Tucked alongside the lively Atlanta Belt Line on the site of a former steel fabrication yard, Breaker Breaker is a unique indoor-outdoor restaurant that embraces the neighborhood’s gritty industrial roots. Originally slated for demolition, one of the existing steel sheds was carefully disassembled and re-fabricated in a gesture of adaptive reuse, now serving as a super-roof pavilion that offers shade and shelter to much of the site. Fundamentally, this project is one industrial-scaled front porch for the Beltline. The restaurant program was distributed linearly between two existing rail-lines, beginning at the remnants of an industrial gantry crane, which still stands as a threshold to the long, narrow site. New and reclaimed materials are reintroduced to the existing remains of concrete footings, steel plates, and rail lines as patches and layers. Pockets of soil are strategically distributed throughout the ground to encourage pioneer species to continue to overtake the structure. Enormous leaves of big-leaf magnolias trees have already begun to lift their otherworldly canopies towards the massive roof.
Collaboration with Square Feet Studio, Architect
Kimley-Horn, Civil
