Tom Marshall: Memphis Architect; Speaking to the Future of Hunting Camps

My first knowledge of Tom Marshall originated somewhere around my freshman year of high school, when as lead architect, he came to give something of a sneak-preview to his alma mater, Memphis University School (’77), of the renovation plans for Memphis’ beloved Pyramid [which actually came into fruition based on a fishing bet, which he was present for] – a job upwards of $100 million, including the all new Bass Pro Shops, Big Cypress Lodge, Ducks Unlimited Heritage Center, one of a very limited number of Beretta galleries, and the tallest freestanding elevator in the United States. While he claims this to be the “pinnacle of his design career,” believe it or not, this is only one of Marshall’s many architectural achievements in the outdoor-related world.

Bass Pro Shops at The Pyramid – Memphis, TN.

Tom Marshall is a Memphis native & graduate of the University of Tennessee, where he earned his bachelor’s degree. In addition, he has studied at the University of East Anglia in the U.K. & completed courses at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. After earning a master’s from the Illinois School of Architecture, he would go on to shadow some of the world’s most coveted architects such as Paolo Soleri & Durell Stone, and has now served as Principal of his own Memphis-Nashville firm, OT Marshall Architects, founded by his father, OT Marshall III in the mid 20th century, since 1986.

Tom’s achievements in the world of architecture are numerous – the recipient of major international recognitions such as La Biennale di Venezia Design Award, IIDA Healthcare Design Award, and American Institute of Architects Chicago Award, he has been a force to be reckoned with across the nation and globe. But Marshall has not neglected his roots, having served over twenty years on Memphis City Council, where among other accomplishments, he passed a new ethics plan emphasizing transparency in city government & created a unified development code; conducted statewide assessments of school building conditions; assessed risk on medical facilities for adherence to ADA & seismic building codes; and designed numerous Mid-South residential & commercial properties. While also having served as a consultant on a great deal of projects, he mediated Memphis’ FedEx Forum job, functioned as lead architect on the Memphis Cook Convention Center renovation [both deals north of $200 million], and the Memphis City Schools’ five-year master plan. With his firm behind him, Tom has been involved with the overhaul of Tunica, Mississippi’s Bally’s Casino, Memphis’ St. Francis Hospital, the revitalization of the downtown & midtown areas, and at least three University of Memphis projects. Recently, Marshall evaluated the potential for a Memphis shopping center to be used as a temporary COVID-19 hospital.

A Speculative photo of the Memphis Cook Convention Center renovation

I got to know Tom a bit more personally last year on a late season duck hunt at his now three-year-old property, Buffalo Creek, located in McCrory, Arkansas, just an hour and a half from the duck & rice capital of the world, Stuttgart. I joined Tom’s nephew, Ryan Pahlow, a long-time friend, and fellow MUS Grad (’17) & Razorback, for a last-weekend-of-the-season hunt, after a pretty unfruitful year.

Tom & Ryan in the marsh at Buffalo Creek

I had spent a handful of nights in high school at Ryan’s house in Memphis, but as we rounded out the long, strange trip from Fayetteville, and drove down the gravel road in the dark up to the Buffalo Creek clubhouse, the pieces really started to come together in my head. I recalled Ryan’s house that we had nicknamed ‘The Fort,’ due to its position on top of a large Shady Grove hill, and remembered how interested I was the first time I ever set foot inside. With sprawling floor-to-ceiling windows, an ergonomic floorplan, and unique atrium… I only then connected the dots that it was an original OT Marshall design. And now arriving at Buffalo Creek, I was in for a new one.

As we pulled closer to the tastefully lit structure, I knew Ryan wasn’t joking when he told me that I was in for a surprise, and that he couldn’t really describe it; I just had to see it. I stepped out of the car into the crisp, January air to hear the chatter of ducks from all around, the hum of a Waylon Jennings tune on a Bluetooth speaker, and the smell of buttered steaks on the grill.

Sounds pretty nice already, right?

