Exploring the theme New Middles: From Main Street To Megalopolis, What Is The Future of The Middle City?, the 2020-21 cycle of Exhibit Columbus has launched the latest Design Presentations in an accessible four-session virtual format. While the presentations during the initial two sessions on March 19th focused on the topics Ecologies and Geographies, the next event, taking place this Friday, March 26th, will present two sessions with featured designers and architects covering Visibilities and Possibilities.
As the official media sponsor for Exhibit Columbus' Design Presentations, Archinect is delighted to highlight each session and introduce the featured designers and their work.
If you missed Part 1 of Archinect's coverage of the event, click here to learn more about the presenters of the March 19th sessions.
Curating the 2020-21 New Middles cycle are architect Iker Gil, founder of MAS Studio and the nonprofit MAS Context and Executive Director of the SOM Foundation, together with Los Angeles-based critic, editor, and curator Mimi Zeiger.
"The Design Presentations draw on Columbus' identity as a city for experimentation and collaboration by bringing the public into the creative process," shares Anne Surak, Director of Exhibit Columbus. "The event is the first chance for the public to preview the exhibition and an exciting opportunity to learn how our city continues to fuel new architecture, art, and design."
Starting off the Friday, March 26th sessions is Visibilities, from 10:00 am to 12:00 pm EST. Click here to register.
Besides the official presenters, the event will be joined by special guests Maite Borjabad (Neville Bryan Assistant Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design, Art Institute of Chicago), Jia Gu (Director, MAK Center for Art and Architecture), Dave Hayward (Executive Director of Public Works, City of Columbus), Enrique Ramirez (Architectural Historian), Shanda Sasse (Manager, The Commons), and Dave Wissman (Director of Facilities, Cummins Inc).
Featured Designer: Sam Jacob is the principal of London-based interdisciplinary firm Sam Jacob Studio. The practice's work ranges from curatorial projects through art and design to architecture, including the Cartoon Museum, the exhibition Disappear Here, the installation Sea Things, and the famous Half-Timber t-shirt that Archinect carried in its Archinect Outpost store. Jacob is currently a professor of Architecture at University of Illinois Chicago, a columnist for Art Review, and was previously a founding director of FAT Architecture.
Site Details: Washington Street, Columbus' "Main Street," has been a place of civic and commercial exchange now for 200 years.
Featured Designers: Lola Sheppard, a Professor at the School of Architecture, University of Waterloo, and Mason White, Professor at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, & Design at the University of Toronto, are the founding partners of Toronto-based practice Lateral Office. Highly collaborative, the team embraces a research-driven processes and experimental work, such as Canada's 2014 Venice Biennale pavilion "Arctic Adaptations: Nunavut at 15." Mason White is also an editor of Bracket, Archinect's collaborative publication with InfraNet Lab. For the Exhibit Columbus project, they will be joined by team member Kearon Roy Taylor.
Site Details: Currently awaiting redevelopment, the green space at Sixth and Washington Street was previously the A&P grocery store where many downtown residents would shop. More recently, this space has hosted many community activities and events.
Featured Designer: Ang Li is an Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture at Northeastern University. Researching and exploring the "maintenance practices and material afterlives behind architectural production," her work has been featured in a number of recent exhibitions, including the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the Villa Terra Decorative Arts Museum, and the Carnegie Museum of Art.
Site Details: The current version of the Commons was designed by Koetter Kim & Associates (2011) and is home to a popular playground and Jean Tinguely’s monumental kinetic sculpture Chaos I (1974). The front of the building was rebuilt in part from the original structure by Cesar Pelli of Gruen and Associates (1973) and is an interesting example of a small city creating a modern super-block to inject much-needed life to downtown Columbus while suburbanization sprawled across America.
Featured Designers: Chicago-based architecture practice Future Firm was founded by Ann Lui and Craig Reschke in 2015. Their team operates on projects of variously scales, ranging from events to residential and commercial buildings to urban and territorial speculations. Learn more about the two designers in our 2019 Studio Snapshot interview with Future Firm.
