A century-old Atlanta warehouse long home to a building supplies manufacturer is now a factory for art called Loop, thanks to a nimble renovation from architect Jennifer Bonner.
Georgia Tech purchased the property in 2018 from Randall Brothers, a building supplies company in Atlanta on the site since 1885. The seven-acre plot is slated to hold Georgia Tech’s new Creative Quarter, with academic buildings, student housing and even a hotel to come. Most buildings on the site were demolished. The historic warehouse that houses Loop was happily retained, now home to this event, exhibition and studio space operated by local arts organisation Goat Farm.
The project was rooted in felicitous chance. Bonner, who is based in Portland, Oregon, but formerly taught at Georgia Tech and has exhibited with Goat Farm, ran into Mark Dinatale, Goat Farm’s managing director on the site. She explains, 'Mark and I saw each other there and I said "we have to work together on this."'
Goat Farm operates nearly 200 artists’ rental studios at five locations throughout Atlanta. 'The revenue from studio rentals actually goes to support the arts programming. We can use it to subsidise harder-to-fund art forms and more experimental forms of art,' Dinatale explains. Goat Farm has worked with Georgia Tech in the past, and is collaborating on a three-year activation of the warehouse.
The building was in generally good condition. The design team made repairs to the roof and installed new HVAC, plumbing, windows and doors. A lingering layer of sawdust from its prior life was cleared out.
A temporary stay required a light touch, one successfully executed thanks to Bonner’s scheme. The structure provided easy guidance as to where to locate 17 artists’ studios, within the column grid along its two sides, while retaining the central volume for flexible use, including exhibitions, installations and performances.
To accommodate such a variety of uses, Bonner and her team relied on a literal loop, a translucent curtain composed of metallic flame-retardant polyester fabric which can be shifted or removed. 'Basically the curtain became a way to spatially close things off or divide them,' Bonner says.
Forty custom-fabricated planter carts, meanwhile, provide a cheap and easy source of ornament and spatial organisation. 'They can be recombined in terms of shapes and they can be all clustered together,' Bonner adds.
Lighting is another source of verve, consisting largely of LED strips. Bonner, working with lighting designer Pablo Gnecco of New York-based firm Studio Studio, placed the lights vertically on interior columns and horizontally on the building's front facade in a glowing band. '[It's] stretched the whole length of the facade, like Dan Flavin on steroids,' Bonner says.
The lighting design involves a range of shades from pink to purple to green, which can be fixed or pulsate.
The overall aim of Loop, as Dinatale explains, is to achieve 'an experimental space,' that grants artists access to space and technology. So far, Loop has provided a space for exhibitions and events, as well as performances by Hyojin Kwon and Frank Vigroux; dance companies; AI art; video game art; and even Georgia Tech’s Laptop orchestra.
Allie Bashuk, Goat Farm’s creative and design director, notes Loop's proven an ideal location for evening performances, with no residences around. Their aim has been to provide a strong platform for offbeat art. 'We try to elevate all these projects by giving them proper lighting and visual cues,' Bashuk says.
Bonner held an exhibition on roof designs at Goat Farm in 2014 titled Domestic Hats. This time, she's returned to work under a hat of her own devising – and an overdue accomplishment, she notes: Loop is the 'first building on the Georgia Tech campus designed by a female architect.'