Exhibit Columbus Announces Mapping the Middle: Design Research Conversations
This one-day event brings together the seven University Design Research Fellows from the 2021 Exhibition and a number of special guests.
Columbus, Indiana — Exhibit Columbus announces a new event that highlights the work of the seven 2020-21 University Design Research Fellows from this year’s exhibition. Mapping the Middle: Design Research Conversations is a colloquium created in partnership with Ball State University and Indiana University that will take place on Saturday, October 2 in Columbus, Indiana. This free, one-day event will be outdoors in the courtyard of First Christian Church and will highlight the University Design Research Fellows, as well as nationally recognized special guests.
Attendees will hear reflections from each of the Fellows regarding their collaborative building processes, while considering the relationship between teaching, research, and their design practices.
“Education is key to our program, and it has been an honor to create this event with our colleagues at Ball State University and Indiana University. The University Design Research Fellowship provides a platform to showcase the richness, depth, and importance of institutional research within the accessible framework of our Exhibition,” said Anne Surak, Director of Exhibit Columbus.“ This weekend is another great opportunity to visit Columbus and experience New Middles alongside this year’s visionary participants and incredible leaders in the field.”
Mapping the Middle celebrates design education and the Exhibit Columbus University Design Research Fellowship—a network of institutions and diverse teams, who, in each Exhibit Columbus cycle, create research-based installations developed around a curatorial theme. For this colloquium, the Fellows will consider the many ways their research uses mapping as a tool or process to examine, reveal, and represent the world around us, and further connect to the theme of Exhibit Columbus, New Middles: From Main Street to Megalopolis, What is the Future of the Middle City. Framed within the curatorial vision, every new design research inquiry helps map the future of the middle and inspire the next generation.
“We are so pleased to be working together with Exhibit Columbus to produce this event,” said Peg Faimon, Founding Dean of Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design, and David Ferguson, Dean of the Estopinal College of Architecture and Planning and Professor of Landscape Architecture at Ball State University. “Together we are growing awareness about research and design through education across the state of Indiana, and beyond.”
Participating as special guests in the colloquium are internationally recognized design leaders Amale Andraos, Dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and Shannon Nichol, landscape architect and founding partner of Seattle-based Gustafson Guthrie Nichol (GGN). Returning to Columbus to participate in the event are co-curators Iker Gil (Chicago, IL) and Mimi Zeiger (Los Angeles, CA). Mapping the Middle builds upon Columbus’s legendary commitment to quality of place through design excellence and education. This year’s University Design Research Fellows represent eight universities in two countries and across six states.
Mapping the Middle is made possible by Heritage Fund—The Community Foundation of Bartholomew County with grant support from Lilly Endowment Inc. Archinect and Bustler are the media partners for Mapping the Middle, these long-time Exhibit Columbus partners will feature special content on their leading architecture platforms.
On Saturday, October 2, visitors to downtown Columbus can also experience a site-responsive dance performance in concert with several Exhibit Columbus installations by Dance Kaleidoscope, presented by the Columbus Area Arts Council. Additionally, Fiesta Latina will be taking place on Fourth Street, an event hosted by Su Casa, the Community Education Coalition, and the City of Columbus to celebrate the rich cultures of Latin America. J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize Recipient Future Firm will host a short film screening at their installation Midnight Palace, in collaboration with YES Cinema and The Night Gallery.
Click here to download biographies and headshots of Mapping the Middle: Design Research Conversations special guests and participants.
University Design Research Fellows
Derek Hoeferlin (Washington University in St. Louis)
Tracing Our Mississippi, located next to the East Fork of the White River, asks visitors to understand local waterways in relation to the vast territorial scales of the fourth largest watershed in the world. By representing the Mississippi River watershed as a large-scale model of the river basins (including the Ohio River, which connects Columbus to the Mississippi), the installation emphasizes the relentless infrastructures controlling the Mississippi’s landscapes, communities, and resources.
Join us for Watershed Weekend (October 21-22), and the public program entitled Voicing Our Mississippi which will explore how people from across this broad ecological and cultural geography might be empowered to collectively question past methods of control and power.
