Last week, the Indiana-based Exhibit Columbus organization announced the artists, architects, and landscape architects who have won the 2022–23 J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize. Under the theme, Public by Design, each winner will be paired with an institution in Columbus to create an installation as part of an exhibition, opening in August 2023, intended to reinvigorate local and visitor interaction with public spaces throughout the city.
Downtown alley space off of Washington Street, City of Columbus Department of Public Works. Photo © Hadley Fruits for Landmark Columbus Foundation
The prize, given every two years, was begun in 2016 to honor the legacy of J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller, the patrons who commissioned many of the best 20th century American architects to design civic buildings throughout Columbus.
This year’s recipients include Tatiana Bilbao Estudio of Mexico City, who will partner with the Bartholomew County Public Library and focus on the I.M. Pei-designed Cleo Rogers Memorial Library Plaza (1971), which prominently features a Henry Moore bronze sculpture.
Tatiana Bilbao. Photo © Luis Garvan
Studio Zewde, a landscape architecture and public art practice in Harlem in New York, alongside Columbus’s Parks and Recreation department, will work on the 83-acre Mill Race Park, where two of the city’s rivers join to form a tributary to the Mississippi River. Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates redesigned the park in 1993.
Sara Zewde of Studio Zewde. Photo © Studio Zwede
PORT, landscape architecture and urban designer consultants based in Philadelphia and Chicago, will pair up with the Mill Race Center, a community center for active older adults within Mill Race Park. PORT will focus on the public space surrounding the 2011 building, designed by William Rawn Associates.
PORT, partial team portrait. Photo © PORT
The Practice for Architecture Urbanism (PAU) studio, led by Vishaan Chakrabarti and Ruchika Modi in New York, is partnering with the City of Columbus to work on the community and events area known as The Commons.
Vishaan Chakrabarti. Photo © PAU
Previous recipients of the Miller prize include SO – IL; the recently announced designer for the Met’s new wing, Frida Escobedo; Oyler Wu Collaborative, a former Record Design Vanguard firm; and visual artist Olalekan Jeyifous, whose work was featured in MoMA’s Reconstructions exhibition (2021).
