Photo Credit: Timothy Hursley, Lee Kluger

Three Alliance Center

Project Description

Three Alliance Center, a 502,358 square foot nineteen story office tower, is the third and final office tower of the Alliance Center complex.

Three Alliance Center at once fully participates in and exceeds market driven assets of commercial office space in Atlanta. Typical office floors are approximately 26,000 square feet with generous floor to ceiling glass. A total of 1,150 parking spaces, are offered as well as direct access to multiple modes of transportation and Atlanta’s most prestigious urban community.

Three Alliance Center is sited within Alliance Center in the heart of Buckhead, an upscale community north of downtown Atlanta. The building takes full environmental advantage of a long east/west axis, to maximize the long range views from Georgia 400 and finally to create a meaningfully generous center plaza and forecourt for the three towers of Alliance Center.

The most distinguishing design feature of Three Alliance Center is the array of faceted windows that cascade down the facades. The faceted windows in conjunction with the motion of the automobile set up a dynamic and titillating play of flittering light and pattern.

The building lobby is born of southern sunlight. It is lodged at the intersection of its generous forecourt of landscaped green and granite and the tower façade of faceted glass.

Design Challenge

While the three glass clad office towers of Alliance Center are a compelling whole, Three Alliance Center distinguishes itself by faceted windows that cascade down its facades. The building’s north facade addresses long range views from Georgia 400. From the automobile in motion, the eye is titillated by a dynamic flittering play of light and pattern. The south facade, facing onto the forecourt, is a slower dynamic. Here the faceted windows stop short of the building lobby. From the exterior, the lobby appears frozen and floating, a sculpted cloud within a sparkling glass box. Inside the lobby there is a sense of suspension within the serene sun-filled environment. Ceiling lights have floated to the floor. The ceiling of windswept planes hovers while undulating walls rotate toward the wood paneled elevator lobbies and lounge. The lobby is an ordinary spatial experience made extraordinary through orchestration of natural light and rich materials.

Physical Context

Three Alliance Center is the third and final tower of one of Atlanta’s most successful commercial developments, Alliance Center. Much of this success can be attributed to its location in the heart of Buckhead and its multimodal transportation connections. Located at the juncture of two major thoroughfares, Georgia 400 and Lenox Road, Three Alliance Center is seen by thousands each day. The design responds to this adjacency at several scales. At the scale of the city, the building’s a long east-west axis presents the north facade to Georgia 400. At once, this produces visual access to both treed and urban landscapes. The nineteen stories of office space have spectacular long-range views to Kennesaw Mountain, southwest to downtown Atlanta and east to Stone Mountain. To the south are more intimate urban views across the generously landscaped Three Alliance Center plaza that connects the three buildings of Alliance Center, seamlessly joining indoor and outdoor collaborative space. Furthermore, the building orientation creates a generous center plaza and forecourt joining the three towers that comprise Alliance Center and maximizes southern sun for consistent natural light inside. The Alliance Center location provides outstanding highway access via multi-point ingress/egress from the Three Alliance Center 1,150 space parking podium. At the scale of the window, the facade design responds to the automotive and pedestrian experience with an array of faceted windows that cascade down the facade. Seen by the motion of sunlight or observer, the faceted windows shimmer across the Atlanta skyline in a dynamic play of flittering light and pattern. Seemingly complicated, the design is achieved with just three window types, standard, vertical-tilt, and horizontal-tilt.