Joyce Hwang (University at Buffalo)
To Middle Species, With Love amplifies habitat conditions for urban wildlife in Columbus—our co-inhabitants of the built environment. These bats, birds, amphibians, and reptiles—which we call “middle species” in contrast to “flagship” species—are common in our communities and ecosystems, yet often remain invisible in our imaginations.
Made out of Indiana hardwood, the installation provides bird perches and functions similarly to the bat houses used by the endangered Indiana Bat—one of 13 bat species in Indiana. Boulders offer habitat for smaller creatures.
Humans may experience the sounds of high-frequency bat calls (recorded with ultrasonic detectors) via QR codes and headphones. Additional QR codes link to research projects from the Ecological Practices graduate studio at the University at Buffalo.
Jei Jeeyea Kim (Indiana University)
LaWaSo Ground is a contemporary memorial and a community ground of (La)nd, (Wa)ter, and (So)il. It acknowledges the silenced and suppressed voices of the past, and advocates for more diverse inclusion in the future. LaWaSo Ground echoes the topography of the limestone quarries found in the region and is reminiscent of Indigenous earthworks along the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys. Indiana limestone plays a complicated symbolic role given its widespread use in the construction of civic monuments across the United States. Indigenous artist Katrina Mitten, a member of the Myaamia Nation of Oklahoma, designed the engraved motifs. An homage to the belltower of First Christian Church, the tower marks significant times in the solar calendar, such as the summer and winter solstices.
Ersela Kripa and Stephen Mueller (Texas Tech University at El Paso)
Spectral considers the aerial activity above Columbus, such as commercial and military flight paths, and speculates on a future in which urban spaces engage with aerial imaging technologies. Recent technological advances make it possible for cities, landscapes, and public spaces to be monitored by military, federal or state organizations, and private companies. Beyond the visible spectrum, these technologies record and analyze sub-perceptual shifts in heat signatures, radio waves, and radiation. Low-cost and widely accessible, they transform the city into a multispectral environment, where previously invisible activities are newly detectable.
Constructed from infrared obscuring material, Spectral is a public gathering place—a “safe space” where visitors’ thermal activity is shielded from the view of multispectral cameras.
Ang Li (Northeastern University)
Window Dressing invites visitors to reflect on the architectural legacy of Late Modernism. Through a temporary cladding system of ornamental shingles, the installation recalls the façade of the Commons and Courthouse Center by Cesar Pelli and Norma Merrick Sklarek for Gruen Associates (demolished in 2008).
Using mylar film, a lightweight precursor to mirrored glass developed by the aerospace industry, Window Dressing draws inspiration from community events that took place inside this air-conditioned civic interior—high school proms, fashion shows, and election nights. Throughout the course of the day, this dynamic architectural tapestry encourages multiple readings of its surrounding context that responds to changing atmospheres and events: wind and light, pedestrian traffic, and the civic rhythms of downtown Columbus.
Lola Sheppard and Mason White (University of Waterloo and University of Toronto)
This Appearance Is ____ invites citizens into the space of appearance and disappearance. In the 1950s, political theorist Hannah Arendt described the public realm as “space of appearance,” which she viewed as a collaborative process of worldmaking. Today, our collective space feels at times fragmented. The installation is a study in our ability to retreat from and then rejoin the larger world—a test made all the more poignant after more than a year of pandemic restrictions. A maze of curved walls made of lenticular plastic sheets creates a unique optical condition, visitors can disappear almost completely within the installation. Sheppard and White collaborated with students at Lincoln Elementary School to develop new games for all ages.
Natalie Yates (Ball State University)
Calibrate is an apparatus for registering and perceiving multiple timescales of accumulated environment data gathered from across Columbus and the Ohio River watershed, from geologic time to real-time sensing data. Columbus straddles the edge of the Wisconsin Glacial Limit. Thousands of years of glacial motion altered the landscape, carving the meanders of the Ohio River watershed, producing major aquifers for groundwater, building agricultural land with rich soils, and depositing foundational sediments.
The robotic drawing machine uses data sensing to draw layers that reveal rhythms in the environment, climate, current of the river, and how we move through space. These traces are unveiled through new technologies and provide new information about this familiar place.
Press Contact
Elizabeth Kubany
elizabeth@kubany.co
