GREAT BUILDERS
Miller & Reeves
10 ESSEnTIAL BUILDInGS
The I-670 Cap
It appeared from thin air: A strip of storefronts on either side of High Street hovers above the space where I-670 for decades sliced a barren rift between Downtown and the Short North. The cap at Union Station was the first of its kind when it opened in 2004. The revolutionary design features three bridges, including one for through traffic and two others that support a 25,500-sqaure-foot retail development above the eight-lane interstate. It replaced a bleak, windswept overpass that was scarcely crossed. “I think now it’s become so much a part of the [city’s] fabric that no one really sees it anymore,” says David Meleca, the project’s architect. His design is traditional; the buildings seamlessly connect to the arts
GREAT BUILDERS
photos: top, cRaig holman; isozaki, DoRal chenoWeth iii
photos: left, Rick Buchanan photogRaphy; Right, columBus metRopolitan liBRaRy’s image collections
Year built: 2004 Architect: Meleca Architecture Style: Classical
district’s long strip of restaurants, bars and galleries. But its deep arches, broad pillars and ornate details channel Meleca’s muse, the 19th century Union Station Arcade. Using measurements from the arch in McFerson Commons on Nationwide Boulevard—the only piece of the Arcade saved from demolition in 1976—Meleca developed a pattern proportional to the original design. The columns are concrete, while a fiberglass mold forms the archways and arcades above patios. Even its embellishments and sandy color mimic the Arcade. The Cap received national praise once completed, but Meleca at one time believed the project might never happen. It took eight years and $7.8 million to build. Finding a balance between the initial return on investment and what was best for the city required some altruistic thinking. “It’s more than just about making money,” Meleca says. “It’s about wanting to fix something and do something positive.” North High Street between Poplar Avenue and Goodale Street, Short North
Peter Eisenman
“The spaceship that crash-landed on the prairie.” That is how monologist Spalding Gray reportedly described The Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University, designed by academic Peter Eisenman and the late Richard W. Trott. Even some of the center’s employees were bemused by its deconstructionist appearance upon its unveiling in 1989. Curator at large Bill Horrigan remembers the staff having “crash-coursed ourselves within the Eisenman ethic,” but found it “a bit confounding: the fetishistic horror of right angles, the completely annoying columns (which couldn’t even be justified as load-bearing), the Expressionistic staircases, the steep angle of the ramp up to the galleries.” Nonetheless, the building soon became iconic in its oddness. “The Wexner Center is considered a seminal canonic work both as a project (where ideas take center stage) and as a building (where experience and function prevail),” says Ohio State architecture professor Jeffrey Kipnis, who notes that Eisenman’s work to that point consisted of just “five houses and a small office building,” but his practice skyrocketed after the success of the Wex.
In 1918, Robert R. Reeves set up shop with Orlando C. Miller, and the announcement in The Western Architect is a reminder of the name recognition Frank PackVard had in Columbus: “Mr. Miller announces the association, Mr. Reeves having been in the office of Frank L. Packard for many years.” Changing course from the publicbuilding emphasis of Packard, Miller & Reeves made hay with residential projects. Their legacy lives on most visibly in Sessions Village, which Doreen UhasSauer of the Columbus Landmarks Foundation calls “a masterpiece of a French town.” The Ohio Historic Places Dictionary notes that Reeves was inspired to build the village while globetrotting to France, where he observed the details he wanted, including “a village street of cobblestone and slate sidewalks.”
Arata Isozaki
Ohio State architecture professor Jeffrey Kipnis describes Arata Isozaki as “one of the giants of architectural culture for his thought and mobilization of Japan into a major source of contemporary architecture.” Among Isozaki’s buildings are the Art Tower Mito and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and though he has only one work to his name in Columbus, it is a memorable one. For the expanded COSI complex, Isozaki used the bones of the old Central High School, transforming the site while still respecting what came before. As an article in The Columbus Dispatch observed, the new COSI “incorporates much of the 1924 school into its 300,000-square-foot building.” “By doing so,” says COSI president and CEO David E. Chesebrough, “he acknowledged history and the rich educational heritage of Central Ohio and created an innovative and forward-thinking complement to Central High in the rest of his design.”
Columbus Monthly • December 2013
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