Hotlanta

By: Chase Masters

As a field trip, the Grad students went to visit Atlanta, Georgia.  We went to visit the Olympic legacy project from the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, since we are designing an Olympic legacy project for Arc 551 Comprehensive Design Studio.  Throughout the trip we got to visit and see many different interesting buildings, and new things to come to Atlanta.  One of my favorite was the new Atlanta Beltline.  The Beltline is the circle of railroads that create a “belt” around the city of Atlanta.  The design to change this beltline is to take the railroads that are not in use anymore and to repurpose them to benefit the community.  This was a great beneficial idea for the community of Atlanta to try and move away from the traditional car lifestyle.  For more information you can go to Perkins and wills website - http://perkinswill.com/work/atlanta-beltline.html.

We also visited the Marriott Marquis and got to see the very interesting Atrium that brings in natural light for the entire building, one of the largest Atriums in the world.  What made the atrium very interesting was the elevators in the middle of the building breaking the atrium into two different ones.  The space was used to film parts of the Hunger games and other movies.  During our stay in Atlanta there was a big convention at this and other hotels, called Dragon Con.  This convention is similar to Comic Con, it ismultigenre and is based in Atlanta; it brings in around 50,000 people.  For more infomation about the Marriott Marquis go to John Portman & Associates - http://www.portmanusa.com/project.php?

name=Atlanta%20Marriott%20Marquis%20Hotel&projectid=5617&country=USA.  For more information about the Dragon Con go to their website - http://dragoncon.org/.

            Another great spot we visited was the Centennial Olympic Park.  It was part of the Olympic Legacy project that reformed a part of Atlanta to bring new life to a rundown part of town.  It was a park that tried to incorporate a sense of nature in a downtown city.  It worked around the site given to try and block the noise from the high traffic on one side of the site, and also bring in people with a larger sidewalk from the other side of the site that has less traffic, but has lots of pedestrian walkways.  This park was heavily used by family and by people who wanted to run in the fountain to remain cool in the hot summer.  There were brick sidewalks with names from people who donated money on each brick.  The park was laid out like a grid so people could come and easily find their brick.  You could see people walking up and down the side walk trying to find their name.

            The visit to Atlanta was a great one, trying to give some insight to how Legacy projects work and are used as well as look and experience a different city.