Corporate attraction and museum and 7 acre open space adjacent to the Georgia Aquarium and Centennial Olympic Park in downtown Atlanta.  

Martin has been asked to participate in subsequent site design and landscape assignments as needed by improvements and additions to the facility since it’s opening.

“One of the most unique projects I’ve worked on”

When we were selected to be Landscape Architect of Record for the new World of Coca-Cola, next to the Georgia Aquarium and directly adjoining Centennial Olympic Park, I was excited with the propects of another one-of-a-kind project. It promised both fun and challenges that would likely lay ahead.

The Coca-Cola Company (TCCC) always held very specific ideas about how this marketing element fits into a larger public relations framework related to their primary business, drinks. But they have no experience with the design and development of real estate. That is the opposite end of the spectrum from clients like Hines and, to the extreme, Disney.

Beginning work with the Jerde Partnership, winners of the original design competition years earlier, we moved from concepts and vague notions of what this would be to more specifics, but still schematic and sketchy. The original master plan, prior to our involvement, included a “Global Garden” to celebrate TCCC’s worldwide business. At some point in the design development phase, a directive came down from an upper executive tier to pursue water as a major theme and message for the project’s key statement. We worked to develop a refined abstraction of water throughout the world, how we encounter it in different forms at various scales. It was to be a celebration of water and how it effects us as well how we are effected by it. And it ws to signal Coke’s attitude of stewardship related to this vital natural resource. The message was to be implicit and subtle. It would focus forward instead of looking back on where the company had come from, as in a global garden.

Restrictions from an extended drought after completion meant the artful water feature with its elaborate subtext was not operational. Concerned with a negative image and mixed messages, TCCC eventually pursued the creation of drought-tolerant landscape features in place of the water. I was asked to design this make-over. It seems to have addressed the primary issues and I wonder how many first-time visitors to the site are aware of the change. It’s not always easy to anticipate the future, but if you can stay involved in the process, chances are the future and you will be better off for it.