As an anticipated development off Georgia Tech's campus, Arts Square focuses on blending art, technology, campus, and community all in a central hub at the corner or North Avenue and Marietta Street. The Display Case project focuses on Phase A of the arts center, containing maker spaces, music and dance studios, performance areas, digital labs, and flex spaces. Using a series of volumetric shifts, the building gives each programmatic block its own time to shine with strong visual connections to Georgia Tech campus, rising Science Square, and the Marietta Ridge District. These programmatic blocks create an individual space for each of Tech's creative communities, but connects them through a large central shifting atrium to encourage collaboration. The volume shifts also create a series of terraces that traverse up the building and allow users plenty of opportunity to connect with the outdoors. Glazing facade techniques are utilized to create transparency, creating a "display case", and a series of metal fins and opaque corrugated metal panels offer depth and color to the exterior while shading the interior spaces appropriately. Overall, The Display Case creates a perfect solution to merge art and technology, bridge campus to the community, and allow students freedom to make, learn, perform, create, sing, and dance to their heart's content.
To begin the project, the pair designed the 7-acre site to include a significant arts program, a hotel, commercial space, student housing, and an existing building (Randall Brothers) to be renovated into a food hall/retail space. The site includes a large, tiered green space looking back towards Georgia Tech campus and an underground connector between the student housing and arts buildings.
