Exhibit Columbus organizers are preparing to showcase new projects and the city itself.
A celebration of the city’s modern architecture legacy, Exhibit Columbus will host its opening event series Friday and Saturday. This year’s theme, “Yes And,” is taken from a well-known improv theater principle. Designers from around the country worked with community partners to create 13 new projects.
“I hope that people around the state, around the country, come look and say, ‘What's next for their town?’” said Richard McCoy, executive director of the Landmark Columbus Foundation. “‘How can they positively work together as a community to make it better for everyone?’”
Exhibit Columbus will host free and family-friendly events, ending with a party on 5th Street. McCoy said visitors can expect food trucks, beverages and live music.
“Bring your friends and your family and come over to Columbus,” McCoy said.
Locals will recognize some Columbus landmarks as homes for new projects. An installation at the historic Crump Theater highlights layers and layers of transformations. New leadership wants to make the theater, built in 1889, fully functional again.
Architecture lovers from all over the world come to Columbus. But Charlie Vinz, designer with Adaptive Operations, said the project is for locals — people who see the Crump every day along a busy highway.
“I'm trying to remind people that the built environment is very much a living and breathing thing, and it changes all the time,” Vinz said. “That can be a good thing.”
Vinz and his team built three installations at the theater. One uses a burn scar and sheet metal on the side of the building.
“There was a fire in 1978 that burned down the building,” Vinz said. “It's letting people see that for the first time in 50 years or so.”
Along with revamping a forgotten opera box inside, Vinz recreated a 1920s facade that honors people notable to the building’s preservation.
“There's 130 silhouettes of people from Columbus who have had some role or some part in helping save the building from demolition,” Vinz said. “We actually worked at Propeller, which is a maker space on the north side of town, to laser cut all their faces out.”
Exhibit Columbus awarded Vinz and Adaptive Operations the J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize for architectural excellence. Other Miller Prize winning projects can be found at Saarinen’s First Christian Church, the Irwin Block and the Jackson Street Parking Garage. The church is named for Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen.
“Yes And,” projects will be displayed until Nov. 30.
