Studio Work in Progress:

Postcards from the Edge of Atlanta's I-20 East

Abstract

Previous Masters Thesis research conducted by graduate students under my guidance was concerned with the assessment of residual urban sites in relation to suburban expansion. The tremendous influx of displaced commuters and capital into the redevelopment of Midtown and Downtown Atlanta was the impetus for this research. We constructed projects around such spaces as parking lots, brown-fields, newly inscribed ‘special public interest' and 'community development' zones, and dysfunctional gaps in the city such as interstate viaducts and tunnels.1 The most recent Thesis research, completed in the Spring 2002, shifts away from investigations concerned with Atlanta's numerous urban centers, and moves out toward Atlanta's eastern suburban periphery. For all the prosperous professionals who have moved into the core city of Atlanta to escape traffic, the growth of the suburbs was 100 times greater than that of the city last year. The city, in fact, has grown little while the region around it has swelled. With 427,500 people, Atlanta today accounts for 13.3 percent of the metropolitan area's 3.2 million residents, while it made up 22.4 percent in 1980.2 Over the next ten years, it is anticipated that the I-20 corridor from Atlanta, east to Madison, Georgia, will become the fastest growing sector of the Atlanta metropolitan area. The State of Georgia is finally involved in a number of initiatives which seriously assess issues related to sprawl - environmental, transportation, civic, and institutional, all related to our quality of life. As Atlanta expands, small towns on the edge of the metropolitan area must act now to develop intelligent, comprehensive plans for future development, or risk consumption by pervasive growth. The assessment of existing policies, the implementation of new planning strategies and architectural proposals that address the intertwining of traditional settlement patterns and contemporary modes of being is the focus of this current research.