John M. Johansen — Smith Elementary School
I spent part of last week doing some work for The Cultural Landscape Foundation, in conjunction with their upcoming retrospective of modernist landscape architect Daniel Urban Kiley. More on that in a bit.
The weather decided not to cooperate for much of my time in Columbus, however that gave me an opportunity to seek out some of the other buildings. I was able to get a tour of a pretty cool Johansen building.
John M. Johansen designed the eye-catching school in 1969, featuring brightly painted steel ramps or “tubes” connecting the multi-levels of the reinforced concrete and bronze-tone corrugated steel structure. Christian Johansen designed the expansion and renovation in 1997.