I formally introduced myself to Tom and his groundskeeper, known only as Cowboy, who looked and acted as his namesake. Wearing a wide-brim hat & bandana, and being a pretty quiet fellow, all the information I could get out of him over the course of the weekend was that he lived in Colorado at one point.

As we all sat down to dinner, we pulled high-card out of a deck for the big steak (I didn’t get it), poured a glass of red wine for each of us, and chowed down on a good opening meal. Followed by some quality, small-batch bourbon and poker, the place felt steeped in tradition already, even with it only being a few years old.

After a few more drinks, and a royal flush from Ryan, we headed back out to the deck to sit around the firepit, and even busted out a little karaoke. I slurred a bit of Hank Williams Jr. & and quickly sat down as we began to talk about the plan for the following morning.

That next day, I would go on to see more ducks than I had in the whole season combined up to that point. As we wrapped up the Arkansas timber hunt, we headed over to the first of the cabins Tom had recently built on the property, that had not yet been named. We threw some logs on the firepit and kicked around the idea of branding it “the grassy knoll,” due to its position atop a small mound, over a Zip-Lock of trail mix left in my blind-bag from the previous weekend.

Soon enough, we headed back to the main-lodge to take part in another one of Marshall’s new, but age-old feeling traditions – the afternoon skeet shoot. Pure competition, we all had an even number of identical shells, to shoot out of the same gun at clays tossed from the collapsible throwing stations atop the structure, from off the deck. I may not have won the steak the previous night, but now that it wasn’t up to chance, I seized the opportunity to capitalize on my high-school trapshooting experience. Though the crowd heckled me through the last few rounds, I would go on to claim my prize – a 1936 buffalo nickel.

As we made our way back to Fayetteville that afternoon, I felt like there was still much to be known about Tom, Buffalo Creek, and his design touch on related projects. I recently set up a phone interview in hopes of gaining some more insight…

Q&A

Griffen Walden (GW): Tell me a little bit about your upbringing in relation to the outdoors – did you grow up duck hunting?

Tom Marshall (TM): I really grew up rabbit hunting & quail hunting. My father had a farm over in west Tennessee… So I really still have a passion for wingshooting; for quail & pheasant & chukar; I went on some hunts with him early in my life out west. But we did get to go on a few duck hunts, which were very special opportunities for a kid from Memphis, Tennessee, because duck hunting was still an hour or two away before you could get to the heartland of ducks, and those were special times… Duck hunting has presented itself as a real opportunity for this generation, and I think primarily due to the conservation efforts that have occurred in years prior, and if not for that, I don’t believe we’d be having the kind of experiences that I enjoyed quail hunting.

GW: I did some reading on your father, who was not only an innovator in modern design at the time, but also eco-efficiency [OT Marshall III designed the first energy-conscious, reflective glass building in the region for Blue Cross Blue Shield]. How did this influence your design, specifically at Buffalo Creek, considering it seems you’ve followed in his footsteps on many of your more commercial projects?

TM: Well it’s a very interesting story, because my dad was a very early modernist… I grew up, for instance, in the first all-glass house in the South… But growing up in a glass house, I was ten or twelve years old before I realized that was a unique thing; I thought everybody grew up in a glass house. So that sort of sense of modernism was just engrained in me early in life… That just became sort of a second nature, aesthetic appreciation for me, so I’ve definitely carried forward his feel. In his mind, he thought that we should be trying to grasp the very next step; and that’s the theory of the avant-garde – trying to embrace that very next step that makes life easier for us on earth… I just felt that’s the way design should be, so that’s carried forward. While I do projects like Bass Pro Shops & The Pyramid with very vernacular interiors, such as the look of a cypress creek or something on the inside, it’s still that iconic modernist piece on the outside.

GW: I read a quote about the glass house that mentioned something to the tune of “completely integrating the house with nature,” it seems like that comes out, not only at The Pyramid, but Buffalo Creek as well.

TM: Well that’s right, you’re sort of book-ended by the outdoors. With the structures on each side, it’s meant to really spend 90% of your time out on that deck, and feel like you’re living outside; that’s what the design was meant to accomplish.

