The community of Serenbe, located outside the Atlanta metro area in Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia, offers a lifestyle that feels further removed than the 30 miles that separate the two worlds. Serenbe is an award-winning biophilic community that focuses on the close-knit connection and interaction between people and nature. The 1,700-acre community can ultimately house 1,700 homes and support nonresidential uses. The first house at Serenbe was built in 2003 and as of March 2025, the community is home to more than 700 residents.
The unique elements of this project include customized homes, conservation of 70% of the land, focus on physical and mental wellness, and an overarching application of biophilia to unite the community with nature and each other.
“Implementing new ideas are always tough,” says Chad Epple, Senior Director at Atwell. “Our team developed many new standards and practices to permit and construct many of the unconventional aspects of this project. We had to think outside the box a bit, and it paid off.”
Deep municipal knowledge and relationships advanced the project through strict jurisdiction
Epple, who joined the project in 2003, has led the civil engineering and surveying efforts to help bring the vision of Serenbe to life. Epple and his team partnered with the owners of Serenbe prior to the incorporation of the City of Chattahoochee Hills in 2007. What distinguished Epple’s team early in the project was their ability to bridge the project’s biophilic vision with the local jurisdiction standards in Fulton County. The team was able to pioneer and implement innovative stormwater and development practices within the local area’s rigid development standards.
Additionally, the Serenbe team was able to have many of these biophilic ideas and practices eventually incorporated into the new City of Chattahoochee Hills’ zoning and development standards. Since the new City’s 2007 incorporation, these practices have been widely accepted and the environmental and visual benefits to the community are easily recognizable and truly precedent setting.
Biophilia and a cultural shift toward wellness
Biophilia is a philosophy of living in harmony with nature and community to achieve well-being, sustainability, and prosperity. This principle applies to individuals, the places we live, and the world around us. With this approach in mind, our client has worked tirelessly to integrate health and mental well-being into the design of Serenbe through the thoughtful consideration of how humans and nature connect, including Serenbe’s 12 Biophilic Principles.
These principles involve 12 planning and design elements that the design team consistently worked towards throughout the project. The purpose of these principles is to achieve four goals for sustaining the planet: global balance, national security, community engagement, and personal wellbeing.
Innovative site planning creates a community where residents can work and play in one place
As a testament to Serenbe’s land use vision and Atwell’s site planning team, Serenbe households generate, on average, only four vehicle trips per day, rather than the recognized national standard of 10 vehicle trips per day per household. The initial phases of development centered around the creation of quality arts, local food, and wellbeing. Residents and visitors are able to sit down for meals with all locally sourced ingredients, visit local shops that offer distinctive goods inspired by nature, and take part in physical activities that support their health via miles of walking trails and dozens of public gathering spaces that offer things like horseback riding, ball fields, pickle ball, and dog parks. Thanks to Atwell’s site planning, residents can enjoy these experiences close to home.
Another unique element of this project is that each home is custom designed. Unlike other planned communities, Serenbe has no templated options, with each home being unique from the next. There are a range of housing options, including lofts, townhouses, cottages, and single-family homes which were all planned and designed collectively as vistas that would capture a unique feeling and look.
The creation of these special, more densely populated neighborhoods supports the integration of community while maintaining most of the natural beauty of the area and achieving 20% more housing units per square mile—more than the average that metro Atlanta’s 17-country region has delivered in the past 30 years.
The community places 70% of the land into conservation and agricultural preservation. The remaining 30% is used for the walkable clusters of neighborhoods and amenities that bring the community together. These customizations presented Epple and his team with new challenges that required them to think outside the box to obtain local approvals. Their innovative approach to planning and development resulted in infrastructure costs that are 40% lower than the traditional sprawl model requires, both for installation and long-term maintenance.
“I believe that Serenbe can serve as a model for unique, special, planned communities across the country, offering residents amenities and a sense of belonging,” said Epple. “Our expertise at Atwell in collaborating with developers and capturing their vision for makes us the perfect fit for larger, impactful community developments from concept to completion. The partnership we’ve had with Serenbe for over two decades is an example of our commitment to the clients we serve and how we strive to support them in every aspect of their goals.”
Serenbe’s community impact and promising future
The project has now entered the fourth hamlet of development, named Spela (the Swedish for “play”), with two more mixed-use hamlets remaining. One of the most recent advances in the project includes a K-12 school within the community and an aging-in-place facility that will offer a full suite of medical services. This facility will allow residents to comfortably grow and age where they are, creating a true multi-generational community by having access to cutting-edge healthcare services within the community. Access to medical amenities and necessities was identified early in project planning as a crucial factor in the project.
Additional planned non-residential uses include a luxury hotel, conference centers, restaurants, professional offices, outdoor events spaces, and corporate campuses.
Serenbe has won numerous awards, including the Urban Land Institute Inaugural Sustainability Award; the Atlanta Regional Commission’s Development of Excellence; and EarthCraft’s recognition as the Development of the Year. With residents experiencing farm-to-table gourmet restaurants in their backyards, stables full of horses they can ride along miles of trails, and nationally known artists exhibiting in galleries across the street, the quality of life that residents and visitors experience is truly unique.
“This is a true live-work-play community,” Epple professes. “People don’t have to leave. There are restaurants and attractions—it’s a destination. You can get back to nature and enjoy well-planned amenities, all in one place.”
