Chattahoochee River Memorial Museum and Park

Year: 2024 Design & Honor Awards | Category: Student Project

The Chattahoochee River Memorial Museum and Park is a 48,470 sf. Memorial Museum located in a 72-acre site dedicated to honoring the victims of leased convict labor that occurred on the site during the early 1900’s. The building is designed as a gallery space detailing the historical events surrounding the Chattahoochee Brick Company and the convict leasing system in Georgia. In addition, the program includes community spaces that supply the surrounding residential community of the adjacent neighborhoods and the planning and design of the entire park to provide an amenity for the residents of the area.

Design Challenge

The history of the site recounts horrors of the convict leasing system of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. The site of the project underwent several ownerships, mostly of industrial nature, after the Chattahoochee Brick Company, a major acting force in the convict leasing network of the time, stopped operations in 1972. Through the rallying of the local community of residents, efforts to pass the ownership of the site to yet another industrial company were stopped. In 2021, The Conservation Fund was able to purchase the site with the intentions of developing a memorial park in honor of the leased convicts that suffered under the CBC. There are several aspects to this project. In the first instance, the Museum is divided into two main programmatic categories: the exhibition, and the community spaces. The exhibition part of the Museum is designed as a single circulatory path that connects the visitor to the galleries as they descend onto the lowest level of the site, connected to the Park. The main driver for the programmatic arrangement of the galleries and the circulation have to do with the concept of “confrontation as a necessary step to honoring tough history and moving forward“. The other parts of the building are dedicated to more public and community-driven spaces. These two main program categories are clearly divided in the space planning of the museum experience. The other aspect of this project includes the entirety of the 72-acre site.

Student
Joanna Frauca

School
Savannah College of Art and Design

Project Location
Atlanta, Georgia

Completion Date
11/13/2023

Professor
Aaron Wilner