my surroundings. Around the corner we found
Oyler Wu Collaborative's The Exchange, built off of
the canopies that once served as drive-up tellers during
the structure's first life as a bank. This porous but intimate complex
of walls, canopies, and benches completes the geometries implied
by Saarinen's original design, and also plays off of
them, looking both new and like it should
have always been there. A few paces away is the Roche
Dinkeloo-designed Cummins corporate office building,
completed in 1984. It features a permanent pergola
under which Plan B Architecture and Urbanism has propagated a
landscape of mirrored columns and grassy knolls, which
we weaved our way through, wishing our break
room was 1/8 this rad. We followed a herd
of Cummins employees to the nearby Le
Petit Caraibe, where we devoured a variety
of Caribbean dishes like jerk chicken,
lentils, stewed pork, and fried plantains,
all delicious. And then, needing
to walk it off, we continued on,
making a brief stop at The Commons, a community
gathering space that features an indoor play space
for kids, a Subway sandwich shop, and oh, hey, this
fantastic 1974 kinetic sculpture by Swiss
artist Jean Tinguely. We stood mesmerized
by its twisting shapes and turning gears until we felt
the pull from across the street of Brooklyn-based
Snarkitecture's Playhouse, wedged
delightfully in an alley. Like any good outdoor exhibition
these days, Exhibit Columbus has some very fine
Instagrammable moments. And this one, with its forced
perspective, is probably tops. Nearby we admired more
of Productora's circles-- by this point they're
really winning me over-- and also took in a
storefront exhibition about the making of
Exhibit Columbus. Models and prototypes are on
display at the installations, five of which emerged
from the-- wait for it-- J. Irwin and Xenia S.
Miller Prize Competition. Nationally and internationally
recognized design firms were invited to participate
in the symposium with winners selected by jury. And although we were
still full from lunch, when there's an old
fashioned ice cream parlor that's been
around since 1900, by all means you must go in it. And since you're there, you
might as well order a root beer float, made the old fashioned
way by the deft and sassy soda jerk Wilma Hare. It looks really, really good,
and it was really, really good. On our way back to our car, we
discovered a curious brick wall in a courtyard whose little
neon arrow politely suggested we investigate further. Around back, the
structure helpfully shared with us its title
and its motivation, a rotating exhibition
space providing a window onto the materials that make up
the architecture of Columbus. The wall itself
is made of bricks glazed with volcanic ash clay
and salt from Mount Etna. A short drive away we sought
out North Christian Church, another collaboration of Eero
Saarinen on the architecture and Dan Kiley on the landscape. Sited on a former cornfield,
the hexagonal building's sloping roofline sits low. But its spire reaches
an epic 192 feet high, a comparatively tiny cross
at the top communicating its purpose. It's hard to imagine anything
holding up next to such a dramatic sight, and the
Exhibit Columbus installation on its grounds, made
by students and faculty from Indiana University,
wisely does not try to compete. It's a light and
airy counterpoint to the dark mass of the
church, offering a quiet spot to sit in the shade. But the ultimate place
to sit in the shade is within the church
itself, the experience of which I can
find no better word to describe than otherworldly. While that would have
been a fine enough moment to conclude our
visit, we didn't want to skip Mill Race Park, a
flood plain that was once a tannery, then an area of
substandard housing known as Death Valley, and since
the '60s, a serene park. It was redesigned in 1992
with a historic bridge set alongside a
large circular pond. Here there's an installation
by Miranda Lash, an arrangement of thousands of
offcuts of Indiana limestone. While its stated goal is to
articulate fields of activity for contemporary park visitors,
it's likeness to headstones cannot and should
not be ignored. It's a kind of mini
rambling Stonehenge with whorls and successions
of cairn-like stacks pulling me this way and that
in my meandering through it. It's here that I
can't help but wonder, what are public spaces for? What are we supposed to do here? Which way do I walk? Where do I sit? What kinds of forms encourage
circulation, congregation contemplation, or remembrance? I asked myself these
questions throughout Columbus. How do we design for
private life and for public? What do we need our
spaces to do right now, and how does that
change over time? What kinds of gestures, be they
small or large, make an impact? And what role do I play? For that matter, what
even is good design? What are its implications
on a daily basis and in the long run? The installations
of Exhibit Columbus are charged with the
considerable task of enlivening our
engagement with works of architecture, design, and art
that are already masterpieces. But in this anomaly of a
place, created and sustained by an anomaly of
a values-driven, multinational
Fortune 500 company, one cannot just rest
on one's laurels. The laurels must not only be
cultivated and maintained, but also constantly assessed,
reassessed, and cross-examined. If we don't continue to
think about these places, talk about them, and make new
and thoughtful interventions around and about
them, how will they continue to be the
useful, provocative, and aspirational structures
they were designed to be? Columbus was and is a
radical experiment in living. And through the efforts of
its stewards and innovators and makers, those who reside
here and those who visit, it has a pretty good
chance of staying that way. [MUSIC PLAYING]
I know nerdfighteria is John's hometown but this is my actual hometown!