If you ask someone to name 

the architectural centers of the 
United States, they’ll probably 
respond 
with 
Washington, 

D.C., or some other signature 
metropolis 
like 
Chicago. 

Surprisingly, thanks to the 
vision of a local leader, the small 
Midwestern town of Columbus, 
Ind., tops many lists as an 
architectural icon. Scattered 
throughout 
Columbus 
are 

the Modernist works of Eero 
Saarinen — designer of the 
famous 
Gateway 
Arch 
in 

St. Louis, Missouri, and the 
University’s School of Music 
— as well as other significant 
architects.

First-time 
writer-director 

Kogonada 
features 
these 

buildings in his recent film, 
“Columbus” — a breathtaking 
arthouse drama that follows 
the 
intertwining 
lives 
of 

Jin (John Cho, “Harold and 
Kumar Go To White Castle”), 
Casey (Haley Lu Richardson, 
“The Edge of Seventeen”) and 
the town of Columbus itself. 
Eero Saarinen’s asymmetrical 
church, 
I.M. 
Pei’s 
Cleo 

Rogers 
Memorial 
Library 

and several design treasures 
get 
their 
moment 
in 
the 

spotlight. 
Cinematographer 

Elisha Christian (“Everything 
Sucks!”) 
incorporates 
this 

striking architecture in her 
takes, 
letting 
monumental 

features 
like 
Saarinen’s 

192-foot spire on the North 
Christian Church pop from the 
background.

When Jin’s estranged father, 

a 
renowned 
architectural 

historian, falls into a sudden 
coma, Jin finds himself stuck 
in suburban Indiana. Korean 
family values trap him in a state 
of purgatory — drifting between 
the hospital, his father’s inn 
room and conversations with 
Casey, a young girl with a wise 
mind. Casey acts as Jin’s tour 
guide, taking him to her favorite 
architectural haunts. Against 
the backdrop of “Columbus”’s 
stunning 
landscape, 
the 

two form a friendship and 
attempt to answer the difficult 
question: What do we owe our 
parents?

Kogonada 
aids 
this 

inquisition with the use of 
mirrors 
to 
observe 
their 

interactions with the world. 
Many of the buildings Casey 
showcases to Jin feature glass 
as the main medium, allowing 
the camera to capture intimate 
moments in reflections. When 
Jin 
reminisces 
about 
his 

relationship with his father, 

he is only shown through the 
inn’s ornate mirror. Similarly, 
when Casey speaks of the duty 
she feels to her mother, she 
appears in the car rearview 
mirror. At one point, Kogonada 
treats a window as a two-way 
mirror, placing the audience 
on the other side of the glass as 
Casey silently explains why a 
particular building moves her 
so much.

The bond Casey feels with 

her mother strongly contrasts 
that of Jin and his father. Casey 
finds nothing more fulfilling 
than giving back to a parent 
— a sacrifice Jin struggles to 
reconcile with. In fact, Casey 
opted out of college to remain in 
Indiana and care for her mother, 
a former addict. Kogonada uses 
the polarity of their opinions 
to further weave the concept 
of mirrors into the film. The 
two characters change in ways 
that are reflections of one 
another: As Jin resolves to stay 
by his father’s bedside, Casey 
finds the strength to leave her 
mother’s home.

In addition, one of the final 

scenes of the film itself is 
a mirror of the first. Set in 
Saarinen’s Miller House that 
pulsates with natural light, 
a sequence of events plays 
out in a poignantly similar 
fashion. “Columbus” opens on 

Eleanor (Parker Posey, “Dazed 
and 
Confused”) 
running 

through the Miller House to 
find her boss, Jin’s father. She 
finds him contemplating the 
manicured yard, surrounded 
by an expanse of green trees. 
When this excerpt repeats, 
it is Casey looking for Jin, 
eventually finding him in the 
exact same place his father 
stood. Through these reflected 
scenes, 
Kogonada 
expresses 

the complex nature of parent-
child relationships, a timeless 
issue that surpasses cultural 
and generational differences.

