Architecture instructor Tim Frank was awarded first place in the 2009 AIA Atlanta 48-hour competition to reinvent the Public Plaza and Streetfront identity of the Marcel Breuer designed Atlanta Central Library.

His submission entitled, "Blocks, Stripes, and Bars" proposes for the plaza a series of multi-media panels that carry a comprehensive array of information from the library to the street itself. In the evening these text filled panels glow in the plaza and serve as a beacon for congregation and exchange.

"Through the edification of text, this project seeks to extend the rich cultural heritage of the City of Atlanta to its citizens both current and future," said Frank. "With this extension the project hopes to stir a deeper desire within the general public to cherish and preserve the cultural footing upon which they stand."

A public fundraising campaign is currently underway to support the realization of the proposal.

Tim Frank, RA, LEED AP is a practicing architect in Atlanta and has been teaching in the College of Architecture for six years.

About the entry: Blocks, Stripes, and Bars
A Textual Patchwork for the Central Public Library

In the Southern Quilting tradition, the top surface of the quit is typically made from pieces that are ripped from everyday cloth in simple geometric patterns called blocks, stripes, and bars. Significant within this process is the act of re-constituting the fabric worn by the local community in order to extend the spoken narratives to new generations that follow. In a similar fashion, a library collects the textual artifacts of a culture so to pass down knowledge and information to future generations in the form of written narratives. In the spirit of these two traditions this proposal seeks to edify the textual fabric that underpins the culture of Atlanta. The project introduces a series of evenly spaced multi-media blocks, strips, and bars across the Central Public Library Plaza. Each unit, derived from the module of the library skin, carries a narrative through distinctive media (text, diagrams, charts, graphs, still images, and video) related to library events both past and present. Some units contain permanent texts that annotate works of art found within the plaza such as Richard Hunt's sculpture and the building itself designed by Marcel Breuer. Other units contain information related to seasonal events sponsored by the library or daily events held within the plaza itself. In the evening, the blocks, strips, and bars glow in the plaza and serve as a beacon for congregation and exchange. The goal of this project is to extend the rich cultural heritage of the City of Atlanta to its citizens both current and future. With this extension the project hopes to stir a deeper desire within the general public to cherish and preserve the cultural footing upon which they stand.