Cover Story: ARTchitecture

“We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.”</
-- Winston Churchill</
They are the icons of great cities, and sources of pride for citizens:</
The Sydney Opera House. The Empire State Building. Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. The Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. The Guggenheim in Bilboa.</
The jewels of great cities are great buildings, and Atlanta has its gems, from big ones like Philip Johnson’s One Atlantic Center and Richard Meier’s High Museum, to smaller ones such as Michael Graves’ Carlos Museum at Emory, and Turner Village, also at Emory and designed by the local firm Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects.</
For the most part, however, Atlanta plays it safe architecturally. In a region where spending resources on great design often is viewed as frivolous, governments and cultural institutions usually concentrate on the bare minimum. Developers and the tenants they serve rarely venture outside an established norm for something that might be controversial and expensive.</
Until now.</
Last year was a watershed time for the city architecturally. And the most dramatic concepts flowed out of the few blocks between 14th and 17th streets.</
Renzo Piano’s expansion to the High Museum of Art opened to rave reviews nationally in November. The curved glass sheathing of Pickard Chilton’s Symphony Tower at 14th and Peachtree — commonly called “the cell phone tower” — changed the shape of the Midtown skyline. And the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra began raising hundreds of millions of dollars for what may turn out to be the South’s most flamboyant architectural icon: Santiago Calatrava’s symphony hall.</
“Atlanta has always had — well, since I started practicing in the late ’80s, early ’90s — a reputation for being very traditional, and it’s had that reputation for a long time,” says Eric Brock, a design principal at the architecture firm Lord, Aeck & Sargent, which collaborated with Piano on the High expansion. “But there’s been a change, and it’s gaining momentum. Developers and the average citizen appreciate a more modern contemporary style of architecture, and I think that goes hand in hand with the urban revitalization we’ve been enjoying. Those forces are allowing a more contemporary architectural progression.”</
In the process, a style is emerging that’s surprisingly appropriate to Midtown’s emerging urban landscape. And A-list “starchitects” like Meier, Piano and Calatrava are part of the pull that will establish a higher standard for marquis buildings in the city.</
You saw that happen in the late 1980s with One Atlantic Station. Famed modernist-turned-post-modernist New York architect Johnson topped the building at 14th and West Peachtree — then known as the IBM tower — with a pyramidal roofline. Other architects promptly changed the designs of neighboring towers even while they were under construction, creating a little flare along an otherwise blocky skyline.</
But there’s also a push for better architecture welling up from the local market-place. Condo towers are breaking out of the same tired mold. Fake stucco and wood is out. Glass, concrete and steel are in.</
Before the end of the decade, Buckhead and downtown are set to sprout more of their own marquis buildings. But ground zero for that “push” is Midtown, south of 14th Street, just as ground zero for the starchitecture “pull” lies north of 14th Street.</
What’s more, many of those new buildings emphasize the kind of multiple uses and pedestrian friendliness that bring city streets to life. It’s a change that Atlantans have been starving for since the city’s core was hollowed out by white flight and urban renewal in the 1960s and ’70s. It’s also a change that offers some hope for an architectural movement that, if not distinctively Atlantan, at least finds a significant home here.</
If you think of Atlanta’s physical landscape as a patchwork quilt, architects are the people creating the actual patches. But the stitching has often been neglected, leaving gaps in the fabric: empty lots, kudzu fields, dilapidated storefronts.</
Ellen Dunham-Jones, director of Georgia Tech’s architecture program, explains that city fabrics are inconsistent because different architects will emphasize different components.</
“The question is: Is the architect’s role simply to be functional? Or is the role to symbolize cultural stature, and identity?” Dunham-Jones says.</
The Atlanta skyline’s formative years ranged from the 1960s into the 1980s, when glass and concrete modernist towers were all the rage — and while downtown was losing businesses and residents.</
Modernism’s famous credo “form follows function” found its application in parking decks, loading docks, elevated walkways, and buildings that met the sidewalk with intimidating concrete walls. The “function,” in other words, was to serve cars and get people out the way.</
Some imaginative structures offered a new vision. John Portman’s downtown Hyatt Regency pioneered grand hotel atriums topped with mechanical rotating restaurants. But the Hyatt and Portman’s Peachtree Center also turned their attention inward and did little for the public space outside.</
“I think there was a misconception about what was done in the ’70s that was part of the urban renewal movement,” says Joe Greco of Lord, Aeck & Sargent. “The idea that somehow we remove [people] from the dirt, the grime and the traffic of everyday life and pick them up into the sky and connect them with sky bridges — out of the weather and hermetically sealed — that did things to the street level that were not beneficial.”</
For a generation, downtown’s energy retreated to the suburbs at 6 p.m., skipped the weekend, and returned Monday morning.</
Then, two things happened. Thanks in part to the 1996 Olympics, key sections of downtown received face-lifts. At the same time, the suburbs lost some of their attractiveness when commute times topped two hours. Intown living became cool again.</
“My theory, too, is they watched TV shows like ‘Friends’ and ‘Seinfield’ and they got catalogs like Pottery Barn, and everybody in the catalog and everybody in the sitcoms is in some funky, cool environment,” says Brock, of Lord, Aeck & Sargent. “And they want [their lives] to be that way.”</