Site Details: Remnants of the the original Commons and Courthouse Center remain facing west on Brown Street, between 3rd and 4th Streets. The original Commons was a project born out of a desire to meld architecture and technology to ennoble the civic spirit. Designed by Cesar Pelli of Gruen and Associates in 1973, it included a shopping mall anchored by a Sears department store, movie theatre, and an "indoor park." The scheme also featured extensive interior landscaping and surface effects housed within a brown glaze wrapper to create a new kind of urban experience.
The afternoon session, from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm EST, focuses on Possibilities. Click here to register.
The list of special guests includes Cole Akers (Curator + Special Projects Manager, The Glass House), Rosalie Genevro (Executive Director, The Architectural League of New York), Jason Hatton (Library Director, Bartholomew County Public Library), Jay Payne (Principal, Central Middle School), and Javier Peña-Ibáñez (Director, Concéntrico).
Featured Designers: Columbus' influential patron of modern architecture, J. Irwin Miller, once said: "The influence of architecture with which we are surrounded in our youth affects our lives, our standards, our tastes when we are grown, just as the influence of the parents and teachers with which we are surrounded in our youth affects us as adults." In this spirit, Exhibit Columbus has invited a team of students from the Bartholomew Consolidated School Corporation (BCSC) to create an installation as part of the 2021 exhibition. The High School Design Team Leaders are Naricyn Andis, Brody Copas, Harley Grant, Chase Jones, Andrew Krueger, Alyson Le, Eshaan Mehta, Grishma Pitkar, Alex Thomas, and C4 Instructor Darin Johnson.
Site Details: Designed by Perkins + Will in 2008, Central Middle School offers innovative learning for 7th and 8th grade students in the Bartholomew Consolidated School Corporation. This distinctive, sawtooth-patterned building replaced a former school building, making this a site of education for more than 100 years.
Featured Designers: Architects Belinda Tato and Jose Luis Vallejo founded Ecosistema Urbano in 2000 in Madrid. Specializing in architecture, public space design, urban consultancy, and urban transformation processes, the team has been developing "participatory tools and techniques to involve citizens in the creative and transforming processes of urban environments," like this Energy Carousel in Dordrecht, The Netherlands. Both designers have been teaching at the Harvard Graduate School of Design since 2010.
Site Details: Designed by Perkins + Will in 2008, Central Middle School offers innovative learning for 7th and 8th grade students in the Bartholomew Consolidated School Corporation. This distinctive, sawtooth-patterned building replaced a former school building, making this a site of education for more than 100 years.
Featured Designer: Olalekan Jeyifous is a Brooklyn-based visual artist with an impressive portfolio of large-scale public artworks, fellowships (including United States Artist and New York Foundation of the Arts), grants (New York State Council and the Brooklyn Arts Council), and artist residencies (Drawing Center's Open Sessions program and the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center). He is currently part of the MoMA exhibition Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America.
Site Details: The Cleo Rogers Memorial Library building was completed in 1969 as one of I.M. Pei’s earliest significant projects. The library sits adjacent to the former Irwin Sweeny Miller family home and across from Eliel Saarinen’s iconic First Christian Church. Henry Moore’s sculpture, Large Arch, frames views of the surroundings. The dialogue between library, church, and sculpture, provides a panoramic view of Columbus history through the dynamic public plaza known anecdotally as "the community’s living room."
--
*Acknowledging the land the exhibition is held on as well as the city's name, Exhibit Columbus and the Landmark Columbus Foundation shared: "Landmark Columbus Foundation acknowledges that this area has been a site of human activity for more than 12,000 years through the rich and vibrant cultures of the Adena, Hopewell, Cahokia, Shawnee, Miami, and Kickapoo, and Delaware Nations. In a state named for Indians, in a city named for Christopher Columbus, we recognize that many people called this region home centuries before the first Europeans arrived. Although this land was ceded to the United States of America by the Miami and Delaware Nations through the Treaty of St. Mary’s in 1818, we recognize that the languages, culture, and traditions of these nations continue to this day. At the natural confluence of waterways and rich soil, the Columbus area has long drawn people to gather. As we continue to make Columbus the best city of its size, we strive to be good stewards of this land and place, as those before us."
Alexander Walter grew up in East Germany with plenty of Bratwurst. He studied Architecture and Media Design at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Germany, and participated in foreign exchange programs with Washington-Alexandria Architecture Consortium in Alexandria, Virginia and Waseda University in ...
No Comments
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.