E


Rio Atlanta, Georgia


Architect
Arquitectonica International
Corporation design
Milton Pate & Associates, Inc.
- production

Consulting Engineers
Bennett & Pless, Inc.
Brady & Anglin
Harris Engineering Corp.

Landscape Architects
The Office of Peter Walker and
Martha Schwartz-Courtyard


Signage and Graphics
Wagner Bruker Design Asso-
ciates, Inc.

General Contractor
McDevitt & Street Company

Mechanical Contractor
J.S. Thomas Co.

Electrical Contractor
Michael/Yukon Electric Co.

Owner/Developer
Ackerman and Company


 This 110,000 square foot
retail center is primarily a se-
ries of buildings around a cen-
tral entertainment court. It is
located at a busy intersection
adjacent to downtown Atlanta.
 Conceived as a small, ur-
ban village with separately
defined buildings, this com-
plex allows the pedestrian to
circulate from the inner court
to the parking outside. Within
this complex, one building is
rotated from others to allow
special entry. The buildings of
the center are made of vertical
blue corrugated metal siding
with white window mullions
and yellow awnings. The ro-
tated building is horizontal
corrugated black metal siding
with green mullions.
 The entertainment court is
 a series of similarly rotated
 squares. The court contains a
 garden which consists of a


Photos by Rion Rizzo and Mike Astalos


series of turf and green boulder
strips sloping into a reflecting
pool.
As the stripes engage the pool,
they are continued as fiber
optics. Situated along the
stripes in land and water is a
rigidly placed grid of golden
frogs. All of the frogs are fac-
ing a forty foot vine-covered
geodesic sphere which emits a
fog at regular intervals.


Jury: "The use of 'off-the-
shelf' building elements and
the response to a restricted site
and budget produced a master-
ful work. The frog pond is a
great thing to build around. The
building is strong and eye-
catching."


FLORIDA ARCHITECT September/October 1989