Empowering Young Changemakers: NOMA Atlanta’s 2025 Project Pipeline
- Clementine Kornder
- Sep 16
- 5 min read
On Saturday, June 28, 2025, NOMA Atlanta hosted its Project Pipeline program at Georgia Tech—a full-day design workshop with a purpose: to give young people the tools, mentorship, and inspiration to affect positive change in their communities through design. This year’s theme—“Future Unfolding – Where Imagination Builds and the Future Unfolds”—served as a lens to focus student creativity on one of Atlanta’s most interesting, and long-neglected, urban sites: the Atlanta Constitution Building, located at 143 Alabama Street in South Downtown.
What is Project Pipeline
Project Pipeline is more than a summer camp—it’s a mission. Organized by the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA), the program seeks to empower students underrepresented in the design field (especially youth of color) by immersing them in the full design process. Students are guided through:
Investigative processes: drawing, model building, exploration
Analytical tools: diagramming, research, understanding context
Engagement: site visits, interviews, feedback from professionals
By the end of the workshop, participants put forward a fully-realized design proposal, one that responds to actual urban needs in their city.
Why 143 Alabama / South Downtown?
The choice of South Downtown—and specifically the 143 Alabama Street site (the former Atlanta Constitution Building)—was especially timely. Here’s the context:
The building, constructed in 1947, is a rare example of Art Moderne architecture in Atlanta. It has been largely vacant for decades.
The City of Atlanta, through its economic development agency (Invest Atlanta), selected Gorman & Company (with Gensler) as the lead developer to transform the building into a mixed-income housing project, combining adaptive reuse of the historic structure with a new residential building on the adjacent parcel.
Phase 1 (in progress) includes stabilizing/restoring the exterior, daylighting the commercial space, converting upper floors into ~50 affordable residential units (with a majority being income‐restricted units), and creating public/retail/commercial activation at street level.
Phase 2 will add ~151 additional units in a new adjacent building, enhancing density, access, and housing affordability.
Given all this activity, 143 Alabama presents a tangible, vivid case study of urban renewal, design challenges, historic preservation, affordable housing, transit proximity, and placemaking. An ideal site for students to engage with real, current problems—not hypothetical ones.
What Students Did
During the Project Pipeline workshop, students centered their design efforts on the 143 Alabama site under the “Future Unfolding” theme. They were challenged to imagine what this building (and its surrounding parcels) could become not just from an architectural standpoint, but as a piece of community identity: something that reflects local needs, aspirations, and histories.
They sketched, modelled, diagrammed—and also engaged with the local context: walking the site, understanding the architecture, likely discussing transit connectivity (Five Points MARTA station is right there), imagining public space activation, affordable housing, and retail or cultural uses.
At the end, students showed their design proposals—visions for building(s) that respond empathetically to the past and the future, designs that could serve both local people (residents, workers) and contribute to downtown Atlanta’s vitality.
Juror Feedback
To give students actionable insight, the final presentations were reviewed by a panel of six jurors:
The ADC (Atlanta Design Commission) served as one of the jurors
Other jurors were Joel Reed, John Maximuk, Jane Rodrigues, Brock Thompson, Arti Verma, and Trevor Walker
These jurors provided constructive critiques: how well the proposals responded to community needs, how feasible or imaginative the architecture was, how well students balanced preservation and innovation, and how convincingly they incorporated public engagement/real-world constraints.
Connecting to the Larger Development & Civic Context
The students’ work didn’t happen in a vacuum—this is a live redevelopment site with real, high-stakes challenges:
The redevelopment of 143 Alabama Street is poised to deliver nearly 197 total residential units across its phases, many of them income-restricted, to serve workforce and lower-income residents close to transit, downtown amenities, and jobs.
The project also aims to activate the ground level, restore historic architectural features, improve public-facing façades, and incorporate public gathering space/event space (“The Pitch”) in part to leverage momentum around the 2026 FIFA World Cup, given that Atlanta will host matches.
The site’s location next to Five Points MARTA station and proximity to big transit, cultural, and commercial infrastructure makes it a key node in Atlanta’s downtown connectivity. It’s part of a broader strategy of downtown revitalization, especially in South Downtown—an area historically under‐invested, but now seeing renewed focus.
Why This Matters & What We Can Learn
Several lessons and themes emerge from combining Project Pipeline’s student exercise with what’s happening on the ground at 143 Alabama:
Historic preservation + adaptive reuse are powerful tools. Students working on this site can see how architecture preserves identity—not just by restoring old buildings, but by integrating the old with the new. The Constitution Building has historic value, stylistic uniqueness, and stories embedded in it. Redevelopment gives those stories new life.
Affordable, equitable housing matters. The design proposals by students likely raised questions about affordability, who gets to live downtown, what amenities are necessary, and what public spaces are missing. The real project’s commitment to mixed-income housing, with units at 30-80% AMI (Area Median Income), shows that this is taken seriously.
Site-specific challenges sharpen design thinking. Students dealing with issues like activating street frontage, dealing with transit access, managing budget/timeline constraints (especially with deadlines tied to the World Cup), and preserving architectural features—all of this mimics real-world practice.
Mentorship, juried feedback, and community engagement amplify impact. Having experienced jurors and professionals (ADC + others) gives students exposure to design critique, helps them see trade-offs, strengthens proposals, and builds confidence.
Public-private partnerships unlock potential. Gorman & Company (developer), Invest Atlanta (public agency), Gensler (design), and others working together show how complex, large-scale urban projects succeed when multiple stakeholders coordinate. Students’ designs can only benefit by understanding these relationships.
Looking Forward with NOMA Atlanta and Project Pipeline
As the Folio House project at 143 Alabama proceeds (with Phase 1 set to complete just ahead of the 2026 World Cup, and Phase 2 wrapping up around 2028), there is real momentum for downtown Atlanta’s equitable development. Project Pipeline students are stepping into that momentum, imagining what’s possible, and their work—though conceptual—can feed into community discussions, advocate for better design, more inclusive public spaces, and help shift public expectations.
For Atlanta, and for any city, having young people imagine what “future unfolding” means is crucial: because they are the ones who will live with the outcomes, shape the culture, and carry forward what is built today.
Conclusion
NOMA Atlanta’s Project Pipeline on June 28 was more than a design workshop—it was an act of civic imagination. By focusing on 143 Alabama Street, students engaged with real history, real constraints, and real opportunity. With thoughtful design, critical feedback, and public support, the revival of South Downtown can be not just about housing units or restored façades, but about belonging, equity, and the unfolding of a future that includes everyone.
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