Released this summer, American Modern: Architecture, Community, Columbus, Indiana is a dynamic and thorough monograph shedding fresh light on the long-established experimental canvas that was this company town. Researched and written by seasoned architecture critic Matt Shaw, who also happens to have grown up in the mid-western city, the book is an in-depth historical record of its status as one of the country's most prominent modernist projects; a semi-urban city populated by distinct, groundbreaking civic buildings imagined by mid-20th-century heavyweight architects such as Eero Saarinen and I. M. Pei as well as a slew of their contemporary successors, Deborah Berke and IwamotoScott amongst many.
For over a half century, era-defining talents have cut their teeth here, leaving their mark by erecting radical concept-driven projects both in the largely unconstrained development of their own distinct styles but also in the contribution to what Shaw has identified as a somewhat utopian yet participatory rather than top-down “total community project,” if not also the ever-developing definition of modernism.
