EOA Architects is a Nashville practice founded in 1991 by Gary Everton, working across architecture, interior design and urban planning. The firm has been majority women-owned since 2019 and is a signatory to the AIA 2030 Commitment; it is led by Sheila Dial Barton, Tracey Ford and Michael Murdock. Work is organized around housing and hospitality, mixed use and commercial, education, and community and religious projects. Named projects include the new Nissan Stadium, the Tennessee State Museum, Christ Church Cathedral, the Warren and Moore Colleges and Kissam Center at Vanderbilt University, Concourse A at Nashville International Airport, and the Henry Horton State Park Inn reconstruction. EOA led the visitor center redesign for the Legislative Plaza renovation in Nashville.
EOA works out of a single office at 515 Main Street in Nashville, and the project team you meet there is drawn from a staff of about 37 people spanning architects, interior designers, project managers and administrative support. That mix matters practically: interior design and construction administration are carried in house rather than subcontracted, and the firm keeps a dedicated BIM management function, so model standards and documentation stay under one roof from schematic design through the punch list. Urban planning sits alongside the building work, which is how a project can start as a site study and end as a permitted set.
The design argument the firm makes for itself is that buildings should be empathetic — that the complexity of modern systems and technology has to be reconciled with how a person actually moves through a room. EOA calls this Humanizing Design, and pairs it with a plain statement that architecture should be of its time, meaning contemporary work rather than pastiche even when it lands next to something historic.
Renovation and reuse are a real part of the practice, not a sideline. The portfolio includes the Legislative Plaza Building renovation and the Walker Library at Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School, and the housing work runs from Alloy at Tech Hill and Emblem Park to Highland East, Stacks on Main Apartments, Ten21 at Five Points and Inspiritus Senior Housing. Single-family and private residential commissions such as Westerly House and Chamberlain House sit in the same book as corporate work for Smyrna Ready Mix and G7 Entertainment Marketing, and commercial addresses including Hill Center Five Points and the Allston Office Building. On the institutional side the firm has done Eagle View Elementary School, Pope John Paul II High School, St. Joseph Catholic Church, Providence Church, the Two Rivers Event Pavilion and Music City Central. Many of these projects are indexed under more than one market category, which is a fair signal of how much of the work is mixed-program.
Community involvement is organized rather than incidental. EOA partners with roughly ten Nashville nonprofits, among them the Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency, Rebuilding Together Nashville, Thistle Farms and Safe Haven, several of which serve people at the edge of housing stability — a useful tell for owners working on affordable or supportive housing.
For owners and developers starting a conversation, business development runs through principal Sheila Dial Barton directly; general inquiries go to the firm’s main address, and design staff applying for work send portfolios to a separate resume address with a five-megabyte cap.
