Exciting progress continues at The University of Tennessee Engineering Services Facility.

On a recent site visit, our team got to see the concrete frames substantially completed and exterior skins now under way. The 230,000 SF Laboratory and Education facility is slated for completion in 2021.

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  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. 

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 . We are honored to be a part of this celebration of design excellence, individual achievements, and fellowship in our East Tennessee Design Community!

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.

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.