The work of Sanders Pace Architecture stretches across contemporary Appalachian culture, spanning from the city of Knoxville, through the Tennessee Valley to North Carolina, and into the ancient expanse of the Great Smoky Mountains. The office is based at the northern edge of downtown Knoxville in a lively adaptive re-use of a building that sat vacant for more than 30 years. The headquarters embodies an attitude core to the practice: the revitalization of a city can be organically realized one building at a time through preservation, adaptive re-use and sensitive urban infill. Since its founding in 2002, Sanders Pace Architecture has renovated more than 40 buildings within the city limits of Knoxville alone. The city’s identity, rooted in a bottom-up form of urban revitalization, has been greatly impacted by the firm’s sensitive and methodical approach to architecture and urban design.
During the past decade, with a strong footing in Knoxville’s incremental growth and renewal, the practice has expanded its reach. Today, Sanders Pace Architecture works across scales, typologies and contexts to engage city planning, large-scale public sector projects and higher educational facilities across the region. The practice leverages research and collaboration to create shared environments that are authentically rooted in place, while inspiring a new generation of thought leaders and innovation.
The evolution of the firm’s work, at times emerging from rural and remote locations, has been greatly informed by its surrounding natural context. Practicing within the larger Tennessee Valley Region, and within the wild terrain of the Appalachian Mountains, Sanders Pace Architecture has realized numerous projects recognized regionally and nationally for their nuanced and sustainable relationships to the unique histories, ecologies and landscapes that comprise the gradient wilderness surrounding our practice.
John L. Sanders, FAIA
John Sanders’ passion for the profession is embodied in the transformative nature of his work. His influence is evident in the thoughtful rehabilitation of forgotten, neglected buildings in fringe neighborhoods, elevation of overlooked project typologies, and energetic service through teaching and civic engagement. John’s work is meaningful, creative, and inspirational. His designs approach and capture opportunities that are typically unconsidered.
John is a native of West Virginia, and a founding member of Sanders Pace Architecture, a ten-person office located in Knoxville, Tennessee. Over the past 15 years John Sanders and business partner, Brandon Pace, have seized opportunities ranging in scale and typology to create a body of work driven by design excellence. John’s new construction, adaptive reuse, and preservation projects undergo a rigorous design process exploring possible design opportunities while solving the necessary aspects and needs of the specific problem. Mr. Sanders’ conviction to adhering to this process, in conjunction with his curious nature for the forgotten has invigorated his community.
Mr. Sanders’ projects are recognized with numerous design awards, through national publications, community impact awards, and preservation awards. Mr. Sanders’ projects are recognized by the uniqueness of their design approach and attention to detail no matter what the project size or typology. Because of these recognitions, John has been called on repeatedly to chair or participate as a jury member for design awards programs for AIA Chapters across the country.
During his tenures on the AIA East Tennessee and AIA Tennessee Chapters’ Board, Mr. Sanders was integral in creating and implementing a new licensee program to recognize the accomplishments of emerging professionals at local and state levels and formally celebrating the milestone of licensure. At the local level, Gold Medal Lifetime Achievement award recipients sign custom original certificates for each licensee as a memorandum of their significant achievement. This new licensee recognition is a symbolic rite of passage at the yearly design awards program. At the state level, Mr. Sanders was instrumental in establishing the same level of recognition to the new licensees across the entire state. Under John’s leadership these recognition ceremonies were implemented and have become a signature part of his region and state design awards programs.
Mr. Sanders’ passion for the profession also imbeds itself at the academic level. Mr. Sanders has had the distinct opportunity—as requested by the University of Tennessee College of Architecture and Design—to teach numerous design studios at undergraduate and graduate levels. John is consistently present in the classroom where he shares his vision for design and professional practice with future graduates to promote and advance the profession while teaching sound implementation methods and sharing his robust studio culture. John Sanders’ implementation of design excellence and his endless passion for the profession is evident by his body of work and his commitment to the AIA, and it is punctuated by his loyalty and continued public service within his community.
Brandon F. Pace, FAIA
Brandon Pace is a founding partner of Sanders Pace Architecture, started in Knoxville, Tennessee in 2002 with partner John Sanders. With work that is extensively researched and thoughtfully executed, Brandon has become a critical voice for a region and context often overlooked. In an era of increasing globalization, Brandon approaches architecture with a local mindset, identifying and expanding upon those cultural, physical, and social characteristics and circumstances that define a place and make it unique. Most of Brandon’s work has been completed in East Tennessee, grounded in local history, traditions, and customs. It’s a region with a variety of contexts from dense urban centers with suburban fringes to sparsely populated pastoral countryside bordering the rugged terrain of the Smoky Mountains. It is also a place where progressive ideas are often met with skepticism. The region has a long and storied history of independence and individuality along with an impassioned resistance to authority and change. Working within this context Brandon has created a body of work that lands at the intersection of past and present, of tradition and innovation. His work balances a specificity of place with processes that are common and understood – engaging but advancing those materials and systems familiar to our region in new and innovative ways on projects varied in type, scale, and complexity.
Throughout his career Brandon has repeatedly demonstrated that good design can happen where you least expect it, from the crumbling post-industrial ruins of urban areas to the asphalt seas of suburban strip development. His projects are grounded in the realities of the local economy and exhibit a resourcefulness and efficiency of means, leveraging modest materials and traditional methods to great effect. Brandon approaches design with an analytical mindset, identifying opportunities by clearly defining a projects constraints. Small scale urban interventions such as the facade project at 304 South Gay Street are an example of this design approach. Existing elements such as an ill placed fire stair from a previous renovation were accepted and incorporated into a new layered facade which creatively assigned limited construction dollars in a new and inventive way. At the Barrier Island House the preservation of a centuries-old stand of live oak trees established a framework for a project whose form is grounded in purpose and place, a refreshing departure from the nostalgic historicism of neighboring buildings. In his Cape Russell Retreat project a similar critical approach identified parameters within the language of a depression-era TVA flowage easement which allowed for the transformation of what was originally intended as a waterfront gazebo into an off-the-grid shelter which was the recipient of a 2012 AIA Small Project Award. By embracing constraints like these Brandon has been able to establish the foundation and framework for a design process that has led his projects to more than 50 local, regional, and national AIA design awards and publication in books and magazines throughout the world.
Brandon believes in the spirit of openness and that sharing ideas within the profession profoundly impacts our built environment in positive ways. He has become a resource to other AIA chapters across the country through invited lectures and as jury chair for multiple local and state AIA design awards programs. In 2013 he gave candid insight into his own experience building his firm at the AIA National Convention in Denver at a session focused on emerging practices. As Design Awards Chair of the 2015 AIA Kansas Convention he not only offered feedback on the chapter’s work but in a separate session was able to share his own work and process to an audience who likely encounter similar challenges in their own practice. In 2018 Brandon was invited to serve on the AIA Small Project Practitioners Jury and gave his own insights into the jury process as part of the awards presentation at the National Convention in New York City.
Brandon is also a committed educator having taught seven upper level design studios in the graduate and undergraduate programs at the University of Tennessee where in 2018 he became the school’s fourth Tau Sigma Delta Silver Medalist, an honor given to a professional with a record of distinction in design. He is also an active critic at colleges of architecture and design, having been invited to participate on reviews and juries at multiple institutions across the United States.
Over the course of his career Brandon’s fearless passion and commitment has chartered an optimistic and important course for others to follow – both as a critical voice within the profession and a leading designer and thinker in the field.