PORT, recipient of the 2020 Emerging Voices Award from The Architectural League of New York, is leading the architectural and landscape architectural design, with MHM consulting and serving as Architect of Record on the 400-acre Aspire Park in Clinton, Tennessee. Located along the Clinch River, the new park includes a 22,000-sf visitors’ center; a 5,000-sf boat house and launch; a 200-ft long market roof; a 1.5-acre signature playground; a 2-acre bike pump-track and skills course; an 8-acre wildflower meadow; nearly 2,500 newly planted trees; 18-miles of bike and hiking trails; and a canopy walk structure wrapping an existing on-site water tank with spectacular views of the Smoky Mountains to the south. The 25-acre Phase 1 of the park is set to open in 2021.
MHM PROJECTS UP FOR AIA EAST TENNESSEE AWARDS
We’ll be tuning in live to see which projects take home prizes at the 2020 AIA East Tennessee Online Awards Gala. Several of our exciting projects are up for this year’s awards: The KUB Engineering Building, The New UT Student Union, Blackberry Farm Brewery, The Living Lattice, Tusculum Family Physicians and The Ken & Blaire Mossman Science Building. We are honored to be a part of this celebration of design excellence, individual achievements, and fellowship in our East Tennessee Design Community!
STAYING SAFE AND CONNECTED
While offering flexibility for our employees to work from home, we’re finding new ways to stay as connected and productive as ever.
Weekly firm-wide Zoom gatherings are giving us an opportunity to connect as a community, check-in on our friends, and maintain an open dialogue about the issues we are all facing. The flex-setup has also given us an opportunity to explore exciting new technologies. Weekly “SpeedCrits” have allowed us to collaborate on multiple projects through new Concept Board technologies. We’ve been able to gain great insights and input from our whole team.
While we look forward to being together again, we are inspired daily by our partners, clients, and teams’ creative and innovative collaboration.
EMPLOYEE NEWS
We are excited to welcome a new member to the team, Chris Woodcock.
Since graduating from the University of Tennessee in 2005 with a Bachelor of Architecture, Chris has gained a wide variety of experience in a broad range of project types, from residential additions to restaurant design, parks to large university buildings. For him, the most rewarding projects always have an involved client, elegant solutions and personal details. Chris is constantly striving to be an optimistic, sympathetic and practical designer, regardless of budget or scale. His experience also includes five years of industrial & product design in Krakow, Poland, focusing on laser cutting & custom prototyping, rapid & not-so-rapid. His strength lies with assisting in the complete design process- from the initial concept through construction.
THREE MHM PROJECTS WIN ORCHID AWARDS
The University of Tennessee Student Union, built in collaboration with the Christman Company as Construction Manager, was honored with the 2020 New Architecture Award. Designed as a joint venture with BMa, the 395,000 SF building houses the largest auditorium on campus, meeting spaces and ballroom, offices, recreation, retail, and dining facilities, among other spaces. BMa-MHM utilized a contemporary approach to Collegiate Gothic design for the facility, paying equal tribute to UT's heritage and its promise for the future.
The KUB Engineering Building was honored with the Environmental Stewardship Orchid Award. The 3-story, 41,000 SF office building was built adjacent to the existing Engineering + Operations Building on Knoxville Utilities Board’s Hoskins campus. The sustainable efforts made while designing and constructing the Engineering Building on KUB’s largest campus showcase to more than 1,000 employees that environmental responsibility is a core value at KUB. This energy efficient building is designed to be LEED™ Certified and was completed in 2019.
The Miller’s Building, a 2000 Orchid Award winner, took home the Mary Lou Horner Award which recognizes a former Orchid winner whose property has been beautifully maintained for at least 10 years since its original recognition as an Orchid Award winner.
For many years, the storefront of the Miller’s Building was occupied by daytime businesses that left most of its block of Gay Street dark and empty outside of daytime business hours. In the spirit of community revitalization, the Knoxville Utilities Board decided to open up the storefront of the Miller’s Building by leasing to two new retail tenants: Cruze Farm Ice Cream and Bliss/ Tori Mason Shoes. The renovation brings new life to Gay Street by replacing existing tinted windows and shades with transparent glazing and new finishes throughout. The foot traffic created by the added interest of the storefronts has strengthened the connection between shops and businesses along one of the community’s most prized streets.
These awards acknowledge projects that help to beautify our city, and we are honored to be 2020 winners!