FountainSide Café and the Visitors Center for Centennial Olympic Park, located downtown, are under re-conception by design firms, Turner Associates and ai3.
Re-opening in June, FountainSide Café will operate as a quick serve concession style eatery with an outdoor seating plaza, serving the usual suspects: burgers, fries and soda.
The most prominent feature of the remodel will be what Gabriel John Richard, prime architect with Turner Associates and Patrick Johnson, prime architect for ai3, are calling, ‘The Googie Form.’
“We’re putting in this structure,” near the FountainSide Café and “calling it the Googie Form,” Richard said in explaining the mid-century architectural movement known as Googie and the inspiration behind the structure.
“The [Googie movement] had a lot to do with transportation,” Richard said. “You’ve probably seen some of the old hotel and motel road signs with really sharp angles and blinking lights.”
The Googie Form at Centennial Olympic Park will be constructed from a steel frame with aluminum composite panels on the outside. Creating a triangular shape, the Googie Form will pervade the Centennial Olympic Park skyline towering the Visitors Center.
“It’s going to be iconic,” Richard said when describing the Googie Form as “a spectacle for visitors.” Visible from the fountain, Richard believes visitors will be drawn to the Googie Form as they enjoy the fountain.
The remodel of the Visitors Center will also include a new entrance that will have its own “tilted up form that is triangulated” and will be “reminiscent of the Googie Form” but without being “quite as dramatic as the [Googie Form],” according to Richard.
Levy, a restaurant management group out of Chicago, will run and operate FountainSide Café.
FountainSide Café
265 Park Avenue NW
Atlanta, GA 30303
