WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION

(AND THE 55 YEARS AFTER THAT)

By Bill Tunnell

When a classmate suggested I write this, it felt like one of those happy childhood assignments we used to get. Three years into retirement now, it’s probably a good idea to write this down before I forget it all!

Last month in Costa Rica

Following my first summer out of ORHS, working in Gatlinburg like so many of us
did (I played in a dance band at the ski lodge, among other things), I headed for the UT
School of Architecture, along with classmates Flip Knight and Ric Mixon. One of my six
years there I spent living in Nicaragua, working on reconstruction projects following the
1972 earthquake that destroyed Managua. One among many high points of that year
was meeting with Mick and Bianca Jagger, who funded one of our projects.

Graduation propelled me to Atlanta, where I met my artist wife of 45 years,
Karen, got licensed, and began a ‘conventional’ architecture career. For the most part,
what was being built then was cookie-cutter suburban sprawl. I believed resort
development would offer the greatest opportunity for creativity, so I migrated into the
field of master planning, designing resorts and second-home communities throughout
the U.S. and the Caribbean. That, along with raising two amazing kids (son Dylan and
daughter Leila), kept me busy for the next 15 years.

Karen in her Atlanta studio       

The rest of the family, following a recent community theatre production of ‘Newsies’ -

Dylan’s whole family (on right with wife and two daughters) performed, Leila with her two boys (on left)

By the time the 1996 Olympics came to Atlanta, I had started my own design firm
(in 1990) with an architecture classmate from Knoxville, and we found ourselves
designing two of the Olympic venues. It then occurred to us that since we lived in
Atlanta, maybe we should work on our own city (!) instead of just getting on airplanes to
go work elsewhere.
This was about the same time ‘New Urbanism’ came along (thank God), which
turned the American car-centric sprawl development model upside down and produced
a new set of principals and expectations in the marketplace. Embracing that movement
has made it possible to design places that transform the built environment from
something car-focused into something that is people-focused and, therefore, much
more delightful.
As a result, our work became much more oriented toward urban issues like
downtown revitalization and affordable housing and yielded the built projects of which I
am most proud (see photos).

TSW consists of three studios:  Planning, Architecture, and Landscape Architecture.  Our most impactful projects

have employed all three disciplines.  Glenwood Park, one of my favorites in Atlanta,

was completed in 2015 on the site of a former concrete plant

Another favorite - Downtown Woodstock, GA

My favorite of all:  the beach town of Las Catalinas, on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica,

where I’ve been working since 2006 and am still consulting 

On the home front, our kids were both doing amazing and creative things. They both
excelled at the cult sport of Ultimate Frisbee and became super-star fish in their
somewhat obscure pond, traveling the world as ambassadors for their sport. Wife
Karen began to emerge from being a full-time mother (and my partner in the renovation

of a series of homes) and returned to her career as an artist. During the early 2000s we
were the happy owners of a vacation home we designed and built, after the original
house burned to the ground, on magical Lake Santeetlah in western NC.
After the kids graduated from college (Dylan from UGA, Leila from UNC Chapel
Hill), they both decided to move to Amherst, MA, so it was clear Karen and I had to
follow suit. Three years ago we finished building a new home there, around the corner
from Leila’s family and backing up to Brookfield Farm (brookfieldfarm.org), a 650-
member Community Sponsored Agriculture (CSA) that has become the spiritual and
social center of our New England world.
Life is good – kids and four grandchildren close at hand, plenty of time for
gardening, puttering, playing music, and traveling for pleasure rather than for business.
Who would have thought?

Karen commanding her activities table at a recent farm event

If you’re interested, you can see more about my work on our company website
(TSW-design.com). If you’d like to see Karen’s work go to karentunnell.com
(professional stuff) and @krtunnell on Instagram (recent drawings).
Come visit!

If you’re curious about my music, I don’t have any recordings of my current band, but here’s a link to a cut  (courtesy of Jim Gillespie) from my former Atlanta group: https://youtu.be/eyZQE2J7QzQ (not clickable - copy and paste into your browser)

My Amherst band, the fabulous No-No’s, my daughter Leila on the left in green

Editor’s Note: During our senior year, the class officers held a contest to design an ORHS crest since there wasn’t one. Bill’s design won the contest and was featured at check-in at the class reunion.