Giattina Aycock Architecture Studio On The Boards Projects
KIA
Giattina Aycock Architecture Studio was selected for its reputation of smart, comprehensive vision, to design a training facility for the State of Georgia and Kia Motors Corporation on a near-impossible ten-month schedule.
GA Studio’s Chris Giattina, the Principal in charge of the project, said he believes the firm was awarded the job because of their “ability to consider a complex set of requirements and produce a design that is unquestionably clear, despite the challenging timeline.”
Giattina received a call May 16 from the Atlanta office of McCarthy Building Companies, the project’s builder, which was looking for a Design Architect to pitch to the State. The pitch was successful, and at the beginning of June, GA kicked off the process by leading the Design-Build team and the Owner in an intense three-day work session. The first step was to help the Owner put into words their vision for the Project: “to create an international icon recognized for excellence in training and reflecting values of place and culture.”
With this vision as the guide, GA developed a preliminary design for the project, presenting it to State officials at the end of the three-day session. Then, GA had six more days to tune the design for a presentation to the Korean leadership of Kia. The State and Kia were enthusiastic about what they saw.
“What I presented was a straightforward concept that ties together the American South and Korea,” Giattina said. The project communicates values of both cultures, including a shared emphasis on sustainability, functionality and sense of place. It draws inspiration from technology, motion, and the iconographic building forms that would have historically been found in the two regions.
Preston Hite, an Architect on the GA team, said that it was the constant focus on the vision statement that gave the project its strength. “Through the course of the design process, the requirements for the building have changed quite a bit, which is normally the case,” Hite said. “This fluctuation can sometimes cause a design to lose its original clarity. But, as we have considered all of the different design options, we have always honed in on the vision statement. This focus has helped us to strengthen the central concept, keeping the design clear.”
GA came to the Kia project having designed Honda’s Training Facility in Alabama. Even so, Giattina said the firm approached Kia’s facility as they do every project – with fresh eyes and ideas as to what it should become. GFA was able to draw on lessons learned from the Honda project, but the new facility does not mock the former.
In October – only four months after the first design session – the building’s foundations were already under construction. GA worked with the team from McCarthy and from Luckett & Farley, the Architect of Record and Engineering firm out of Louisville, Kentucky, to finalize drawings by the end of October, with completion planned for the first half of 2007.
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