Columbus, Indiana, is a mecca of modernism that still embodies the progressive ideals of its founders and star designers. Our writer explores ‘the Athens of the prairie’
magine growing up in a place where every stage of your life was framed by the best architecture of its day. You start out in an experimental elementary school, learning on a multi-level landscape of open-plan terraces connected by slides, before moving to a junior school where little towers of classrooms are linked by brightly coloured sloping tunnels. You spend your high school years in a heroic piece of brutalism, attend university in a sleek glass temple and go to church in a space-age tipi.
Such a place exists – and it’s situated where you would least expect to find it. Set in the middle of the rolling agricultural plains of Indiana, a landscape dotted with “Farmers for Trump” billboards andhamburger outposts, the small city of Columbus makes for an unlikely modernist mecca.
The architects were given at least a year to work up the plans, with responsibility for the building, interior finishes and furnishings, and recommending landscaping, “so that the building, inside and out is planned and designed in aesthetic harmony”. And if there was an extension planned to a building in future, its original architect would get first refusal – an almost unheard-of contractual perk.
Two miles north, near a dream home he designed for the Millers, stands Saarinen’s other major contribution to Columbus. It couldn’t be more different. A hexagonal slate tent appears to hover above the grassy landscape, as if ready for take-off, rising to a pointed steel spire that shoots 60 metres into the air.
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