The One Atlantic Center is a Postmodernist skyscraper designed by Johnson/Burgee Architects, and built between 1986 and 1987 in Atlanta, GA.
One Atlantic Center is not the only name you might know this building by though. Between 1987 and 1990 it was also known as IBM Tower.
Its precise street address is 1201 West Peachtree Street, Atlanta, GA. You can also find it on the map here.
Johnson/Burgee Architects was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design. But there was also one other architect involved, as far as we know. We are talking about Heery International .
Johnson/Burgee Architects was a prominent American architectural firm founded in 1968 by renowned architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee.
Philip Johnson was initially one of the greatest advocates for the International Style. However, by the late 1960s, he began questioning the constraints of this style and started leaning towards Postmodernism.
It was particularly during his partnership with John Burgee that Johnson explored more expressive, historical, and often whimsical designs, reflecting the evolving architectural landscape of the 1970s and 1980s.
Johnson/Burgee Architects was a leader in redefining corporate architecture in the late 20th century. The firm became known for its influential role in the Postmodern architecture movement and gained recognition for its innovative and bold designs, often characterized by classical references, bold forms, and a departure from the minimalist principles of Modernism.
However, the partnership between Johnson and Burgee began to unravel in the late 1980s as they started to disagree on management and creative directions. The firm’s financial difficulties escalated, and it ultimately declared bankruptcy in 1991, with Burgee suing Johnson for financial mismanagement.
That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but here is a list of the people we do know also played their part in making the One Atlantic Center a reality:
The One Atlantic Center can be categorized as a Postmodernist building.
Postmodernism in architecture emerged in the United States during the late 1960s as a reaction against the starkness of the International Style, which part of the new generation of architects argued was too impersonal, sterile, and disconnected from historical and cultural contexts.
Postmodernism challenged the International Style's austerity by reintroducing historical elements and ornamentation, although this time not as literally as in the Neo-Classic buildings. Instead, they reinterpreted them within the context of modern materials and construction techniques.
Postmodern buildings often feature bold, contrasting colors, unconventional forms, and a playful blend of various architectural elements from different eras and cultures.
In the United States, Postmodernism was not just an aesthetic choice but also a philosophical stance. It represented a democratization of design, where architects sought to create buildings that were accessible and meaningful to a broader range of people, not just designers and intellectuals.
The One Atlantic Center was completed in 1987. At that time Postmodernism was the prevailing style. Fresh, bold and daring, architects were exploring the freedom of designing without having to follow the strict, sometimes arbitrary rules of a specific architectural movement (which ironically became a movement itself). The One Atlantic Center was therefore every much in line with what the architecture community, and the people liked and wanted at the time.
The One Atlantic Center reaches an architectural height of 820ft (250m). It has a total of 50 floors, served by 24 elevators, which combined offer a total of 1,099,995 sqf (102,193m2) of usable space.
In regards to parking space, the building has a total of 2200 spots available, which roughly equals 44 spots per floor (above ground), or one parking spot per every 495 sqf (46m2) of usable space.
Ever since opening its doors to the public in 1987, the One Atlantic Center has mainly been used as Commercial space.
The One Atlantic Center uses a framed tube-in-tube structure , with concrete and steel columns and concrete and steel slabs.
A framed tube-in-tube structure uses a central core, known as inner tube, which usually holds stairs, lifts and installations, and a perimeter of columns around it, which form the exterior tube. The interior tube is tipically more massive (often made of reinforced concrete), and the exterior tube is "lighter" (made of steel or concrete columns). Both tubes are conencted via horizontal elements which make up the floors and also transmit any horizontal froces from the facade to the core.
The facade of the building is load bearing. This is a direct consequence of the integration of the exterior "tube" into the facade, something which most framed tube-in-tube buildings do in order to liberate the interior space from structural elements and achieve a more flexible interior.
So the facade of the builing is techinically load-bearing, yes, however, in between the load-bearing colums we find a curtain-wall type of facade, which by itself would not be cosnidered load-bearing.
From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a glass curtain wall vertically divided by stone-clad vertical pillars. These vertical divisions create vertical stripes that alternate between the stone's lighter brown color and the glass's darker color, emphasizing the building's verticality.
The design includes Gothic ornaments, most notably towards the top of the building, below the copper pyramid with golden details that crowns it.
Another material found at the One Atlantic Center is pink porrino granite, used for the lobby ornamentation.