Like a cheeky hint of what 

to pay attention to, a short 
film by Kogonada precedes 
the feature set to the words 
of Sylvia Plath’s iconic poem, 
“Mirror.” A series of movie 
clips show women of various 
ages interacting with mirrors, 
displaying 
the 
meditative 

and 
captivating 
power 
of 

architecture. 
“Columbus” 

carries this theme throughout 
in its contemplative pacing 
and cinematography, providing 
insight to the answer of what 
we owe our parents. Although 
Kogonada 
ultimately 
leaves 

this question unanswered, he 
suggests there are revelations 
to be found through examining 
these two characters closely — 
as if looking in a mirror.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Thursday, December 7, 2017 — 3B

When I walked up to the home, 

I noticed a crack in the window 
next the door on the right. It was 
shaped like a semicircle, clear 
among the seamless infinity 
windows and elegant French 
doors. Cox makes no mention 
of how it got there, and does 
not address it until a crew pulls 
up and opens the door amid his 
sentence. He apologizes and 
walks over to attend to them as 
they enter the home with their 
equipment, quite nonchalant. 
Cox had been talking about 
furniture. 

As with most of the homes 

Wright designed, he included 
plans for furniture, beds and 
even 
ceramic 
dinnerware, 

envisioning the home down to 
the smallest details. The dining 
room table had been owned by 
the Palmers before, but the rest 
required special construction, 
and cups and plates sit out 
perfectly arranged near the 
dining table. The living room 
was designed with the Steinway 
Grand that Mary Palmer loved 
in mind; her favorite tune was 
apparently “Bless This House.” 
But the piano has been removed, 
and the living room does feel 
a bit absent without it. Cox 
informs me that the piano was 
sold to Ben Folds, the popular 
songwriter from North Carolina, 
who was apparently acquainted 
with Palmer.

The Palmer House was placed 

on the market in August 2008, in 
the midst of the Great Recession. 
It was also just a month after 
Mary Louise passed away, the 
only daughter of the Palmers, 
for reasons Cox will not discuss. 
That left Adrian as the only 
surviving member of the family; 
but he is now a professor at a 
college in Utah, and has little 
reason to come back to Ann 
Arbor. The home was listed for 
a cool $1.5 million when it was 
purchased by Jeffrey Schox.

Cox tells the story of Jeffrey’s 

interest in the home. Jeffrey, an 
avid runner while a student at the 
University, grew infatuated with 
the Palmer House as he passed it 
on his routes around the Nichols 
Arboretum. He was especially 
intrigued by its strangely shaped 
roof. 
He 
apparently 
started 

planning his runs specifically 
to pass the home, and in the 
process, fell in love with it, and 
fell in love with Wright. Schox 
wrote a letter to Adrian Palmer 
once it was put on the market, 
expressing 
his 
fascination 

with the Palmer House and his 
interest in purchasing it, and 
outlined his plans to turn it into 
a guest home. Palmer responded, 
“My mother would be proud.”

Beyond removing the piano, 

the new owners have largely 
kept what once was. As we 
walk around the home — with 
Cox explaining in appreciation 
the expanded ceilings in the 
bedrooms, the hill in relation 
to rooms, the use of space — I 

notice the books that line the 
narrow hallway to the study, 
bearing titles like “500 Cups,” 
“Treasures of Ancient” and 
“Healing 
Heart.” 
There are 

Sumi ink posters throughout 
the home too, in the entryway, 
in the kitchen, in the hallways. 
This was all left from the 
family, as Cox confirms, perhaps 
tokens brought back by Mary 
Palmer, an enthusiast of Eastern 
Hemisphere travel. In the study 
is a photograph of the builder of 
the home, Erwin Niethammer, 

which was also left by the 
Palmers.

