Architecture News

Exhibit Columbus’s Improv Theater–Inspired 2025 Exhibition Opens to the Public

Exhibit Columbus 2025 installation — Photo by Hadley Fruits for the Landmark Columbus Foundation

*Ellipses* by Brooklyn-based AD–WO, on view in downtown Columbus, Indiana. Located on a vacant lot previously populated by a historic building destroyed by fire in 2022, the temporary park is sheltered by a bamboo canopy and features limestone benches fabricated from the remnants of demolished structures.

A cobalt wading pool integrated into the red-brick expanse of a sweeping, I.M. Pei–designed plaza and a gridded structure adorned with kite-like swathes of colorful fabric installed within the sunken courtyard of an Eliel Saarinen church are just two of the site-specific installations now on view during the exhibition of the fifth cycle of Exhibit Columbus in Columbus, Indiana. Running through November 30, the exhibition is a crowd-drawing highlight of the biennial event, which is the flagship program of “progressive preservation” nonprofit Landmark Columbus Foundation. The curatorial theme is the improv theater–riffing And Then, described as a “participatory call to work from existing materials to shape positive change.”

Accessing Nostalgia, by Chicago-based Adaptive Operations, at the Crump Theatre (1889) (1); Lift, by New York–based Studio Cooke John, at First Christian Church (Eliel Saarinen, 1942) (2); Pool/Side, by Akima Brackeen of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, at the neighboring Cleo Rogers Memorial Library Plaza (I.M. Pei, 1969) (3). Photos by Hadley Fruits for Landmark Columbus Foundation

Thirteen installations were activated at partner sites across Columbus during the exhibition’s recent opening weekend, which drew roughly 400 people to a kick-off walking tour, according to Landmark Columbus executive director Richard McCoy. In a statement, McCoy praised all of those who helped to produce a public space–reimagining event that “shines equally as an artistic achievement as a community-loved one.”

Of the 13 design commissions, four were created by the latest cohort of J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize recipients. The prize is named after Columbus’s preeminent patrons of art and architecture, whose largesse helped bring titans of modern architecture—Eero Saarinen, Harry Weese, Robert Venturi, Kevin Roche, and César Pelli among them—to a sleepy company town in central Indiana. This cycle’s Miller Prize winners were AD–WO, whose Ellipses took form at the site of the fire-razed Irwin Block building; Studio Barnes, which placed a “Transformer-like” sound system, Joy Riding, atop a downtown parking structure; Adaptive Operations, whose Accessing Nostalgia explores new possibilities for the reinvention at the century-old Crump Theater; and Studio Cooke John, which created the previously mentioned gridded work, Lift, for the elder Saarinen’s First Christian Church.

Joy Riding, by Miami-based Studio Barnes, at the Jackson Street Parking Garage. Photo by Hadley Fruits for Landmark Columbus Foundation

Apart, Together, by Michael Jefferson and Suzanne Lettieri of the Cornell University School of Architecture, at Ovation Plaza. Photo by Hadley Fruits for Landmark Columbus Foundation

Joining works by the Miller Prize awardees were six works by University Design Research Fellows (UDRF) as well as two community-led installations designed by teams of local students.

A theater-inspired design public design exhibition wouldn’t be complete without a bit of drama—and there was some coming out of opening weekend. One UDRF installation, Sarah Aziz’s A View of the World From Indiana, was removed from the grounds of partner site, the Gunnar Birkerts–designed St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, due to Aziz’s “late and unapproved changes to the concept and its resulting on-site execution,” a statement explained. As installed, the work, which featured a dozen semi-nude wooden “bathtub Madonna” shrines of architects with ties to the Midwest—including Jeanne Gang and Michael Graves—did “not meet Exhibit Columbus's high standards.” Local media reported that the installation generated complaints from the church. While the last cycle of Exhibit Columbus yielded an impressive four installations to be made permanent, the work by Aziz, who is an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico School of Architecture and Planning, is the only to be taken down after opening weekend in the 10-year history of the event.

Inside Out, by Chandler Ahrens, Constance Vale, and Kelley Van Dyck Murphy of Washington University in St. Louis College of Architecture Sam Fox School, at Cleo Rogers Memorial Library Plaza (4); The Steel Horsie, by Andrew Fu, Aaron Goldstein, and Aleksandr Mergold of the New Jersey Institute of Technology, at the Bartholomew County Historical Society (5); PUBLIC/SCHOOL/GROUNDS, by César Lopez, Jess Myers, Amelyn Ng, and Germán Pallares‑Avitia, installed near Central Middle School and CSA Lincoln Elementary (6). Photos by Hadley Fruits for Landmark Columbus Foundation

More on the latest edition of Exhibit Columbus, including a schedule of upcoming Miller Prize conversations and collateral events, can be found here.

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Matt Hickman is senior news/digital editor at Architectural Record. Previously, he served as Senior Editor at The Architect’s Newspaper and has over a decade of experience as a freelance writer and editor specializing in historic preservation, public space, and the intersection of the natural world and built environment. A native of the Pacific Northwest, Matt holds an MFA in creative nonfiction writing from The New School.