Centennial Park Pavillion
Unbuilt
Nestled within the historic grounds of Centennial Park, Nashville's most cherished green space, the Centennial Park Pavilion serves as a contemporary yet timeless addition that blends seamlessly with its natural and cultural surroundings. The Pavillion, a doorless structure, seen through the lens of democratic and civic architecture, offers true freedom for all who enter to gather, reflect, and celebrate., while standing as a testament to lightness and transparency, with its sweeping rooflines and open design. It embodies a design ethos that prioritizes sustainability, community engagement, and the enduring beauty of Centennial Park.
Project Statement
The new pavilion shares its golden proportions with its inspiration, but also in our approach to a civic minded democratic structure. Where the Parthenon is monumental, ornate, and classical in its design, the new pavilion is quietly deferential. The original Parthenon employs 46 massive Pentellic marble columns that are not exactly equidistant, the outer ones being slightly closer together. Our pavilion's 45 columns (one column being omitted at the entry) amplifies this optical refinement into a mathematical gradient. Half of the slender steel columns are structural, the other half serve as downspouts for gutters or conduit for electric, audio, visual, etc. The circular tube steel columns have welded plates in a cruciform manner to reference the fluting of a classical column, but functionally to conceal attachment points for tenting the pavilion in inclement weather. The wooden ceiling and roof are detailed to make a thin, clean edge. Here, all of the elements of the Parthenon’s entablature are distilled into one horizontal element.
From below, the pavilion's ceiling is sculptural and brings surprise and delight. The vaultings here not only provide aesthetic intrigue but also serve as natural ventilation and house large fans above the line of view. A stage stands in for Athena and a greenroom for the opisthodomos. Once complete, we hope Nashville will feel like a second jewel has been added to Centennial Park.
The Centennial Park Pavilion proposes that civic architecture does not need to be monumental to possess civic significance.
Its power comes instead from openness. A structure without doors, an architecture that frames rather than separates, and a public room whose meaning is created by the people who occupy it.
Where the Parthenon represents permanence, monumentality, and classical order, the pavilion responds with lightness, adaptability, and democratic access. Yet both share an underlying belief in architecture’s ability to give form and dignity to collective life.
Rather than competing with Centennial Park’s most recognizable landmark, the pavilion becomes its contemporary counterpoint, a second civic structure shaped by proportion, landscape, and public life, adding a new chapter to the architectural history of the park.
Framework for Design Excellence Narrative
Design for Integration
Architecture, structure, environmental systems, and ornament are intentionally collapsed into a single architectural language. It was the intent for the pavilion to be a fixture within the landscape of the park.
The pavilion’s proportions derive from the Golden Rectangle, establishing a geometric framework that connects it to the mathematical order of the Parthenon without reproducing its classical form. Its 45 slender steel columns reinterpret the Parthenon’s 46-column perimeter, with one deliberately omitted to mark entry and reinforce the pavilion’s openness.
The column spacing itself becomes a subtle mathematical gradient inspired by the optical refinements of classical architecture. Approximately half of the columns are structural; the others conceal roof drainage, electrical, audio, and visual infrastructure. Welded cruciform plates abstract the fluting of a classical column while providing concealed attachment points for temporary weather protection.
Similarly, the Parthenon’s layered entablature is distilled into a single thin roof edge. Structure, infrastructure, proportion, and historical reference are therefore not separate systems applied to the building—they collectively generate its architecture.
\n Design for Equitable Communities
At its core, the pavilion is an exercise in democratic civic architecture.
Where the Parthenon is monumental, elevated, enclosed, and ceremonial, the new pavilion is deliberately approachable, transparent, and open. It has no front door and no singular prescribed way of entering. Instead, the repeated perimeter of slender columns creates a permeable boundary between architecture and park.
This openness allows the pavilion to accommodate a broad spectrum of public life from everyday park use and informal gatherings to performances, civic events, and celebrations. A stage for programmed activity inherently flexible with open floor space.
The building therefore acts less as an object within the park than as shared civic infrastructure: a covered public room belonging equally to those attending an event and those simply passing through.
Its monumentality comes not from exclusivity or scale, but from the collective life it accommodates.
\n Design for Well-being
The pavilion maintains a continuous relationship between people, daylight, air, and landscape.
Its open perimeter allows natural ventilation and uninterrupted visual connections to Centennial Park, providing shelter without separating visitors from their surroundings. Rather than creating a conventional enclosed event building, the architecture preserves the sensory experience of being within the park.
Above, a sculpted wood ceiling transforms a necessary overhead plane into one of the pavilion’s defining experiential elements. Vaulted forms introduce daylight and natural ventilation while concealing large circulation fans above the primary line of sight. Changing light and shadow animate the ceiling throughout the day.
Warm wood, Tennessee Crab Orchard stone, natural daylight, and open-air circulation create a tactile environment that balances the pavilion’s slender steel structure. These elements make the building simultaneously civic in scale and human in experience—a place to gather, pause, orient, and remain connected to nature.
Design for Resources
Material economy is expressed through an architecture in which individual components perform multiple roles.
Columns carry loads while accommodating drainage, power, audiovisual infrastructure, and temporary enclosure. Ceiling forms provide architectural expression while facilitating daylight, ventilation, and concealed mechanical systems. This integration reduces the need for secondary architectural layers and allows the building’s systems to participate directly in its identity.
Material choices also reinforce regional specificity. Tennessee Crab Orchard stone grounds the supporting structures in a durable local material, contrasting with the pavilion’s lighter steel framework. Handmade tile designed by a local artist introduces another layer of regional craft and identity.
The result is a restrained material palette in which durability, function, craft, and architectural expression reinforce one another.
\n Design for Discovery
The pavilion rewards observation.
At first encounter, it can be understood simply as a light, contemporary shelter within the landscape. With closer examination, connections to the Parthenon gradually emerge through proportion, column count, spacing, procession, and geometry.
The references are intentionally abstract rather than literal.
The Parthenon’s massive columns become slender steel tubes. Classical fluting becomes cruciform steel plates. Its entablature becomes a thin horizontal roof plane. Athena’s position within the temple is reinterpreted as a zone to place a stage for public performance, while the opisthodomos finds a contemporary counterpart in the greenroom.
These relationships allow history to become something visitors discover rather than something architecture announces.
The pavilion therefore avoids both historical imitation and deliberate contrast. Instead, it establishes a conversation across time, demonstrating how contemporary architecture can learn from a significant predecessor while remaining unmistakably of its own moment.
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LEED/Green Certifications
Price/sq. ft. if provided
N/A
