Hot on the trail of revealing a community-empowering curatorial theme of Public by Design, Exhibit Columbus has announced the participants—including four recipients of the J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize and seven University Design Research Fellows (UDRF)—selected to partake in the 2022­–2023 cycle of the flagship program of Landmark Columbus Foundation that, this year, will place special focus on the downtown core of modernist architecture–rich Columbus, Indiana. The Miller Prize recipients are Tatiana Bilbao ESTUDIO, PORT, Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU), and Studio Zewde.

The Miller Prize winners, each of which will design a site-specific outdoor installation that will be on view at a prominent institution in Columbus beginning next August for the 2023 Exhibition of Exhibit Columbus, were identified, interviewed, and selected by a team of six Curatorial Partners working alongside four Community Curators. Meant to further involve the diverse communities of Columbus in the event, these roles are new to the fourth iteration of Exhibit Columbus.

“Our theme for this cycle, Public by Design, is more important than ever as our organization is finding increasing relevancy working with so many public institutions and now connecting that work with this cycle’s Miller Prize winners and University Design Research Fellows,” Richard McCoy, executive director of Landmark Columbus Foundation, explained to AN. “As an organization, we are particularly proud to play a part in advancing and elevating the significance of the Miller legacy — there’s really nothing like it here in the U.S. These four firms are carrying that legacy well into the 21st century.”

In another first for Exhibit Columbus, the 2023 University Design Research Fellows were selected through a national, open-call competition for full-time university professors. Shortlisted contenders were selected by the Curatorial Partners; these finalists were ultimately chosen by a 13-member jury panel comprised of community stakeholders. For this cycle of Exhibit Columbus, the respondents were invited to “respond to, enhance, and/or critique” downtown activation strategies recommended by James Lima Planning + Development within the firm’s City of Columbus-commissioned Downtown Activation Study.

Both the Miller Prize recipients and University Design Research Fellows will be in attendance at the 2022 Exhibit Columbus Symposium held in downtown Columbus on October 21–22.

“In collaboration with the Community Curators, we were able to meaningfully align the J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize Recipients with public institutions in Columbus. These Miller Prize participants are remarkable for their creative approaches to community-based design and their capacity to work across many scales, from the scale of urban design to the creation of tactile and interactive environments. They bring exciting ideas about energizing historic downtowns through collaborative cocreation with community partners. We believe their practices carry on the values of the Miller family and have the potential to create a major impact in Columbus that resonates globally. We are looking forward to meeting them all at the symposium,” said the six Curatorial Partners in a joint statement.

As for the University Design Research Fellows, the Curatorial Partners noted that they “… represent a cross-section of artists, architects, and landscape architects working in the U.S. at this moment. It’s an impressive group whose research is advancing important work on sustainable materials and community-based design in the public realm.”

As announced back in early June, the Curatorial Partners are: Paola Aguirre, an urban designer and founder of collaborative research and design practice BORDERLESS; Chris Merritt, founding principal of Indianapolis- and Pittsburgh-based landscape architecture studio Merritt Chase; Lauren M. Pacheco, a cultural and civic artist who serves as founding director of the Gary, Indiana-based Steel Studio Foundation; Bryony Roberts, a designer, writer, and educator whose eponymous design and research practice is based in New York; Raymund Ryan, Curator-at-Large of the Heinz Architectural Center at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh; and Holly Warren, Assistant Director for the Arts in the City of Bloomington’s Economic and Sustainable Development Department.

“There’s possibilities for these installations to not only make a cool exhibition, but also to be prompts for lasting change in places,” said McCoy of the newly structured, community-forward curatorial approach. “And that’s a little different than an exhibition that goes up and you take it down and throw it all away.”

Without further ado, here is the full 2022–2023 Exhibit Columbus participant lineup including the Miller Prize recipients, listed along with their respective partnering community organizations and the Columbus sites that will serve as the backdrop for their installations, along with this cycle’s downtown-reimagining University Design Research Fellows. The UDRF partners sites will be announced later in October around the 2022 Symposium.

2022–2023 J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize recipients

Tatiana Bilbao ESTUDIO (Mexico City), partnering with the Bartholomew County Public Library

Cleo Rogers Memorial Library Plaza (I.M. Pei)

PORT (Philadelphia, Chicago), partnering with the Mill Race Center

Mill Race Center (William Rawn Associates) at Mill Race Park

Practice for Architecture and Urbanism | PAU (New York City), partnering with the City of Columbus Department of Public Works

The Commons (Koetter Kim & Associates)

Studio Zewde (Harlem, New York), partnering with the Columbus Parks and Recreation Department

Mill Race Park (Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates)

2022–2023 University Design Research Fellows

• Joseph Altshuler, School of Architecture at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, and Zack Morrison, Chicago
• Esteban Garcia Bravo, Department of Computer Graphics Technology at Purdue University,
• Jessica Colangelo and Charles Sharpless, University of Arkansas Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design
• Deborah Garcia, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Architecture
• Molly Hunker and Greg Corso, Syracuse University School of Architecture
• Katie MacDonald and Kyle Schumann, University of Virginia School of Architecture
• Halina Steiner, Tameka Baba, Forbes Lipschitz, Austin E. Knowlton School at The Ohio State University, and Shelby Doyle, Iowa State University College of Design