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Atlanta, Georgia
When the world is a monster, bad to swallow you whole
Once a year, during the single hottest week of the Spring, which could be anywhere from late April to mid June, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) holds its annual convention in a different city. And while the AIA offers lots of continuing education classes, keynotes, seminars, receptions and a trade show, I go for one reason only, which are the tours. Why go to a different city every year during the single hottest week of the Spring if you don’t intend on getting out and seeing the place.
In 2015, after a spectacular convention in Chicago, the AIA and its members headed to Atlanta, which while not as architecturally significant as Chicago (sorry, Atlanta) still has plenty of actual non food related things to be proud of beyond the Varsity or the ribs at Fat Matt’s or the downtown Waffle House.
The first tour that I took was ET 108: Porsche Cars North American Headquarters: The Ultimate, High Performance Experience.” I’m not sure if it was, in fact, the ultimate, high performance experience, but it was certainly interesting. The building and complex (located right off a runway at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson) is an old, rich white guy’s dream playground, where they can take learn all about their new Porsche that they bought to really piss off their second ex-wife. Here, they can practice in simulators and then take their Porsche out on a closed test track and really open it up.
Up past Midtown is the High Museum of Art, designed by Richard Meier at his most Richard Meier-est, all white square panels and curves and glass. It’s a good museum with an interesting, ramped lobby, a solid collection and a great place to kill time between ET 102 (a tour of the Perkins and Will office across Peachtree Street) and the short, six minute Uber ride to Fat Matt’s Rib Shack on Piedmont Avenue,
When the High Museum of Art needed to build an addition to their now iconic Richard Meier museum, they decided not to hire Richard Meier. There could be many reasons why, maybe they didn’t want to mess (too much) with a classic or, maybe like just about every other museum out there lately, they hired Renzo Piano because of his designs that bring natural light into the top floor galleries. By this point he seems to have perfected that, and whether you’re in Dallas or Houston or Los Angeles or Chicago, even though the buildings now all kind of look alike, the art on that top floor gallery is most certainly naturally well lit.
ET 213 (to the AIA, “ET” means educational tour and not Esa Tikkanen or Emma Thompson) was a construction tour of the massive new Atlanta Falcons football stadium, under construction and only a block or two from the convention center, although we still took a bus. The stadium is still a year and a half away from opening, but enough of it is built that it at least looks like a stadium.
If you have never been on a construction site, there are a few rules you need to know. First off, they always make a big deal about wearing closed toe shoes with a thicker sole- construction boots are preferred, although I’ve never had an issue wearing thicker sole Merrell hiking shoes. They also give you a hard hat- there should be some give between the head strap and the outer shell so that it sits high, looks a bit goofy and better protects your head. There will also be a safety vest and some clear goggles that will immediately fog up as soon as you get outside in the heat. And then you always have to sign a waiver that you really never read. I understand why you have to do that, I mean construction sites are exceptionally dangerous after all. That said, I’m pretty sure if I came home after the tour with a big piece of rebar impaled in my chest, that my lawyer and I would still find a way to sue.
A lot of the stadium was built, but not apparently any of the actual staircases. To get up and into the site, temporary scaffolding stairs served all of the floors and honestly felt far, far more dangerous than anything else found on site. Our tour group of about 40 people ascended and descended at the same time, and the whole stair tower swayed back and forth with all of the movement. Even from a distance, after getting the hell off of it, you could still see it sway back and forth and back again. Once more, I am lucky to still be alive
