The Cummins Corporate Office Building in Columbus,

Indiana Indiana ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Michigan to the northwest, Michigan to the north and northeast, Ohio to the east, the Ohio River and Kentucky to the s ...

is a

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

office building designed by

Kevin Roche Eamonn Kevin Roche (June 14, 1922 – March 1, 2019) was an Irish-born American Pritzker Prize-winning architect. Kevin Roche was the Archetype, archetypal Modern architecture, modernist and "member of an elite group of third generation modern ...

. Constructed in 1983, the building serves as the

corporate headquarters Corporate headquarters is the part of a corporate structure that deals with tasks such as strategic planning, corporate communications, taxes, law, books of record, marketing, finance, human resources, and information technology. Corporate headqu ...

of the

Cummins Cummins Inc. is an American multinational corporation, multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and distributes engines, electric vehicle components, and power generation products. Cummins also services engines and related equipmen ...

engine company. It was constructed on an old railroad yard and is unique for being built around the Cerealine Building, which was Cummins' first factory building.

Background

Cummins CEO J. Irwin Miller had "a lifelong interest in architecture", and in the 1950s established a foundation to pay architecture fees for new public buildings in Columbus and Bartholomew County. When Cummins decided to construct a new corporate headquarters, it turned to

Pritzker Prize The Pritzker Architecture Prize is an international award presented annually "to honor a living architect or architects whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment which has produced consisten ...

-winning architect,

Structure

The building is built on a three-block plot of land that formerly served as a

rail yard A rail yard, railway yard, railroad yard (US) or simply yard, is a series of Track (rail transport), tracks in a rail network for storing, sorting, or loading and unloading rail vehicles and locomotives. Yards have many tracks in parallel for k ...

in downtown Columbus. As part of its distinctive construction, Roche built the new precast concrete structure around the original Cerealine Building, which served as Cummins' first factory and administrative offices. The original building was also renovated to serve as the cafeteria for the employees of the company. Roche used precast concrete and glass as his primary building elements in the building. Jack Curtis executed the landscaping for the facility, including the large open green area on the eastern side that is open to the public as a park. As of 2013, it remained in use as Cummins' corporate headquarters. In 2017 Cummins began a $50 million renovation of the building, scheduled for completion in 2019.

Sculpture

As part of the construction, Roche incorporated a Rudolph de Harak sculpture known as the ''Exploded Engine'' in the lobby of the building.

References

External links

* {{Cummins Headquarters in the United States Office buildings completed in 1983 1983 establishments in Indiana Modernist architecture in Indiana Buildings and structures in Columbus, Indiana Roche-Dinkeloo buildings Cummins