GW: Do you think designs like yours are going to become the new norm? It’s become somewhat ‘trendy,’ and with shows like “Tiny House Nation;” they seem to be popping up more and more, not just in residential buildings, but in commercial properties too, especially in Arkansas. And with the environment becoming a more pressing issue every day, do you think they could become a necessity, and everything could be moving in this direction?

TM: We do believe that we’re perhaps a pace ahead of others in future trends; I believe that people are going to be looking for ways to better enjoy the outside while in their living spaces. I do think there was a time when people did not want that; they closed themselves off from the outside and created these sort of cookie-cutter subdivisions that created these inward environments; I don’t exactly know why. Some people say that the TV had something to do with that; they wanted to have four solid walls and maybe a small glass window to look out of so they could better watch their TV’s. There’s been a lot of philosophy about this, but I think the trend now is to embrace nature. You see a lot of activism relative to the preservation of nature, and appreciation of nature… I think this is something missing in a lot of people, that they’re going to yearn for, and in yearning for it, they’re going to want a house that brings the outdoors inside. Between that yearning and that need to accept and embrace nature, and the total economic viability of things like repurposing shipping containers, that combination, I think, is what’s going to sort of accelerate this particular aesthetic in the near future… Finding ways to economically provide housing for people affordably, and to include a large natural component is definitely a trend, in my opinion.

GW: I saw that you’re LEED [Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design] certified, and have talked about arcology [the concept of improving urban designs in order to minimize destructive impact on the earth] a good deal in previous interviews, can you tell me a little about this?

TM: When I was eighteen years old, I studied under Paolo Soleri, who was one of our last southern utopian designers. [Speaking about the famous Paolo Soleri Amphitheatre in Santa Fe, New Mexico] Every night after we got through building, he would sit on the big rock, and we would sit on the little rocks and listen & talk about the future… He felt that we had lost that with the urban sprawl that he was witnessing in his time, so he wanted to recreate this village feel that also embraced the environment.

Widespread Panic performing at the Paolo Soleri Amphitheatre in the summer of 2001

GW: Aside from Buffalo Creek and the Pyramid, what other sporting-related projects have you worked on, and can you tell me a bit about them?

TM: Well at Hickory Valley [Farmhouse]… I built a bridge that actually just stops in the middle of a ravine, and you walk out to the end of this bridge, and you’re sixty-five feet hovering over it, then it just stops. And people ask, “well, where’s the rest of the bridge?” And I tell them this is what the bridge is meant to be. You’re hovering up here in the trees! But in any case, I’ve designed a number of dovecotes and aviaries… I raise Birmingham Rollers which are the white doves that do somersaults to show off to their mates; watching them do that over the lake is pretty cool. It’s interesting cause I walked up, while I was building one of these things, behind the contractor, this was about two years ago, and I hear him saying, “he’s a pretty nice guy, but he’s eccentric as hell.” Then he turned around, saw that I was standing there, and realized what he was saying. But anyhow, it’s not just for us. We’ve got to think about the environment and the habitat not just for man, but for the animals that are here on earth with us. And for that reason, I’ve tried to develop this appreciation for wildlife, and while people think it’s a dichotomy to appreciate wildlife, and yet to be a hunter, I have tried so many times to explain that I suspect that I have dedicated more of my life toward the preservation of wildlife than the destruction of wildlife. The notion is having a shotgun in a duck blind & killing ducks, but they don’t fully embrace the experience, and the experience is really sometimes just a great excuse to find yourself outside appreciating the sunrise… and I think it’s time for architecture to embrace that.

GW: What’s the difference, for you, in designing a personal property like Hickory Valley or Buffalo Creek, versus working with a client?

TM: Well, it’s gotten to the point where I’m fortunate to have achieved a certain level of commercial success in architecture where I can pick & choose my clients, cause that’s not always the case… So I have been able to include a clientele for which there is an understanding on the front end that I’m given a large hand in shaping the look; I think that’s why most people hire me now, is that they want that look, and they do have to be admonished early-on that the way to achieve it is to provide a positive influence at an early phase… Having those kinds of conversations with clients is a lot of fun because you can see what activates their imagination, and it gives me something to pull from.

