When The Foundry opened Aug. 15 in Southwest Atlanta, its significance was less about another arts venue than about the kind of space it was trying to preserve: a place where artists can make large, messy and technically demanding work. The 23,000-square-foot campus occupies a former manufacturing building on Bronner Brothers Way and combines private studios with welding and woodworking areas, shared tools and materials, and public amenities including skate ramps, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and ArtsATL.
That mix reflects a practical problem for Atlanta artists: studio space is not only a room to display work, but also a workshop, storage area and source of specialized equipment. The Foundry’s model puts production at the center while leaving room for performances, exhibitions and other public activity.
A factory site with a new creative use
The building’s industrial history is part of the story. The Atlanta Voice reported that Bronner Brothers operated a factory and warehouse in Southwest Atlanta after Nathaniel, Arthur and Emma Bronner began the company in Atlanta in 1947. The Black-owned hair-care company’s presence gives the property a history that predates its current role as a creative campus; The Atlanta Daily World also identified Bronner Brothers as an Atlanta-founded company established by Dr. Nathaniel H. Bronner Sr. and Arthur E. Bronner Sr. in 1947.
The reuse is therefore not simply a conversion of an empty commercial shell. It places artist studios and fabrication facilities in a building associated with manufacturing, a use that aligns with the needs of sculptors, fabricators, builders and other artists whose work cannot be made in a conventional office or gallery. The site’s history is documented by The Atlanta Voice and Atlanta Daily World.
Why the fire matters — and what it does not prove
The Foundry opened less than a year after a devastating example of how vulnerable artists can be when their studios are concentrated in industrial properties. On Nov. 12, 2025, a fire at South River Art Studios on Fleetwood Drive in DeKalb County gutted the main warehouse. Rough Draft Atlanta reported that roughly 25 to 30 individual studios were destroyed and that fire, smoke or water damaged other parts of the facility, leaving several dozen artists and makers without work space and tools.
South River had been built around a similar industrial-space logic. Sculptor Phil Proctor and his wife bought a four-acre property for his public-sculpture work and later converted its warehouses into 45 studios, according to earlier Journal-Constitution coverage summarized in the reporting. The fire also damaged or destroyed more than 50 works in the En Masse regional printmaking exhibition at Gogo Gallery, ArtsATL reported.
That incident helps explain why durable work space matters, but it does not establish that studio fires are becoming more frequent or that the South River blaze caused The Foundry to open. It is a documented comparison: both sites use industrial buildings to support artists, while the fire illustrates how the loss of one property can disrupt studios, tools, livelihoods and finished work at the same time. The incident was reported by Rough Draft Atlanta.
A private experiment in staying power
The Foundry’s other defining feature is its financing. Founder Adam Bostic, who runs Arc Design Fabrication Studio, largely funded the buildout with savings from his own art and fabrication work, according to the Journal-Constitution. ArtsATL reported that Bostic had previously been priced out of a long-term studio on Glenwood Avenue and later lost a temporary location at the Lee & White development in West End.
Those experiences give the campus a specific purpose: to offer a more stable base for artists whose work requires industrial space and whose leases may otherwise be vulnerable to rising costs or redevelopment. Bostic has said he does not want the facility to depend on nonprofit grants, making The Foundry a business and infrastructure experiment as much as an arts project.
The early campus includes private studios, welding and woodworking shops, a shared tool and materials bank, an outdoor stage and skate ramps. The Atlanta Style Writers Association rents space there and helped organize the opening, which featured skateboarding demonstrations, bands, art, graffiti and live music, according to ArtsATL.
The central question is whether that combination can last. Bostic has described plans for additional workshops, nine band rehearsal spaces and a gallery, but those additions remain part of the campus’s buildout rather than completed results. For now, The Foundry offers a concrete response to a documented vulnerability in Atlanta’s creative infrastructure: when artists depend on industrial buildings for both production and storage, the survival of the space can be as consequential as the work made inside it.