The first wave of rehab projects included loft developments such as Fulton Cotton Mill Lofts in Cabbagetown, the Crown Candy Lofts on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, and the Breman Steel Factory on Decatur Street. The look of those projects, and the subsequent loft conversions, were no accidents. The redevelopments were guided by a historic preservation rule that, in a nutshell, bars developers from rebuilding facades in a fake-old style. That rule forced architects to use modern materials and designs — like swooping arches of raw steel — when renovating old factories and warehouses. Atlanta chic became aged brick next to buffed steel.</
Two landmark renovation projects during that time were the Novare Group’s rehabilitation of the old Biltmore Hotel in Midtown, and Peachtree Lofts, an old government building, also in Midtown.</
The success of those projects prompted developers such as the Novare Group and architects such as Lord, Aeck & Sargent and Smith Dalia to design funky buildings from the ground up, pioneering what would become today’s contemporary glass and steel revolution. As Midtown living became more desirable, it made sense for developers to sink more money into design and construction — and to build taller buildings with more units.</
Then came the Metropolis.</
The Novare Group’s concrete and blue-tinted glass condo towers rise 20 stories above Peachtree and Eighth streets. The buildings — designed by Atlanta firm Smallwood, Reynolds, Stewart, Stewart — offer a jarring contrast to Midtown’s bricks, mortar and stucco.</
At first, Novare Group CEO and President Jim Borders worried that it would look too much like an office building.</
“We told [the architects], ‘Look, we don’t want it to be too contemporary.’ We wanted it to have some classical forms to it, classical proportions that you see in architecture throughout the ages that makes sense in terms of how far apart the buildings are relative to their height, things like that,” he says. “So you can have a building that has a very classical look to it, yet is concrete and glass.”</
Judging by buyers’ response, Borders’ modernist ode to classical style was an astounding success. Priced between $148,000 and $300,000, the 498 condo units at the Metropolis sold in six months.</
“The most thrilling moment for us was opening day. The people would go upstairs and look at the units, and they were bought,” Borders says. “It was just unbelievable.”</
Since the success of Metropolis, the Novare Group has forged ahead with similar-looking high-rise condo buildings, such as Eclipse in Buckhead, Spire in Midtown, and Twelve Atlantic Station.</
Other developers have caught on, and several glass and steel projects — commonplace in other major cities — are underway across Midtown. Among the most notable is Plaza Midtown, also designed by Smallwood, Reynolds. The project at West Peachtree and Eighth streets will consist of two curved 20-story condo towers with a Publix supermarket and other shops on the ground level.</
That last point marks another major departure from the kind of project Atlanta’s gotten used to. The old style was to put up a big box surrounded by asphalt in the vicinity of a sprawling, stucco-covered townhouse and condo complex. Now, developers are putting residential units on top of ground-floor retail, which opens to a sidewalk and streetscape that merges with the surrounding city fabric.</
Restaurants and shops also link Metropolis to the sidewalk. Another project, Technology Square, uses shops and the familiar grid pattern of development to patch a new urban neighborhood out of the frayed quilt that had languished on the west side of Midtown near Georgia Tech.</
Those trends closely track New Urbanism, a design movement that stresses mixed-use developments and open common spaces friendly to pedestrians. Planning agencies, from the neighborhood level in Midtown to the Atlanta Regional Commission, now encourage projects to be much more dense, subservient to the automobile, and pedestrian-friendly.</
Smith Dalia Architects is one of the firms that have taken a lead on loft projects with New Urbanist qualities.</
“To me, architecture is more about urban rooms, the remainder after you build, what’s left around you,” says Ed Akins of Smith Dalia. “I think people are becoming more aware of that, and more aware of the public realm, the street ... things that seem to have been ignored for a long time in Atlanta.”</
Condo towers and sidewalk shops may seem to have little in common with the Ivory Tower world of the Woodruff Arts Center. Still, the city’s fabric must connect the residential and commercial realm to the loftiest settings — which, in the Woodruff’s case, includes the work of the most venerable architects.</
There are only handful of architects in the world who reach such stature that they are given virtual artistic freedom for major cultural projects. Shelton Stanfill, president and CEO of the Woodruff Arts Center, has worked with the most prominent of them.</
As past director of the Los Angeles Music Center, Stanfill helped lead the effort to build a new concert hall there. The center hired Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Frank Gehry on the project that is now called Disney Concert Hall — one of the most recognizable and iconic buildings built in recent years.</
One of Stanfill’s passions is architecture, and one of the major reasons he was attracted to Atlanta and the Woodruff Arts Center was the original High Museum building, designed by Richard Meier. Though he may be a tad biased, Stanfill considers the High to be Meier’s best work.</
When it became clear that the High needed more space — and could afford to raise the money — Stanfill was committed to bring in the best.</
“It seemed to all of us that investing in an architect of the very highest realm and giving them the freedom to create great buildings was the most important decision we could make. Most certainly, no one in the world, at least I believe, is building better museums and gallery spaces than Renzo Piano, and I think what we have here says that’s the case.”</
