Ponce City Market Beltline Pavilion and Parking Facility

Filling a challenging site adjacent to historic Ponce City Market in Atlanta, this structure provides parking facilities, street level retail, and a multi-use event space fronting the Atlanta Beltline. The cast in place concrete structure houses 430 parking spaces over 8 stories and serves as a hub to distribute pedestrians and vehicles across multiple levels while providing access points to adjacent buildings and amenities. A future phase of work will incorporate a 14-story residential tower above this existing base.

Design Challenge

Meeting overall program requirements with the existing site conditions proved to be a challenging endeavor. Providing appropriate access for tenants, service vehicles and pedestrians, to uses across multiple levels lead to an almost Piranesian scheme of stairs, ramps, and bridges. The program also required a schematic understanding of the future tower to ensure that services and use of the base structure are continuous during future construction. Adjacencies to the historic Ponce City Market buildings, as well as the Atlanta Beltline, required careful negotiation of overlay zoning ordinances and National Park Service historic guidelines for the historic building and the associated viewshed. The final solution resulted in a simple volume with a unique façade that mimics the vertical rhythm of the existing structure while screening public views to the parking deck interior. The overall design achieves the base goal of becoming an understated backdrop for both the existing historic structures and the future tower that will reside above.

Physical Context

As the base for a future 14-story residential tower, the façade needed to be neutral in order to provide long term design flexibility yet dynamic enough to stand alone in its present phase. A multi-layered fabric system was chosen to screen views of the concrete structure and parked cars while also providing light and ventilation to deck’s interior. The translucent nature of the façade provides for a dynamic transformation from solid mass during the day to a glowing lantern at night while also providing adequate ventilation. A cascading stair with integral bike rail is paired with a public elevator to provide fully accessible connections to the adjacent Atlanta Beltline trail. Pedestrian and vehicular bridges connect the new structure to the adjacent historic building. The spiraling concrete stair at the structure’s south-west corner provides a sculptural focal point and connects the deck to street level retail on North Avenue.