GW: When working on a project like these, how much of a hand do you have in the interior design element?

TM: I’m a licensed architect and licensed interior designer… In terms of specialty projects, I do interior elevations & select materials, and frankly I did that for Bass Pro… It’s about steering the direction of the look.

*One of Four Meticulously Furnished Bunk Rooms at Buffalo Creek*

GW: That leads into my next question – one thing I immediately realized about Buffalo Creek, and having seen some of your other projects, there appears to be a persistent theme of, frankly, impeccable decoration, but also complete functionality. How do you find this balance?

TM: So that’s actually by trial and error. Having made the mistakes that we all make, especially early on in my career, I have found that sometimes I wanted to give form to a project, for which that form was completely unnecessary. And having done that before, I have to fall back on the old saying of “form follows function.” You have to sort of live the space yourself in your mind, and how you’re going to be using it.

GW: I was struck by the deliberate ‘vibe’ of Buffalo Creek. I think I said this when I was there, but the place feels like it’s been there for a hundred years, yet you only acquired the land in 2017. What was the general picture you had in mind for what you wanted it to be, in a sense of feel?

TM: Well as my wife would say, I don’t watch much football, so I think about things all the time [laughs]. And so I try to create immediate tradition in any place that I do. For instance, at Hickory Valley, first we check on the dogs. I have a large kennel where I keep beagles and wingshooting dogs. I go let the doves out, and we drive out to the overlook… and it’s hard to put into words, but I like to create these rituals. Inside of that, it seems like “this is what you do at Buffalo Creek. This is what you do at Hickory Valley…”

GW: Could you give me a quick rundown of the land that Buffalo Creek is on?

TM: Well there’s now a wildlife refuge in full place on the adjacent property – no guns allowed, it’s a resting area. Can you believe that? We’re about halfway between the Cache River and the Bayou De View. And so with that land, it suffers a bit of a swell in the middle of it, and that low area, in this case, is Buffalo Creek… It’s a very unique area, sometimes overlooked, because people that were hunting would just immediately flock to the primary watersheds… It’s a perfect storm because ducks have altered their flight patterns and found a way to take refuge in this area as sort of an alternate flyway. With all the pressure on the primaries, Buffalo Creek has become a favorite for these ducks.

GW: Lastly, do you plan turn Buffalo Creek into an official club with membership, or keep it as your own personal, family & friends property?

TM: We actually have started to consider people like yourself, who have had the chance to hunt there, and have asked that we help them build something similar to it for their clubs. So what we’ve elected to do is establish IronWorks, to create an opportunity for people, with a low front-end cost, to recreate this look. While they’re not going to be cookie-cutter, because we believe that these things should be customized to everyone’s particular suited taste, IronWorks will allow for a pretty quick turnaround & pretty low initial cost. But at this point, Buffalo Creek, specifically, will be a place I continue to enjoy guests at.

As we wrapped up our phone call, I was again struck by the pure genius behind Tom’s work. Beauty, function, efficiency, and purpose seemed to be found behind every inch of his projects. Complete with sleeping accommodations for eight, integrated skeet throwers, a forty-foot duck roosting lookout, and additional ATV storage – years of experience had made the building and furnishing of Buffalo Creek less than a five-month job. And with his vast property of flooded Arkansas timber, buckbrush, and rice fields now bordered by a wildlife sanctuary, one would be hard-pressed to find better waterfowling anywhere in the country. And with IronWorks now available to the public, and the ability to fully build and furnish in under sixty days, others have the unique opportunity to have a Tom Marshall design of their own for their property, and for a relatively low overhead. Lastly, Tom’s care for the environment around him, in all of his work, resonated with me deeply, and is something that I think that we can all do a better job of taking into account. As they say, hunters make the best conservationists.

*Click on Griffen to find him on Instagram*

Hunting Stories, Faces in WaterfowlCorey MulhairSeptember 24, 20202 Comments

Tom Marshall: Memphis Architect; Speaking to the Future of Hunting Camps

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