Early in his life, Daryl Johnson had a sense of honesty and pride in your reputation instilled in him
Thirty years later, the President of Johnson Architecture still subscribes to the importance of those learnings from his parents.
Daryl Johnson, President, Principal Architect and Director of Design for Johnson Architecture Inc., learned early in life the value of hard work and a person’s reputation.
“Watching my father go to the level of discomfort for his family was impactful,” the head of the Knoxville form that bears his name, says about his father who took as much overtime work as he was allowed to do. Both parents also instilled a sense of the importance of honesty and pride in your reputation.
Today, those lessons learned during the years that Johnson grew up in New Jersey are still very vivid in his mind nearly four decades later. Now, 30 years after launching Johnson Architecture on January 1, 1994, the firm has 24 employees and a new home in South Knoxville near the city’s bustling Suttree Landing Park.
How Johnson ended up in Knoxville, not once but twice, is an interesting story. It starts with what he says was a desire to be more particularly artistic than he was. In the sixth grade, he took a class in mechanical drafting and actually designed his first house as a senior in high school.
“It was awful,” Johnson says but he was hooked on architecture and applied to the University of Virginia but was not admitted, so he ended up at Penn State University in Scranton. After an unsatisfactory year, he and a longtime friend decided to head South to Tennessee.
“We moved into the Hotel Monday and woke up the first morning to a sea of orange,” he says. It was a Tennessee football weekend.
Four years later in 1984, Johnson graduated from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and headed back to New Jersey. By early 1988, he was back in Knoxville working as Director of Entertainment Related Design for Glenn Bullock and Charlie Smith at Bullock Smith & Partners.
Midway through his first year in his own firm, Johnson says he was asked to design two Calhoun’s facilities – one on Bearden Hill and the other in Gatlinburg.
“We’re still working with Mike Chase 30 years later,” he says, adding that one of the major things he has observed over his four-decade career is being a good listener. “It’s a major advantage in business,” Johnson says.
The new headquarters fills a longtime goal to own the firm’s own space and also was a real morale booster.
“Our employees wanted a place where they could walk to lunch and not get in a car,” Johnson said, adding that they also wanted it to be near a park and have convenient parking. “From a morale perspective, it is one of the best things we have ever done.”
The new home is located in what was probably a 1920s-era building that had originally served as a metal fabrication shop. The wood-framed patio had burned and some of the other roofing had caved-in. Johnson Architecture was previously located in Cherokee Mills where PYA, the power behind teknovation.biz, is also located. After a temporary move to the former Knoxville News Sentinel building for more than a year, the firm held an open house on May 9.
So, what’s on the horizon for Johnson Architecture?
It’s the Neyland Entertainment District that revolutionizes the landscape surrounding Neyland Stadium and Thompson Boling Arena by creating an iconic entertainment, hospitality, and retail destination that students, residents and tourists want to visit year-round. Johnson Architecture leads the design team and architecture on the project, partnering with strategic lead Dixon Greenwood, Brick + Bev Development, Hartland Hotel Group, and Emerald Capital as the 865 Neyland Project Team.
As Johnson reflected on the past 30 years, he talked about the firm’s legacy for high design . . . architecture that met a client’s needs while making the built environment better.” He said the firm is very client-driven, but also has a focus on those things that draw on our expertise.
“If it is not something we regularly do, we tell the client upfront. If they still want us to do it, we will,” he says.
Years ago, Johnson says, “We were kind of like the mosquito with the big guys in town. We’re now spoken of in the same sentence.”
Like what you've read?
Forward to a friend!