Our Oak Hill Residence received in Honorable Mention at the 2023 Preservation Awards in Nashville on May 18.

The residence represents a type of housing stock that is rapidly disappearing from Nashville, particularly in its more affluent neighborhoods: the mid-century ranch. Located in Oak Hill, the house is part of a small development of brick ranches built there in the 1950s. Along this street, the ranches have started to disappear, replaced by significantly larger homes.

So, the project began with a modern Nashville conundrum: do we tear down or renovate? MZA's Andy Grogan and Juliana Daily discussed options with the homeowners and determined that we could reconceive their existing house and preserve it. The project was part restoration, part rehabilitation, and part adaptive reuse. The guiding principle was that we could build well without over-building. Keep what you have, make use of it, and extend its life.

"In a town that is growing faster than most residents can keep pace with, and where the most ready answer to the question of housing seems to be demolishing modest, mid-century houses in order to build new (and frequently much larger) ones, it feels quietly radical to have instead chosen to preserve an original home," said Daily.