Tag Archives: architecture

Travel Tips: Columbus, Indiana

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Columbus, Indiana

National Historic Landmark by Myron Goldsmith

Enticed by seeing the small movie Columbus last year, we put this mecca of modernist architecture on our post-Derby travel itinerary. It had long lurked in the back of my mind as a place to visit one day, but the movie crystallized that wish. In it, an architect’s son, played by John Cho, stays at an elegant bed and breakfast (The Inn at Irwin Gardens, where we stayed too!) and helps a young Columbus resident (Haley Lu Richardson), understand what’s so great about the buildings she’s been surrounded by her whole life.

It started during World War II with a church. First Christian Church member J. Irwin Miller, the head of the area’s largest employer, Cummins Engine Company, persuaded the congregation not to build another faux-gothic pile, but a modern church. Eliel Saarinen’s design became the country’s first “modern” church. It was followed by the first modern bank building.

Post-war, the city experienced the baby boom and the need for new schools. The first were pre-fab structures, truly awful. Miller gave the school board a list of five U.S. architects and promised that, if they chose one of them for the next school, his foundation would pay the design fee. The result was so successful that many more architect-designed schools, followed by fire houses and libraries, as well as other churches, banks, and factories followed.

Flamenco

Flamenco by Ruth Aizuss Migdal; photo: Vicki Weisfeld

Buildings by such architectural luminaries as the Saarinens (Eliel and Eero), Robert A.M. Stern, Harry Weese, Cesar Pelli, Robert Venturi, Richard Meier, and I.M. Pei. Landscape architects and significant sculptural pieces followed, with installations by Henry Moore, Dessa Kirk, Dale Chihuly, and Ruth Aizuss Migdal (Her “Flamenco” was a favorite).

Miller and his  wife (a woman from a modest background, whom he met over the bargaining table. He was Management, she was Labor) built a home designed by Eero Saarinen, with interiors by noted graphic artist and architect Alexander Girard, that is both modest and magnificent. One of seven Columbus buildings deemed a National Historic Landmark, its most appealing feature for me was Saarinen’s ingenious tic-tac-toe lines of skylights that deliver bright outdoor light to almost every room of the house.

The Visitor’s Center provides maps, tours of the Miller House, and a lovely gift shop.

So near?

From Louisville: 72 miles
From Columbus, Ohio: 189 miles
From Chicago: 227 miles
From St. Louis: 284 miles

Books to toss in your suitcase

Columbus, Indiana – photographic essay by Thomas R. Schiff
The Cathedral Builder –  Biography of J. Irwin Miller by Charles E. Mitchell Rentschler
Alexander Girard: Popular Edition – by Kiera Coffee and Todd Oldham

Columbus

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“A lot of today’s Hollywood films don’t have a lot of patience. They sort of expect the audience to get bored really quickly, so they’re like, ‘We’ve got to have an explosion every 10 minutes.’” That was said about the dystopian science-fiction sequel Blade Runner 2049. It’s hard then to imagine how a film like Columbus, the debut film of writer/director Kogonada,  got made at all or that American audiences would sit through it. I liked it.

Set in Columbus, Indiana, home to an astonishing collection of modernist architecture, the buildings speak to a young city resident, Casey (played by Haley Lu Richardson). She’s been offered a chance to go to Boston to work and study with a prominent woman architect, but has decided to stay where she is, shelving books in the local library. She lives with her mother, recently recovered from a bad meth habit, and is afraid to leave her. They treat each other like thin-shelled eggs that require constant vigilance. She has an admirer at the library (Rory Culkin), who, like her mother, urges her to go.

This stasis changes when she meets Jin (John Cho), the New York-based son of a prominent Korean architecture scholar who suffered a stroke while visiting the town. He’s in the hospital and may never recover consciousness. He and Jin have had a distant relationship and Jin feels little connection now. He wants to get back to his life. The father is probably closer to his long-time assistant (Parker Posey), who, like Casey, has given up her individuality to play a supporting role.

Richardson and Cho bring great depth to their parts, and it’s a pleasure to watch them—indeed, the entire cast—work. There’s not a lot of yelling or acting out. And not one explosion.

The example of Casey, denying herself so much to protect her mother, weighs on Jin, just as his encouragement to follow her dream inspires her. This sounds simple, but the movie never drifts into the banal. The healing power of architecture is often referenced and the Columbus buildings, lit from inside at night or seen from odd angles, are stunningly beautiful. They loom over the characters studying them like benign watchmen. Arty, and satisfying—as Sean P. Means said in the Salt Lake Tribune, “a tender, beautiful gem that should not be overlooked.”

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 97%; audiences 84%.

Oak Park, Illinois, & Frank Lloyd Wright

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Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright, Laurel Highlands

Fallingwater (photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

This year marks the 150th year anniversary of architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s birth, and the design world is using the occasion to reexamine his ideas and precepts, as well as to celebrate his lasting legacy. My parents were big FLW fans in the 1950s, and my dad designed our little house with many of his principles in mind. Although Wright died almost 60 years ago, in 1969, he’s probably still the architect most Americans can name.

He’s of course known for his many heavily visited landmarks: Fallingwater and the nearby Kentuck Knob south of Pittsburgh, Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin, and Taliesin West in Scottsdale, and if you go to the Guggenheim Museum, you’re in the Wright place. I’ve also visited the lesser-known, but beautiful Dana-Thomas House in Springfield, Ill., but until this month, had never been to where it all started, in Oak Park, Ill.

If you go, the FLW Trust offers a guided tour of his studio and home, where he lived with his first wife and their children. There’s also an easy walking tour of nine Wright-designed houses in the immediate neighborhood. The Unity Temple, recently refurbished for millions of dollars, is nearby (not yet reopened for visitors as of early July).

After these experiences, you’ll recognize how Wright’s prairie-style designs, daring cantilevers, and use of simple materials for complex effects continue to influence architects today. You may be surprised at how many of his rooms are rather small. He emphasized the quality of the space people were to inhabit, not the quantity.

Wright was a larger-than-life personality—with a messy personal life—and maybe that’s what it took to break with the past and develop new approaches and methods to solve design problems. While he was a modern architect, he didn’t go in for the spare, unembellished approach we think of as “modern.” His work contains a surprising amount of beautiful decoration, in the form of leaded glass, wood carving, brickwork. He even designed the furniture and light fixtures for his buildings.

In a Wright structure, there is always something interesting to draw the eye, including nature—outdoor views he brought inside through thoughtful window placement. So in this 150th year, celebrate an American icon.

See:
Frank Lloyd Wright at MoMA, New York City – an exhibit with much new material and insights
Taliesin West, Scottsdale, Ariz.
FLW Trust, Oak Park, Ill.
FLW Public Sites Directory

Special coverage:
Architectural Digest, “Frank Lloyd Wright’s Beautiful Houses, Structures & Buildings”
Metropolis, July/August, “Wright, Relevant as Ever”
Bloomberg, “Frank Lloyd Wright Is Not Who You Think He Is”