The Miller Garden: Icon of Modernism

pub_fac_hilderbrand_miller_gardenDan Kiley’s Miller Garden—the result of Kiley’s collaboration with architects Eero Eero Saarinen, Kevin Roche, and Alexander Girard for Indiana industrialist J. Irwin Miller and his wife Xenia—is an acknowledged icon of mid-20th century modernist design in America. The Miller Garden: Icon of Modernism brings together, for the first time, Kiley’s original plans for the garden, Ezra Stoller’s 1958 photographs of the newly completed project, and Alan Ward’s color images of the mature garden from the past two decades.

Architecture critic David Dillon reviews the legacy of the Millers’ architectural patronage in Columbus and reveals aspects of the relationships amont the collaborators on the Millers’ residence.

In his examination of the house and garden, Gary R. Hilderbrand contends that the Miller Garden’s success is rooted in the mutual respect and the shared pursuits of architect and landscape architect. But it also arises from Kiley’s unusual capacity for turning the timeless conventions of landscape form—orchards, hedges, and rows of trees, and vistas—into wholly modern spaces for a modern way of living. And because Alan Ward’s splendid photographs appeared in print after more than twenty years of meticulous care has allowed it to mature, he argues that Kiley’s Miller Garden helped to revitalize a commitment to the medium and craft of the garden in American landscape architecture.

Spacemaker Press