The area for the park began as an inner city patchwork of cracked-asphalt parking lots that doubled or tripled rates when conventions came to town. A room-for-a-week hotel, with yellowed curtains. Broken glass, from drunks' discarded bottles and the smashed windows of cars thoughtlessly parked on side streets. From this, a 21-acre center-city neighborhood was reduced to red dirt and reincarnated as the $60 million Centennial Olympic Park. (From a news article on the building of the park.)
Centennial Olympic Park is built on a quilt theme.
Pathways of commemorative brick paving stones (800,000 in all) stitch together the park’s landscape quilt pieces. Pedestrians can follow the Southern patchwork quilt design of the plaza surrounding the Olympic ring fountain.
Along the east border are the Quilt Plazas, five quilt "patches" of masonry, fountains, and gardens, of contrasting bricks that tell the story of the Centennial Olympic Games. 
One of the quilts is titled the Quilt of Remembrance, it pays respect to the bombing victims and contains colored marble from five continents.
Finding the park was a pleasant surprise, uncrowded on this Sunday morning. Finding the quilt theme was another surprise. Who would have thought that traditional patchwork quilt designs would be incorporated into this park, this space of international acclaim. What do the Olympics have in common with a Southern patchwork quilt? Is it the piecing together of all different shapes and colors to be joined together into one common goal, finding those special pieces of each color and texture that will stand out on their own and also work together to accomplish the final project?
Well, all the designers and craftsmen definitely came together on this project, with the end result a beautiful peaceful space among the skyscrapers of downtown Atlanta.
Centennial Park
