The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change is located in the heart of Atlanta’s Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site and Preservation District, and attracts almost one million visitors each year.   J. Max Bond was commissioned by the King Foundation to design the Center, which includes Freedom Hall (containing meeting rooms, and auditorium, exhibit hall and gift shop), the Archives and Administration Building (home of the world’s largest primary source collection on the Civil Rights movement), Freedom Walk (a vaulted colonnade extending the length of the site), and the Chapel of All Faiths.  The site also contains the crypt of Dr. King.

The arts program includes a series of murals along the barrel-vaulted Freedom Walk that depict Dr. King’s campaigns and the civil rights movement’s precedents, various sculptures, and other works of art relating to the history of the civil rights movement.  Throughout the mid 1980’s Max Bond worked continuously with the Center to upgraded the chapel, to improve site lighting and finishes and to develop a maintenance program for the buildings.

The architecture of the Center reflects the non-violent nature of Dr. King’s work and the continuing civil and human rights movements.  The formal organization of the spaces and proportions of the buildings, the introduction of a reflecting pool into the complex, and carefully chosen materials each possess a spiritual, cultural, and in some cases economic relationship to the goals of the Center.