Photo by Hadley Fruits Alba Cortes (left), Brose Partington (center) and Isaac Solis of Tatiana Bilbao ESTUDIO discuss their installation for Exhibit Columbus.
The construction that has helped residents in recent years, they say, see the city’s older, Modernist celebrated structures with new eyes has begun again.
Yet, most of the building blocks are coming together outside Columbus — in places ranging from Indianapolis to Chicago, where fabricators are located.
Such is the case for the 13 varied installations for the 2023 Exhibit Columbus architectural exhibition “Public By Design” opening Aug. 25-26 with a soon-to-be-announced newfangled celebration.
“The Miller Prize installations and others are very much in the works,” said Richard McCoy, executive director of the nonprofit Landmark Columbus Foundation, the umbrella agency for Exhibit Columbus. “And by the first week of August, you’ll see a lot of these people setting things up right here.”
The Miller Prize installations generally are the most involved installations, each constructed on an $80,000 budget. They are considered the centerpiece of the free event.
And make no mistake, in a town with a promotional push that boasts it’s “different by design,” when they build it, people will come. Some 40,000 estimated people enjoyed the first exhibition efforts in some way or another in 2017. This marks the exhibition’s fourth celebration since it is held every other year.
Exhibit Columbus is “an exploration of community, architecture, art, and design that activates the modern legacy of Columbus,” according to the event and entity’s mission statement. And McCoy and his board have been even more purposeful in the past year or so to emphasize that the bottom line of worldwide designers imaginatively creating new, temporary, three-month pieces next to well-known structures is about far more than refined lines and sleek schematics.
That front-and-center emphasis also has come from new Landmark Columbus Foundation Chairman Mark Elwood.
“Our overall purpose,” McCoy said, “adds up to make this area a better place to live. And we believe that putting an installation — one by a really famous architect — at the Bartholomew County Public Library can help in some way in shaping what the public understands what the public library is.”
The exhibition has caught the attention of some because it mixes the work with some of the globe’s top designers, and top up-and-comers, with a contingent known as the High School Design Team guided by an instructor and sometimes by local architects. But they have originated their creations — and won the public’s approval the first year, if social media comments were any indication.
“The High School Design Team has been crushing it,” McCoy said.
It began with more than 30 students working together in the fall. Most recently, a core of about a dozen students have been working in the C4 program space at Columbus North High School to put together an installation they call “Machi,” Japanese for a busy downtown street. It will be located next to the east Cummins parking garage downtown.
“I’d say we’re in the home stretch,” said Nettie Meeks, who will begin studying architecture next month at Ball State University. “We’re just about finished with our steel tubing.”
That element supports the installation’s awning that provides shade for relaxing or unwinding. But Meek’s favorite piece of the work are Lego-style wooden blocks that will be used for seating.
She chuckled about her team’s softened swagger that impressed a crowd of more than 300 people at The Commons in February when designers offered overviews of their planned designs.
“Growing up in Columbus around all this architecture has definitely given many of us a sense of confidence,” she said.
For more
For more on the Exhibit Columbus exhibition and installation, visit https://www.exhibitcolumbus.org.