It’s almost like the design, 

the construction and everyone 
involved 
in 
both 
became 

residents of the home as easily 
as the Palmers did. They must 
have kept Wright in mind, for 
example, 
as 
they 
prepared 

food in the kitchen: There are 
no handles in there, as Wright 
thought they would ruin its look. 
Each drawer must be pulled open 
by the bottom, so to open the 
very top one, you must pull the 

bottom four open first, lowest 
to highest. Cox guesses that 
Mary Palmer would have left 
the drawers open for ease in her 
daily life, and then quickly close 
them as she saw guests arrive 
in the driveway through the 
kitchen windows. When I try to 
open one of the upper cabinets, 
I find it surprisingly tricky, and 
it takes me at least four attempts 
to open and close it successfully.

I can examine the little 

designs in the kitchen now, the 
same ones which ran parallel to 

the stairway I ascended to the 
entrance. It’s harder to make out 
the exact design from outside, 
but inside I can see now how 
it sinks into the concrete. Cox 
describes the image as a bird in 
flight, the symbol of the Palmer 
House — it keeps to the distaste 
for perpendicular lines here, 
and its aggressive attention to 
triangles. This design is original 
to the home, as Wright liked to 
add a defining feature to each 
of his residential works. When 
the sun sets in the West over 

the driveway, it shines through 
these small designs, throwing 
shapes of light all throughout 
the house. Cox explains this 
with competitive joy, like a tour 
guide describing a University 
tradition.

I let Cox attend to the cracked 

window and the fixing crew, and 
walked around the perimeter of 
the home. Its size is continually 
surprising; just when I thought 
the structure ended, there’s 
another offshoot, another little 
detail I’ve missed. There’s the 
occasional 
triangular 
bricks 

in the ground for walking, and 
a small, pleasing light fixture 
that looks especially Japanese 
in inspiration. You can almost 
hear a stream babbling near, 
though the stream that passed 
by the home dried long ago. 
The closest water source is the 
Huron River, over a mile away. 
The tranquility is astounding, 
almost 
shocking 
given 
the 

locale, seeing as the drive passes 
right 
by 
several 
fraternity 

houses, so many of which are 
currently embroiled in some 
pesky scandals surrounding a 
few assorted felonies. Those 
Victorian façades, which are 
luxurious and imposing, seem 
antithetical to Wright’s style.

There’s 
such 
an 
ease 
in 

becoming abstract in this place. 
The very physical and real home 
that sits on this hill, through 
which a family lived, married 
and died, conjures up an almost 
inexplicable emotional response. 
That feeling sits somewhere 
between the precision of its 
geometry and the casual bend 
of the trees above it. It works 
because it feels natural and 
unforced, as if every home should 
look as if it glides past Saturn. 
Despite the oversaturation of the 
word “organic” when speaking 
of Wright, it still comes to mind. 
That word can feel empty when 
applied to his works, given its 
oversaturation. And yet, there is 
probably no better descriptor to 
capture the essence of what it’s 
like to walk through, and to look 
upon, one of his buildings.

The Palmer House is one of 

the last in a line of hundreds 
of residences he designed, and 
though it maintains the thread 
among his many works, it is, 
as each other, unique. At this 
point in his career, so close to 
the end of his life, he pushed 
experiments with form as far 
as they could stretch. Take 
the Solomon R. Guggenheim 
Museum, for example, which 
he designed at the same time 
as the Palmer’s home. There, 
he fixated on the circle; here, 
he’s taking on the triangle. 
Wright was showing a fixation 
with specific shapes as themes, 
as delineators of the story each 
project was meant to tell. That 
theme could shift with each 
home to reflect the personality 
of the land and the people who 
were to live on it.

A movie of mirrors: Architecture in ‘Columbus’

Kogonada’s debut film explores the complexities of parent-child relationships through the lens of modernist architecture

MEGHAN CHOU

Daily Arts Writer

CEREN DAG/DAILY

SUNDANCE INSTITUTE

