In the years before his death, the late Marine, astronaut, and US Senator John Glenn had a vision to create a place of gathering and remembrance for veterans of all conflicts. It would not be a traditional war memorial or military museum, but a place that would honor veterans and promote civic discourse, sharing stories of service through interactive exhibits, oral histories, images, and personal artifacts.
https://www.archdaily.com/908954/allied-works-new-museum-in-columbus-is-designed-for-the-history-of-the-futureKatherine Allen
Allied Works has, since their founding in 1994, become known for their portfolio of delicately balanced and civic-minded works. Their Clyfford Still Museum in Denver has in particular been recognized in numerous awards and publications - but may perhaps be overshadowed by their most recent built work.
The National Veterans Memorial and Museum, located in Columbus, Ohio elevates what might have been a staid and somber program into a public space with an urban outlook. The museum, composed of intersecting white concrete bands, opens onto a lustrous landscape (designed by OLIN) and connects the formerly neglected riverfront to the small city’s downtown.
The Exchange / Oyler Wu Collaborative. Image Courtesy of Oyler Wu Collaborative
On its outskirts, you'd be forgiven for assuming that Columbus, Indiana is a suburban American town like any other. But travel downtown and you're suddenly greeted with an unexpected variety of modern architecture. The small midwestern city has for the past half-century been a kind of laboratory for contemporary architecture, attracting designers as diverse as Kevin Roche and IM Pei. Children attend school in a building designed by Richard Meier, congregants attend services in a church designed by Eliel Saarinen.
How does the built environment--whether fictitious or entirely founded in reality--impact how we experience and process film? From lesser-known indies to blockbuster movies, the ways in which architecture and the built environment inform everything from scene and setting, to dialogue and character development has far-reaching effects on the audience’s cinematic experience. Below, a roundup of everything from recent releases to classic cinephile favorites uncovers the myriad ways in which film utilizes architecture as a means of achieving a more authentic and all-encompassing form of storytelling.
In this video, Spirit of Space visits Exhibit Columbus to see Wiikiaami, a parametrically designed structure by studio:indigenous. Beginning in 2016, Exhibit Columbus is an annual event which invites people to travel to the small, but architecturally fascinating Midwestern town of Columbus, Indiana. Free and open to the public through November 26th, Exhibit Columbus displays 18 unique, site-responsive architectural installations.
Oyler Wu Collaborative: Dwayne Oyler, Jenny Wu, Hans Koesters, Lung Chi Chang, Harrison Steinbuch, Irvin Shaifa, Clint Johnson, Andy Magner, Dongwoo Suk, Andrea Sanchez, Hsiyuan Pan, Thomas Lanham, Emilijia Landsbergis, Suhan Na, Ibrahim Ibrahim, Tucker van Leuwen-Hall
Engineering
Nous Engineering, Matthew Melnyk, Katahdin Engineering LLC, Elizabeth Woolf
If I had to guess, I would say that it has been forty years since Columbus, Indiana, was the hot topic of cocktail conversations at design-related get-togethers in New York City. In those days, it was the supercharged patronage of industrialist J. Irwin Miller and his relationships with designers like Eero Saarinen and Alexander Girard that spurred a wave of innovative and provocative architecture in the small Midwestern town. Columbus, with a population of 45,000, has a Robert Venturi fire station, a John Johansen school, a park by Michael Van Valkenburgh, and several buildings by Eliel and Eero Saarinen, including the younger’s iconic Miller House.
The "architectural pilgrimage" is much more than just everyday tourism. Studying and admiring a building through text and images often creates a hunger in architects, thanks to the space between the limitations of 2D representation and the true experience of the building. Seeing a building in person that one has long loved from a distance can become something of a spiritual experience, and architects often plan vacations around favorite or important spaces. But too often, architects become transfixed by a need to visit the same dozen European cities that have come to make up the traveling architect's bucket list.
The list here shares some sites that may not have made your list just yet. Although somewhat less well known than the canonical cities, the architecture of these six cities is sure to hold its ground against the world's best. The locations here make ideal long weekend trips (depending of course on where you are traveling from), although it never hurts to have more than a few days to really become immersed in a city. We have selected a few must-see buildings from each location, but each has even more to offer than what you see here—so don't be afraid to explore!
About twenty years after the last documentary on Kevin Roche was released, London-based film company Wavelength Pictures will produce an updated look at the life and work of the Pritzker Prize-winning architect, with a section of the film focusing on his projects in Columbus, Indiana, reports local paper The Republic. Wavelength Pictures plans to come to Columbus in 2016, filming buildings that Roche designed and conducting interviews.
Nationwide Children’s Hospital has selected NBBJ to design their $85 million Livingston Ambulatory Center in Columbus, Ohio. The six-story, 200,000-square-foot center will serve more than 100,000 patients annually. It will feature modular and flexible units centered around shared employee workspaces. Construction will begin in February.
Allied Works Architecture has released designs for the Ohio Veterans Memorial and Museum in Columbus. Set to complete by 2016, the billowing museum will be constructed on the banks of the Scioto River, directly across from downtown, as part of Scioto Peninsula’s 56-acre redevelopment masterplan. It will host a variety of galleries, education and interpretive spaces that will house exhibitions and artifacts that serve as a testimonial to the 250 years of military service of Ohio Veterans.
“The Ohio Veterans Memorial and Museum is conceived as an architecture of two acts. The first is an act of landscape, where the surrounding parkland is cut, carved and lifted into the sky, creating a processional path to the sanctuary, a place of ceremony, celebration and reflection - a civic room for the city of Columbus,” explains Allied Works. Continue reading to learn more.
Before it was even completed, New York Times critic Paul Goldberger dubbed the Wexner Center for the Arts “The Museum That Theory Built.” [1] Given its architect, this epithet came as no surprise; Peter Eisenman, the museum’s designer, had spent the better part of his career distilling architectural form down to a theoretical science. It was with tremendous anticipation that this building, the first major public work of Eisenman’s career, opened in 1989. For some, it heralded a validation of deconstructivism and theory, while its problems provided ammunition for others who saw theory and practice as complimentary but ultimately divergent pursuits. The building’s popular reception has been equally mixed, but its influence and intrigue in the academic community is as pronounced and unmistakeable as the design itself.
.jpg?1412657909 "© Flickr user joevare")
.jpg?1412657922 "© Flickr user joevare")
.jpg?1412657910 "© Flickr user joevare")