Apart, Together is one segment of a larger series of projects bridging the gap between aesthetics and social consciousness that Suzanne Lettieri and Michael Jefferson, faculty from Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning, have been working on for the past decade. The larger idea, Placeholders, explores how to leave space for people besides the designers to come and contribute their own ideas and sensibilities to an installation.

“The way we are doing that in this particular project is through the use of color,” Lettieri said. “In our work, color often celebrates civic space while hinting at a different life for the project—something beyond the physical. The colors are bright, and naturally attract attention. In this case, the colors, signify a virtual layer.” 

Here they use color as a way to overlay content that is not as easy to grasp in a public space as well as to incorporate their community partner, the Lincoln-Central Neighborhood Family Center (LCNFC) and YES Cinema.

“There is a wealth of good they do that is not possible to document in a physical form,” Lettieri said. “This is a way for us to integrate other narratives and complex histories into a design project and for our installation to serve as civic infrastructure for Columbus.”

The physical installation at Ovation Plaza consists of a series of blue, green, red, and yellow panels, serving as chroma key screens like those used by weather reporters on television. The MDF panels are fixed but the accordion-like folds reveal different shape and color combinations so that depending on a person’s vantage point, the experience is different. Meanwhile, QR codes accessed by smart devices link to virtual cinematic content curated with Randy Allman and Diane Doup from YES Cinema. Throughout Exhibit Columbus, this content will evolve through events, beginning with a celebration of Columbus and later supporting the Columbus, Indiana YES Film Festival with student films, trailers, and more. 

“We wanted to make something that felt very individually engaged on your phone but that shares concepts with other people so that you are forming communities with others who are watching the same things with you,” Jefferson said. “You figure out maybe who is laughing at the same joke at the same time, but it is also something that is urbanistic so that as you move along Fourth Street you start to see different things coming in and out of focus and something really different starting to happen as one moves around the installation.”

They are also trying to flip the script on the siloing and isolation caused by digital devices that is present in contemporary society by creating a work where devices bring people together in physical space. Moreover, in creating a project for Columbus they are aiming to address the disparity between what is sometimes perceived as elitist high-modernist architecture in the vibrant urban center of a relatively small city and the people, for example, who live in the Lincoln Central neighborhood.

“We wanted to make something that everyone could enjoy,” Jefferson said. “The idea was to reflect different interests and experiences—so we included media that would speak to a range of people. 

Chris Chandler, owner of Ovation plaza, was already thinking about providing nighttime film screenings on the back wall, so that adds another level of Yes And to the project—a complex system of experiences in the daytime, movies to share with other members of the community in the evenings.

The idea for multiple media experiences occurring at once in the same location came from drive-in movies, and The Crump Theater played a part with its folded and undulating facade. They also wanted to honor the history of kinetic and Op Art as well as J. Irwin Miller’s involvement with the Museum of Modern Art in New York. One local influence that inspired the couple was a piece of Yaacov Agam’s artwork at the Cummins headquarters in downtown Columbus. 

“This process has been shaped by incredible collaboration,” Lettieri said. “Working closely with YES Cinema and LCNFC, Chris Chandler, and the Landmark Columbus Foundation led to rich conversations that inspired both the physical and virtual outcome.