Building on the success of the Atlanta Regional Business Center and programming studies for two additional RBCs, Atlanta Gas light hired Goode Van Slyke to design a new facility for their Marietta, Georgia district.

From the onset, the design of the Atlanta Regional Business Center for the Atlanta Gas Light Company was synthesized from basic fundamentals of the site and client. Grounding the project in ideas stemming from the business of natural gas, as an expression of what they provide, was an important aspect of how the project started and how it developed. The site provided some very basic context on orientation and alignment of building forms with property lines. The building however took a more sophisticated approach by analyzing natural gas and extracting strategies for design development. Natural gas is formed by the compressing of organic matter under enormous amounts of pressure over long periods of time. We use compression as our point of departure and developed various strategies to express this force. Through the use of structural elements, we demonstrated compression through gravity. Through buildings forms and placement, we demonstrated compression by material use and color and formal arrangements. Internal planning demonstrates compression where the user navigates a series of spaces by being compressed and then released.