The Indiana Architectural Foundation welcomed three new Board members this year: Chris Reinhart, LFA, Well AP – Cripe, Jack Faber, AIA – Hafer Design, and Michael Davis, AIA, EDAC – VPS Architecture have joined the 13 member Board.

Roofless Church New Harmony, Indiana Architect: Philip Johnson The Roofless Church in New Harmony, Indiana New Harmony Indiana is home to several architectural attractions.  One of the most prominent works is the non-denominational Roofless Church designed by architect Philip Johnson. The Church is comprised of an open park surrounded by a rectangular brick wall.  The organization of the park resembles a formal church with a center aisle and an altar.  The altar however is replaced with a flower-like shaped dome with cedar shingles engulfing a bronze statue, surrounded by shrubbery placed on an ornately laid out cobblestone patio.  The canopy structure resembles a cloth draped over a table and has been noted to cast a shadow that looks like an open rose.  The golden rose was the symbol of the utopian community that founded New Harmony. The simplicity of the Church and the inclusion of trees and landscaping in the space is part of its charm.  It is a clean Modernist statement about the preservation of nature and religion. It is also a unique project of Philip Johnson’s varied catalog. It is one of Indiana’s hidden treasures and is included as one of the first 50 projects in the Indiana […]

IAF scholarship helps former college dropout realize his dreams of becoming an architect Chris Reinhart didn’t take the traditional route to architecture school. But Reinhart isn’t what you’d call a traditional kind of guy. He built his first home out of straw bales and salvaged materials. When he graduated from Lafayette Jefferson High School, the academically gifted 18-year-old headed off to Indiana University and the world appeared to be his oyster. However, after five semesters, he “very ungracefully,” dropped out. He formed a rock band, Cadmium Orange and got a construction job. Today, at age 40, Reinhart is days away from receiving his master’s degree in architecture, and he’s working part-time as a design associate at Cripe Architects, a job he said he landed, in part, because of the Indiana Architectural Foundation. During the scholarship presentation, IAF asked each of the recipients to say a few words about their project. Reinhart talked about a hypothetical design for a future charter school in Bloomington. He doesn’t remember exactly what he said, but he remembers the call he got from Cripe asking him to come in and talk about a job. Reinhart was “prepared, polished and engaging,” said Fred Green, Cripe’s president […]

AIA/IAF 1st Annual Trivia Night is a Mind-blowing success Jeopardy champ, James Holzhauer, would have been hard pressed competing against the 60 plus trivia enthusiasts present at the first annual AIA-IAF Trivia Night held on April 12th at the District Tap Restaurant and Bar.  Participants enjoyed an evening of refreshments, drinks, prizes, fun, goofy eyewear, and of course plenty of brain taxing trivia questions.  The event was led by our outstanding trivia master, Justin Sage, who did a tremendous job running the show and keeping contestants scratching their heads for answers.  Through ten tedious rounds of questions (with a couple bonus rounds tossed in for fun) seven teams competed neck and neck until the final round when the eventual champ was determined.  The winning team hailed from American Structurepoint who aptly dubbed themselves ‘Structureyoink’ included team members Rob Bray, Matt Jennings, Abbey Kochert, Joe Koslow, Dan McCloskey, Noah Porter, Jeff Thornberry, and Brianna Wetzel.  Congratulations to our first team winners who are recipients of the AIA-IAF Trivia Masters traveling trophy and a few other prizes as well not to mention bragging rights.  The runner up team was ‘Axis Allies’. All in all the event was a tremendous fund raising success […]