Today we’d like to introduce you to the team at Atlanta City Studio.
Please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
We started off in Ponce City Market in 2016 as a new concept to our city – urban design studios within city government are a relatively recent trend, and we’re one of the first. The inspiration for the Atlanta City Studio was the potential growth of our city. We are expected to grow our population exponentially in the coming decades, and the studio gives us an place to engage in open dialogue with Atlanta’s residents on the design of our city.
We started off as a team of two urban designers, Kevin Bacon and Vanessa Lira, who worked with Commissioner Tim Keane Ryan Gravel on the Atlanta City Design, a concept design for of our city. We have now grown to six full-time members, including architects, landscape architects, a public arts manager, and a community engagement manager.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
We’ve been operating for three years and in three very different parts of the city: first in Ponce City Market, then in Cascade Heights in southwest Atlanta, and now in South Downtown. The original idea was to move every six months to maximize our exposure to our residents throughout the city., We quickly discovered that six months was too short to engage in a meaningful way and, by design, truly make an impact in a collaborative way. We adjusted our model to recognize the importance of community engagement in our design work.
Please tell us about Atlanta City Studio.
We are a pop-up urban design laboratory focused on employing the principles of good urbanism to shape the future of Atlanta’s diverse neighborhoods and communities. We act as a facilitator, a forum, and a resource to help create the Atlanta we aspire to become through lectures, book talks, film series, open forums, urban art presentations, and other neighborhood and design programs. Our space is designed to celebrate and build momentum for design excellence in our city.
Each of our first two locations has been unique and have produced several projects of which we’re proud. At Ponce City Market, in creating and delivering the Atlanta City Design, we got to speak with hundreds of Atlantans about who we are as a city and how that should translate into a design for a vision for our future. The passion our residents have for our city is inspiring. The result of this is something we feel is highly comparable to the work Daniel Burnham did for the Plan of Chicago in 1908 which is still shaping Chicago today.
In Cascade Heights, we’re proud of how we were able continue the work of Atlanta City Design and show how it can be combined with the incredibly important work that all of our neighborhoods are doing. We spent two years in Cascade Heights improving storefronts, building bus shelters, designing better streets, and hosting open streets events. It’s extremely special to invited by a community to work in partnership for two years to design and physically deliver on their vision for how they want to grow.
Our philosophy of exceptional customer service and a commitment to the idea that “design is for everyone” sets us apart: we want every Atlantan to feel welcome to come to our space and be a part of the design of our city.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
In starting out at Ponce City Market, we had two members that were part of the founding team – we asked what their favorite memories were from that first location:
Kevin Bacon: I grew up in northwestern Ohio. We lived in a neighborhood where I was able to ride my bike over a good part of the city including down to the 7-11 for a pack of baseball cards, a slurpee, or some other piece of candy. This was all well before I was ten years old. I want that same freedom of experience in our city for my own children.
Vanessa Lira: I moved to the Atlanta area when I was 16. I remember being mesmerized by the trees as I rode in the passenger seat of my parents’ car. There were so many trees, so much green everywhere. I didn’t know developed areas could have that much nature. I had spent most of my childhood in a densely populated city outside of Sao Paulo, Brazil. My family lived in a compact 3-bedroom condo. My parents walked to work and to the local bakery. My sister and I walked to our swimming lesson after school. Atlanta, at its best, will be the juxtaposition of those two worlds. Our city has the unique opportunity to be both a verdant forest and a vibrant city.
Contact Info:
- Address: 99 Broad Street SW Atlanta GA 30303
- Website: atlcitystudio.org
- Phone: 4046236585
- Email: atlcitystudio@atlantaga.gov
- Instagram: instagram.com/atlcitystudio
- Twitter: twitter.com/atlcitystudio
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