Known as “The Ellis Island of the Deep South,” Clarkston, GA was selected as an ideal location for refugee resettlement by several refugee settlement programs in the 1990s due to its open rental market and proximity to Atlanta’s public transportation system. By some estimates, over 50% of the population is foreign-born. Clarkston embraces its identity as the “most diverse square mile in America.”

RAD, along with Nelson, was tapped by social entrepreneur Luke Keller and his partners to adapt and rehabilitate an abandoned 12,000SF warehouse located in downtown Clarkston into Culture Worx, a multi-tenant coworking space that focuses on job creation and incubation of refugee startups. Culture Worx will have 40+ offices, five large conference rooms, a 1000SF training room, a large coworking space, and a 50+ person stadium seating area. Anchor tenants include Amplio Recruiting, a staffing agency that helps great companies hire dependable employees from the refugee workforce; the administrative offices of Tekton Training, a trade school that trains refugees; Target Capital, a real estate joint venture and consulting firm founded by Reed Rowlings, former NBA player; and the offices of Clarkston City Hall. The space will feature a new innovative brewery from Monday Night Brewery, a restaurant partnered with Chef Jason Jimenez from Homespun and Kitchen 6 and a coffee shop from Refuge Coffee Company. The restaurant will focus on mentoring refugee restauranteurs, who will also have space in the retrofitted building. Culture Worx will also include a farmers and makers market.    

RAD’s designs for Culture Worx draw inspiration from the textures of woven fabric. Different colors and types of thread can be intertwined to create something new, beautiful, and useful without sacrificing what makes the original elements distinctive. This is a perfect spatial metaphor for the cultural hybridity of Clarkston. The floor plan, inspired by woven textiles, interlaces the multi-purpose spaces seamlessly. At once, they are distinct, but unified: representative of the dynamic tension of the refugee experience. There is the unique culture from which the refugee hails; the new American culture into which they are thrust; a new hybrid which is birthed as these cultures and experiences react and interact together; and the universal human experience that transcends culture—birth, death, family, struggle—uniting it all. The windows protrude to create a ripple effect on the façade, symbolic of the refugees’ integration with and impact on their adopted community. Each window is a visual invitation to see things from a slightly different perspective. This building will be a place where culture truly works, as many different organizations that strive for the collective good of their community live and work together under one roof.