On Nov. 17, Piano’s 177,000-square-foot addition to the High Museum of Art opened to nationwide fanfare, lauded for its use of light, its creation of public space, and its sense of urbanism. USA Today described the building as ushering in “a sea change in Atlanta,” a view shared by many prominent architects and city leaders.</
Nine months before the High’s opening, the museum’s sister organization in the Woodruff Arts Center family, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, received almost as much attention as Piano drew when Santiago Calatrava’s ultra-modern designs for a new $300 million Symphony Center were revealed.</
The building itself is signature Calatrava — grandiose and futuristic, with arching lines reminiscent of the ocean. Steel wings form a sunscreen that will open and close over the upper lobby. And on the inside, acoustic ceiling tiles can be lowered or raised, depending on how much volume is needed for a particular performance.</
While Piano’s master plan modestly sublimates itself to Meier’s work, Calatrava’s symphony hall promises to stand out, as much as if not more than the nearby High.</
Yet even stars like Piano and Santiago are criticized for their shortsightedness. As with any group whose work is based partly on art and partly on science, architects debate theory frequently and hotly.</
For example, an article in the Sept. 19, 2005, edition of Metropolis magazine describes several projects by A-list architects, including Calatrava’s expansion to the Milwaukee Art Museum, the following way: “The trouble with betting on an iconic building — or a few — to transform a city is that the area of improvement is tightly focused and the impact doesn’t always filter down. Neighborhoods still get lackluster development in more routine construction.”</
Conversely, starchitects run the risk of ignoring worthwhile architectural trends in a specific city where they’re working. Some schools of thought are built on the premise that an architect’s primary goal isn’t to lord over and dictate to surrounding environments, but to accent surroundings and blend with them.</
Traditionally, cities develop their own architectural style in response to their climates and typography, as opposed to importing it, says Georgia Tech’s Dunham-Jones.</
“Increasingly, cities are turning to star designers to provide icons that become part of the postcards for that city, which is quite different from tradition,” she says. “So that would be the shift in how cities are promoting their sense of place. Atlanta has certainly done the same thing that a lot of the larger cities are doing.”</
But critics will have a hard time arguing that Calatrava and Piano ignored the area surrounding the Woodruff campus, or — at least in Piano’s case — that the design is a flashy expression of ego.</
The most striking thing about Piano’s design is its subtlety. The expansion to the High doesn’t compete with the original Meier building. Instead, it complements Meier’s work, while reclaiming the streetscape and opening the areas surrounding it.</
Stanfill says the Piano building is extraordinary not because it’s a marquis piece by a starchitect but because it emphasizes the exterior spaces outside as much as the gallery spaces inside.</
“We already had a great iconic building here, with the Richard Meier on this campus. There was no reason to compete with that, and the thing was not to play Billy the Kid to see who could outgun one another,” Stanfill says. “We had the opportunity to create truly great, great galleries and the chance to change the concept of this campus.”</
Piano, in fact, didn’t just settle on designing a complementary building. According to Lord, Aeck & Sargent architects who aided him with his design, Piano insisted on master-planning the entire site. In doing so, he created an arts village in the center of the campus. Visitors may access that piazza from several different entries, which connect to other open spaces.</
“If you think back, if you remember what it was like before, you just had these two very different buildings that had a very ugly connection between the two of them that didn’t say we had a campus here,” Stanfill says. “It was really about recapturing a block, and I’m not sure where else that’s happened.”</
Art centers “are now not about just whatever art that takes place within them. It’s about their role in the community, it’s about their center in the urban experience, and so it’s about the aesthetics as well as about the social [role of architecture],” says Stanfill. “Certainly, what Renzo has created is much more a place of community celebration than it was in the past.”</
Likewise, not only is the Calatrava eye-catching and iconic, it also is built to make sense for living, breathing people.</
It will have an outdoor education center for children and school groups. A walkway will connect West Peachtree and Peachtree streets, complete with a promenade that will guide pedestrians by the Symphony Tower “cell phone” skyscraper. And standing on Peachtree Street facing south, you’ll be able to look upward to the tower’s unique top, and back over your shoulder, westerly, at the dazzling Calatrava building.</
Stanfill’s goal — in addition to elevating the museum and orchestra’s status — is nothing short of an alteration of the heart of Midtown. The Calatrava and Piano designs “together raise the level of expectations of buildings for Atlanta, especially Midtown, for the future,” he says. “I think that I’m optimistic, not overly optimist, that in the future you will see finer architecture by both local as well as international architects.”</
It’s only taken a couple of decades for Atlanta’s urban texture to rot, and then begin to reform. Already, the vibrancy of the city has increased, which will only quicken with the new symphony hall, with each new skyscraper, and with each new intown development that brings more people to the city.</
“The heart of all this progress really deals with the pedestrian experience, making a livable, walkable city,” Stanfill says.</
“We could be one of the first major cities in which true urbanism had been lost — because everybody had deserted it and all your retail had closed down and all your people moved out — [and then] that truly turns around, and returns to a full urban experience.”