Road Trip 2023, Midwestern United States
<< 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Cleveland, Ohio - Part 2 (6/6 - 41 images)
On my midwestern US road trip, I finally heeded my own advice. Go travel, go out there and see what's waiting for you. While nature was abound, so was Americana, with highway billboards preaching either religion or guns. An eclectic tapestry of agricultural, suburban, and City-scapes, I found driving through middle America fascinating (with a tinge of anxiety) as I took to the road in search of my heroes.
|
Whether it was route 69 on my way to Columbus, IN, or route 70 to St. Louis and 75 or 71 or 90 as I make my long loop around Lake Erie, the world of design was out there. The sources of my inspiration, my obsession, my teacher and educator, all the projects that I have admired exist out there and it was finally time to make the effort to go see them. From Columbus, IN, to St. Louis, MI, Louisville, KY and Cincinnati, OH as well as Cleveland, OH, I got to see projects that I have only seen in history books and design magazines or websites. To see these projects in person, to experience them as was intended, and to truly understand their design and scale in its proper context, I could not be more satisfied and humbled with the entire experience that I can only credit my past colleagues and friends who have always encouraged me to go travel. There's nothing like finally seeing these sites in person as I tried to express in my article, "Letter From… the Road — The Importance of Being a Tourist". In the American Midwest, cities like Columbus, Indiana; St. Louis; Louisville; Cincinnati; and Cleveland became key stages for the evolution of modernist design, not only in architecture but also in landscape architecture and urban space. Columbus, Indiana, stands out as a beacon of modernist civic design, where landscape architect Dan Kiley collaborated with leading modernist architects like Eero Saarinen and Kevin Roche to create carefully integrated landscapes around churches, schools, and corporate campuses, embodying the modernist ideal of total design. In St. Louis, modernism found both monumental and public expressions, most notably through Saarinen’s Gateway Arch, complemented by Kiley’s design of the surrounding Gateway Arch National Park, which frames the monument within a rigorous landscape geometry, symbolizing national progress while creating public space. Louisville’s Waterfront Park, a later project but rooted in modernist landscape values, transformed an industrialized riverfront into an expansive green civic commons, reconnecting the city to the Ohio River and exemplifying the modernist ambition to merge infrastructure, ecology, and public life. In Cincinnati, the University of Cincinnati campus, redesigned by Hargreaves Associates, carries forward modernist planning principles while incorporating contemporary landscape strategies, creating dynamic public spaces that integrate architecture, circulation, and topography to reshape the student experience. Cleveland’s landscape evolution reflects similar ambitions, from Field Operations’ Cleveland Civic Core and Public Square redesign, which reinvents the historic heart of the city into a flexible, people-focused landscape, to Peter Walker’s work at the Cleveland Clinic Medical Center, where structured modernist landscapes provide clarity, calm, and dignity within a high-tech medical environment. Across these cities, modernist and postmodernist design interventions in both architecture and landscape reveal a shared aspiration to use design as a tool for civic identity, urban revitalization, and social progress, while also highlighting the ongoing dialogue between the built environment, public space, and the evolving needs of contemporary urban life. Chapters 1 - Columbus, Indiana - Part 1 (1/6 - 49 images) 2 - Columbus, Indiana - Part 2 (2/6 - 39 images) 3 - Louisville, Kentucky (3/6 - 70 images) 4 - Cincinnati, Ohio (4/6 - 80 images) 5 - Cleveland, Ohio - Part 1 (5/6 - 45 images) 6 - Cleveland, Ohio - Part 2 (6/6 - 41 images) Photography: Terence Lee Related Link(s): Letter From… the Road — The Importance of Being a Tourist Project Locations |
