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1 Cummins Engine Childcare Center
2 Cummins Engine Distributorship Prototype
3 Irwin Union Bank Branch Prototype
A walk through downtown Columbus, Indiana, could intimidate any architect planning to build there. From Eliel Saarinen's astonishingly graceful First Christian Church of 1942, to the nail-on-thehead rightness of I. M.Pei's 1969 public library across the street, there is a lot to live up to. Columbus's fame for modern architecture is well deserved, and a commission from the city's enlightened patron, the Cummins Engine Foundation, is justifiably regarded as an honor. However, Carlos Jim6nez, the principal of an eponymous studio in Houston, has completed two buildings in Columbus,
and demonstrates not a case of nerves about his position in posterity, but enormous pleasure in simply being there.
A stroll with Jimenez includes an unnecessary trip to the ATM in Eero Saarinen's 1954 Irwin Union Bank & Trust building, the withdrawal made primarily because it is so nice to go inside and have an excuse to linger. Aside from computers on the original desks, the ATM machine is the only visible addition to Saarinen's open glass box, with its shallow-domed light fixtures. Jimenez exclaims over Kevin Roche's ivied colonnade at the Cummins Corporate Headquarters: The gardenlike entrance makes the vast building seem friendly, even small. This is his first of several odes to Roche, and an occasion to shoot slides for his admittedly large collection. Carlos Jimenez loves Columbus.
His emotion suggests an interesting lineage for local architecture. It runs from Eliel and Eero Saarinen to Roche, Eero's student, and now to Jim6nez, in a connection more about sensibility than style. While Roche is out of fashion, his buildings in Columbus show a remarkable attention to the interests of individuals, from engine builders to people buying stamps. That humanism manifests itself formally, and this is what these architects share: a quiet, even self-effacing, approach to the art of building.
Columbus's current nature is due largely to the Miller family, which owns majors shares in Cummins, Inc. and the Irwin Union Bank, two of the town's major businesses. In 1957, J. Irwin Miller, the former CEO of Cummins, decided to sponsor the building
of new schools (and later, all public projects) in the county, understanding that improving the quality of life...