01
Cumberland House
A house for two readers on a limestone bluff, built in board-formed concrete and cedar that will grey to match the river birches.
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Nashville, Tennessee · Established 2011
Buildings that keep faith with their place.
We are a small architecture practice working on houses, civic rooms and the careful reuse of old structures across Middle Tennessee.
The practice
Every site already contains most of the answer. Our work is to find it, argue with it, and build something that will still make sense in fifty years.
Wren & Hale was founded in 2011 by Eleanor Wren and Marcus Hale. We keep the studio deliberately small — five people — so that the architects you meet in the first conversation are the ones who draw your building and stand on site while it is built.
We work slowly at the start and quickly once the direction is right. We build models. We read the sun, the water and the budget before we read the precedents.
Selected work
A few buildings we are glad to have made.
02
Foundry Row
A 1926 iron foundry kept as a working building — now sixteen artist studios, a market hall, and a boiler house that stayed exactly as we found it.
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03
Pilgrim Chapel
A chapel for a retreat centre on the plateau, built of one material and lit from a single source you never look at directly.
View projectWhat we do
Four kinds of work.
Most projects draw on more than one of these. We would rather take on fewer commissions and stay on each of them from the first site walk to the final punch list.
Architecture
New buildings from first sketch through final punch list — houses, civic rooms, places of work and worship.
Interiors
Interiors designed with the building, not after it. Millwork, lighting, and fixed furniture drawn in the same hand as the walls.
Adaptive Reuse & Preservation
Old buildings carry information. We read it before we change anything, then intervene where the structure invites it.
Master Planning
Longer-horizon work for campuses, neighbourhoods and owners who build in phases over many years.
Have a site, a building, or a question?
We are glad to talk early, before anything is decided. Tell us where it is and what you are hoping for.