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A modern garden in America's midwest Innovation has helped to put Columbus, Indiana, on the map, reports Tim Richardson.
A modern garden in America's midwest Innovation has helped to put C...
By Tim Richardson
In many ways Columbus, Indiana, is an ordinary Midwestern town, its main street lined with shops and restaurants, with numerous churches, an imposing town hall and a showpiece main square. But it is also extraordinary, in that it boasts more than 70 pristine examples of modern architecture including a dozen or so world-class buildings – from Finnish-American Eero Saarinen's hexagonal North Christian Church (1964), which has inspired many imitators, to the triangular City Hall (1981) by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
All of this derives from the vision of Joseph Irwin Miller, head of the Cummins Engine Company, which remains to this day the industrial heart of the town. The son of a professor, and educated at Yale and Oxford, he nurtured an abiding interest in modern architecture. In 1954 he instituted a programme that pledged to provide the funds to pay architects' fees if local businesses (and later institutions such as schools) selected a practice from a list provided. It meant that over the course of half a century this small town fostered innovative work – and the experiment is still going on. It is difficult to go more than a block or two in Columbus without coming across a distinguished building.
(read more here)
By Tim Richardson
In many ways Columbus, Indiana, is an ordinary Midwestern town, its main street lined with shops and restaurants, with numerous churches, an imposing town hall and a showpiece main square. But it is also extraordinary, in that it boasts more than 70 pristine examples of modern architecture including a dozen or so world-class buildings – from Finnish-American Eero Saarinen's hexagonal North Christian Church (1964), which has inspired many imitators, to the triangular City Hall (1981) by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
All of this derives from the vision of Joseph Irwin Miller, head of the Cummins Engine Company, which remains to this day the industrial heart of the town. The son of a professor, and educated at Yale and Oxford, he nurtured an abiding interest in modern architecture. In 1954 he instituted a programme that pledged to provide the funds to pay architects' fees if local businesses (and later institutions such as schools) selected a practice from a list provided. It meant that over the course of half a century this small town fostered innovative work – and the experiment is still going on. It is difficult to go more than a block or two in Columbus without coming across a distinguished building.
(read more here)
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