Some Atlanta Architects Call For Better Building Design
FILE – In this March 25, 2012, file photo a couple enjoy a sunny afternoon against the backdrop of the Midtown skyline from Piedmont Park in Atlanta. The lower 48 states were 8.6 degrees above normal for March and 6 degrees higher than average for the first three months of the year, according to calculations by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with both March and the first three months of the year far exceeding the country’s old records.(AP Photo/David Goldman)
David Goldman / Associated Press
New developments are sprouting up all around in-town Atlanta, but some in the design community are worried that not all of them represent the best quality.
Michael Kahn, architect for Rosser International and editor at Curbed Atlanta, said there is a growing chorus of architects and planners in Atlanta who are calling for more “accountability in the design and development community.”
“Recently Matt Bronfman, who’s the chief of Jamestown Properties [and] who recently redeveloped Ponce City Market, came out and took to task developers in the city for lackluster design and architecture,”Kahn said, “and this wasn’t a new concept at all.”
“We’ve seen it at Curbed in interviewing architects over the last couple months,” he said. “You have architects long-established in Atlanta and new voices that are complaining or addressing the concerns that many of us have about development in the city.”
One architect compared some of the developments to “visual pollution,” Kahn said, while Atlanta’s planning director Tim Keane described design in the city as being a little “Mr. Potato Head-like.”
In an interview with WABE, Kahn considered what might be bringing about this so-called bad design, explored what some are doing to improve architecture in the city and also discussed the need of developers to balance their own financial needs with those of the community.
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