Five national or international design firms have been named as winners of Exhibit Columbus’ J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize.
The honor is what organizers call “the centerpiece of Exhibit Columbus.” The Miller Prize salutes a Columbus couple largely responsible for establishing or promoting the local and even part of the worldwide art and architecture scene.
Exhibit Columbus celebrates Columbus’ design heritage while making it relevant to new audiences, according to organizers.
The five firms’ work will be displayed as part of the second Exhibit Columbus exhibition in August 2019. But first, they each will be the featured participants during this year’s Exhibit Columbus National Symposium, speaking Sept. 29 on the final day of the four-day event which opens in Indianapolis and concludes in Columbus.
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The five inaugural Miller Prize winners were announced in January 2017, with their works exhibited starting in August of last year.
The second group of Miller Prize winners — each of them earning $70,000 for being chosen — are:
Agency Landscape + Planning, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Bryony Roberts Studio of New York City.
Frida Escobedo Studio of Mexico City, Mexico.
MASS Design Group of Boston, Massachusetts and Kigali, Rwanda.
SO-IL of New York City.
Representatives of these firms will return to Columbus on Jan. 19, 2019, to present their design concepts to the community, and then will build site-responsive installations that relate to the context of the many important landmarks around downtown Columbus as part of the 2019 exhibition, which will open to the public Aug. 24, 2019.
As a source of inspiration for the 2018-19 cycle of programming, Exhibit Columbus looked to the 1986 exhibition, “Good Design in the Community: Columbus, Indiana,” organizers said. This exhibition was mounted by the National Building Museum when Columbus businessman and philanthropist J. Irwin Miller became the first living American inducted into the Museum’s Hall of Fame.
“These five winners represent studios at the top of their game in North America,” said Richard McCoy, among the founders of Exhibit Columbus. “Each of them are excellent at making works that improve people’s lives.”
These firms are larger and more experienced firms than those selected for the 2017 exhibition, McCoy said. Part of that is connected to the inaugural exhibition’s success and stature, he said.
“And they do give us a more global feel,” McCoy said. “But I think it also gives us more of a Columbus today-and-tomorrow feel. Columbus is a small city that is certainly globally connected. Go to lunch almost day now, and you see people from all over the world.”
He pointed out that fewer than half of the Cummins Inc. workforce is employed in the United States. Additionally, a large number of Japanese firms flourish in Columbus and France-based Faurecia enjoys a substantial global presence.
“The Miller Prize recipients speak to the (Millers’) curatorial theme and what Columbus is all about,” McCoy said. “But we also want them in some way to represent what Mr. and Mrs. Miller were all about — and to continue that legacy of equity and inclusion.”
McCoy referred, for example, to the fact that J. Irwin Miller actively promoted women and minorities as chief executive officer of Cummins Engine as early as the 1950s amid even the tension of the civil rights movement. He also was an outspoken opponent of apartheid in South Africa, even when it cost Cummins financially.
Mirroring that is the fact that Miller prize winner MASS partnered with the Equal Justice Initiative to design and build the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, a site for reflection on the nation’s history of racial terror and lynching. The memorial opened in April 2018 to national praise.
McCoy said that Exhibit Columbus’ 15-member curatorial team suggested firms for the Miller prizes.
Columbus resident Jeff Baker is a big Exhibit Columbus Columbus supporter who worked with John Pickett to organize the project’s sold-out preview party in August. When Baker looked over the prize winners and their experience, he said was impressed, calling them “among the cream of the crop of young designers.”
In fact, via online presentations and news, he already was somewhat familiar with two of the picks: Frida Excobedo Studio in Mexico City, Mexico, and MASS Design Group in Boston, Massachusetts and Kigali, Rwanda.
“They’re changing the face of the earth,” Baker said.
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Biographies for the latest Miller Prize winners, provided by Exhibit Columbus, are:
- Agency Landscape + Planning in Cambridge, Massachusetts — Formed by landscape architect Gina Ford and planner Brie Hensold. The duo currently is leading the White River Vision Plan, a year-long strategic plan for 58 miles of the White River in Indiana. The pair also has worked on major efforts such as the Chicago Riverwalk project.
- Bryony Roberts Studio in New York City — Founder and principal Bryony Roberts uses design “to bring attention to overlooked social histories and to make intangible heritage vivid and accessible to contemporary audiences.” This work involves close collaboration with communities seeking to preserve and sustain their own histories. Her New York exhibition “Marching On” included a performance of the Marching Cobras of New York to in part demonstrate that “African-American marching bands have long been powerful agents of cultural and political expression, celebrating collective identities.”
- Frida Escobedo Studio in Mexico City, Mexico — Principal Frida Escobedo produces work that ranges from art installation and furniture design to residential and public buildings in Mexico and around the world. The firm’s projects include “You know you cannot see so well as by reflection,” a summer pavilion designed for the central courtyard of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2015. In 2018, she became the youngest architect to work on the Serpentine Pavilion in London.
- MASS Design Group in Boston, Massachusetts and Kigali, Rwanda — This nonprofit architecture firm that has built “a reputation for sensitive projects that strengthen community ties and use architecture to heal. It was recognized with the 2017 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture, and the 2018 Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Architecture. MASS partnered with the Equal Justice Initiative to design and build the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a site for reflection on the nation’s history of racial terror and lynching. The memorial opened in April 2018 to national praise.
- SO-IL in New York City — A future-oriented architectural design firm led by Florian Idenburg, Jing Liu and Ilias Papageorgiou, SO-IL’s work is grounded in the conviction that architecture’s power resides in its ability to affect humankind for the better. Its projects explore fundamental questions such as “How do we want to live?” in innovative, expansive ways. SO-IL first made a splash with “Pole Dance” for the Museum of Modern Art PS1 in New York City, a playful installation that invited visitors to interact with communal space in new and unexpected ways. It is known for projects such as the Kukje Gallery in Seoul, Korea.
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