official and unofficial architects:
ed akins, joe amisano (in collaboration with the reynoldstown revitalization Corp.), frank andre, peter bahouth, ryan blakey, mary clare de reuil, mehmet dogu, ben fain, gamble and gamble architects, julia kubica, alyson Laura, kemp mooney, john powell, katie ridley, vikram sami, mack scogin merrill elam architects, tom zarrilli
empty lot film animation
curated by: shana wood animators: steve dixey, katie ridley, & kelly teasley
Inspired by the book, "Unbuilt America,"* Unbuilt Atlanta is a take off artshow of drawings and models for Atlanta-specific sites curated by Karen Tauches. Presented are a few architectural proposals from the past that were never accomplished. But, to call the rest of the proposals in this show "unbuilt" is a self-fullfilling prophesy that reflects our perception of atlanta's built future.
Shana Wood curates a video projection which attempts to animate the future of empty lots and Alyson Laura designs a scroll of related clippings (in collaboration with the main curator).
Atlanta in 2007 is a city that ambitiously manufactures itself anew for the 21st century. The crane is our city mascot, positive progress our dictum. Long-time citizens find themselves lost in their own city, as our built environment changes radically every week, nostalgia mounts as the newly built too often disappoints . . .this deeply felt change is largely at the hands of business-minded developers and is considerably outside the reach of visionary citizens, artists, city planners, landscape designers and architects. . .so, it seems that now is a very good time to consider progressive, futuristic, playful, environmentally sustaining, imaginative or secularly spiritual ideas about space and building, both private and public for the place where we live.
The medium for this show is imagination, a rather cost-effective medium (and you need not have any particular authority to use it). The purpose is to publicly exhibit visions that artists have for our future city, unconstrained by the practicalities of business, politics and construction. . .and if it’s only a fantasy, then we’ll have an amusing and poignant record of how potentially different our city could have been.
* The book, "Unbuilt America: Forgotten Architecture in the United States from Thomas Jefferson to the Space Age," by Alison Sky & Michelle Stone, (New York, McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1976) is a publication of collected drawings, plans and proposals for architectural projects (dating back to the Nineteenth century) which were never actually built in America. They are radical, ahead of their time, culture-changing, victim to fashion, sometimes even downright goofy. . .these documentations inspire the present and acknowledge that the imagination and potential for such an America indeed existed.
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