Mike Wolanin | The Republic Landmark Columbus Executive Director Richard McCoy addresses guests during the 2022 Exhibit Columbus Symposium at The Commons in Columbus, Ind., Friday, Oct. 21, 2022.
A design leader from the nation’s Capitol said mayors must be willing to become “the chief urban designer of their city.” And good and thoughtful design ideally can attack problems ranging from racial inequity to community divisions.
Those were the words of Trinity Simons Wagner, executive director of the Mayor’s Institute on City Design based in Washington, D.C. She served as keynote speaker Friday morning at the opening session at The Commons of the Exhibit Columbus symposium. She spoke before a crowd of about 150 people, ranging from representatives from offices such as the Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce to visiting architecture students and others nationwide and also from Mexico.
The two-day event, under the theme of “Public By Design,” continues today at various locations listed at exhibitcolumbus.org
Simons Wagner’s organization has worked with some 1,200 mayors from tiny towns to metro cities and 700 design professionals through the years, according to its figures. That includes Columbus, too.
“We believe that mayors and designers are natural bedfellows (to work together),” Simons Wagner said.
Exhibit Columbus is an exploration of community, architecture, art, and design that activates the modern legacy of Columbus. Since the event began in 2017 with an exhibition, it has drawn thousands of people to its sometimes temporary structures, workshops and presentations, and triggered renewed international publicity and interest in the city’s heralded, mid-century modern architecture.
Plus, it has triggered something not previously and regularly noticed publicly locally — a burgeoning interest among teens and 20-somethings in local architecture and its impact and importance. That interest has been evidenced by everything from social media posts to discussions among young residents in local eateries and cafes.
In fact, a team of teens seated on the front row of the downtown venue were among the opening session’s key volunteers with the Landmark Columbus Foundation, the nonprofit umbrella agency of Exhibit Columbus.
The mayor’s institute began in 1986. Simons Wagner acknowledged that mayors’ urgent messages in those early days were all about work.
“The mantra at the time was very much jobs, jobs, jobs,” she said “And for the most part, it didn’t seem to matter what the buildings (for the jobs) looked like, and how they connected and interacted with the streets or the larger city.”
Simons Wagner was happy to report that, through her organization’s work and others’ efforts, that picture has changed — especially with more communities putting more emphasis on quality of life issues in order to attract and retain its brightest workers. Simons Wagner said that by the time she became the institute’s executive director in 2012, “mayors began to really get it” about using thoughtful design as a tool for good — something that late local industrialist and architectural aficionado J. Irwin Miller long believed in.
This weekend’s symposium is borrowing a page from the institute’s playbook, casting a variety of city leaders, from Bartholomew County Public Library Director Jason Hatton to Mill Race Center Executive Director Dan Mustard as a mayor of sorts as they meet with 2023 Exhibit Columbus exhibition architects for a broad range of design exploration.
“Of course, we’re not solving problems here for the long term,” said Richard McCoy, executive director of Landmark Columbus Foundation. “We having an exhibition and we’re trying to have fun.”
McCoy mentioned later in the day that the session discussions and ideas “are the start of what will become the installations” for the fall Exhibit Columbus exhibition.
Simons Wagner mentioned that she has long been impressed with the mix of local city leadership and design, dating all the way back to her first visit to Columbus — “a remarkable place” — 20 years ago amid an architectural school field trip.
“I for one am encouraged and inspired by what is happening here,” she said.
She also has found encouragement in efforts such as the proposed Eleventh Street Bridge Park Project in Washington, D.C. that includes equitable development components such as more affordable housing in a depressed, nearby area and ways to incorporate arts and culture to enhance the quality of life. The effort includes a plan to include spending as much money to improve the surrounding neighborhoods as will be spent on the park infrastructure itself.
Simons Wagner called this “design’s role in the achieving justice in the built environment.”
Today’s symposium schedule
A schedule of today’s Exhibit Columbus events is found at exhibitcolumbus.org and in today’s Community Calendar in The Republic on Page A2.
