The Freelon Group/HOK win Commission for Center for Civil and Human Rights

At Contract we love when our Designers of the Year make us proud, as Phil Freelon, FAIA, DOY 2008, has recently done. The Center for Civil and Human Rights (CCHR) in Atlanta has announced that the design team of The Freelon Group of Research Park Triangle, N.C., and the Atlanta office of HOK has been chosen to design the new $125,000, 100,000 sq. ft. CCHR facility scheduled to break ground next winter.

The Freelon/HOK team won the commission through a design competition between five teams that presented their design concepts to the public in early March, beating out such prestigious firms as Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Antoine Predock Architects, and Polshek Partnership Architects. The five design concepts and public feedback collected by CCHR following the public presentation are posted on its website at http://www.cchrpartnership.org. Ultimately, a jury of 12 including civil rights activist Andrea Young, community leader Mtamanika Youngblood, theater and film director George Wolfe, Executive Director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Sara Bloomfield, architect and Yale University professor Deborah Berke, and Atlanta Architect Craig VanDevere, made the final selection.

The Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta will commemorate the landmark contributions of Atlantans and Georgians to the historic struggle for African-American freedom and equality as well as present the continuing story of human rights efforts around the world.