It started with two young architects working at the same Seattle firm. What began as a professional relationship grew into a life and body of work reaching far beyond what Ted Shelton (’93) and Tricia Stuth could have imagined.

Their careers have taken them around the globe, from the Pacific Northwest to Estonia and Cambridge, England, and eventually to Philadelphia before bringing them to Knoxville. For Shelton, the move to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, was a return to his alma mater, where he received the university’s highest student honor, the Torchbearer Award, in 1993.

Rocky Top offered something special they had been looking for: a place where practice, teaching, and research could coexist, with ideas moving freely between them. For Shelton and Stuth, design informs teaching. Teaching generates research. Research can shape public policy. And ideas explored in the classroom can contribute to change in the communities beyond it.

They signed a two-year contract to join the School of Architecture and hoped for the best. That was twenty-two years ago.

“We approached our move with some trepidation,” Stuth said. “But we’ve found not only a vibrant design culture but something much closer to a community of practice, people who want each other and good ideas to succeed.”

Designing With Purpose

Their shared approach to architecture expanded in 2005 when Shelton and Stuth co-founded curb, a firm built around thoughtful, resourceful design. The firm generally takes on just one major project at a time, in order to pursue work that aligned with issues they pursue in their teaching, research, and efforts to shape public policy.

“Those things are inseparable to us; we’ve never been able to choose between academia and practice,” Stuth said. “Each aspect of our career enriches the other and makes us much better architects and educators.”

Beginning in 2009, Stuth and Emeritus Professor Robert C. French led an interdisciplinary team of students and faculty in reimagining a piece of Tennessee history. Created in conjunction with the 75th anniversary of the Tennessee Valley Authority, the New Norris House asked what a model home for the 21st century might look like.

The answer went beyond sustainable design. The team worked with local and state officials and Clayton Homes to address building codes and other barriers to sustainable construction while creating a home centered on environmental performance, affordability, and livability.

“What we managed to build at curb and pass along to students has happened because we were held up by a community that operates in service of something bigger,” Shelton said. “We’re very lucky to be able to do this work.”

In 2014, Shelton and Stuth, working with Professors Brian and Katherine Ambroziak, brought that same design approach to Old Briar, a home on 80 acres of farmland in rural West Tennessee. The project was a homecoming for its owners, who returned to the county where they grew up after 25 years in Chicago and envisioned the house as an anchor for generations to come.

The landscape and the family’s stories shaped the design. The home responds to its active agricultural setting and the clients’ commitment to stewardship while incorporating water harvesting, solar strategies, and age-in-place features. Even its name came from a family memory. Old Briar was the affectionate name given to the client’s grandfather’s pickup truck and later passed along to generations of family vehicles.

For Shelton and Stuth, those personal connections are part of the architecture.

“Design is an act of care for a place and the people in it,” Shelton said.

Ideas Into Action

For Shelton and Stuth, teaching architecture is not just about what happens inside the classroom. Their Housing America studios, a joint series of courses focused on ethics in architecture, gives students the opportunity to explore housing through social, political, economic, and environmental lenses while working with architects, policymakers, advocates, and others in the field.

The Housing America collaboration has earned Shelton and Stuth two AIA/ACSA Housing Design Education Awards and led students to tackle professional architectural priorities like dense, diverse, and context-driven urban housing.

Single-stair housing is one example. Shelton, Stuth and their students have explored how allowing a single stairway in certain multistory residential buildings could make better use of small urban lots while still meeting important safety requirements.

“For a small apartment building, two sets of stairs take up a large percentage of space,” Shelton said. “We’re interested in making changes that allow small, local developers to build something that could become part of the fabric of that community.”

In 2024, Tennessee passed legislation allowing local governments to permit residential buildings of up to six stories with a single exit stairway, subject to safety requirements. Shelton and Stuth joined Tennessee AIA members advancing the initiative in the legislative processes. They then carried the issue into the classroom where students learning about these opportunities created designs for exhibitions that exposed professionals and the public to new opportunities. The following year, Shelton and Stuth served as jurors for a single-stair housing design competition, exploring what the change could mean for housing.

“The university keeps us curious,” Stuth said. “Our students and academic colleagues have no obligation to be polite about weak ideas. Practice offers the ultimate testing grounds, further honing those ideas and bringing them into the world of experience.”

A Shared Body of Work

In Chattanooga this summer at the AIA Tennessee Conference on Architecture, Shelton and Stuth stood together to accept the William Strickland Achievement Award for the Profession of Architecture. It was the first time the award had been presented to two people.

“Many architects trip over the curb between teaching and practice, but Professors Stuth and Shelton have designed and inhabited that line over the course their ongoing careers,” said Carl Lostritto, director of the School of Architecture. “I’ve seen firsthand how they treat their students as collaborators. I think it might also be fair to further note that many of their clients and colleagues consider ourselves to be their students too. Their projects are as compelling as they are curious, beautiful and didactic. I’m proud to work with them and congratulate them for this well-deserved award.”

The honor felt like a recognition of the whole of their work: the design, teaching, research, and advocacy.

“It’s so gratifying to be honored for them collectively because many times we had been told we should choose between academia and practice, but for us that was unthinkable,” Stuth said.

The moment carried historical significance as well. Stuth was the first woman to receive the honor, a distinction Shelton said was especially meaningful after a career in which she was often the only woman in the room.

“She has never once had a female boss. She has spent her entire career in a profession that did not always make room for her. Instead of that making her guarded, it made her generous. She has spent years helping emerging architects navigate the profession. She shows up for them, advises them, and encourages them. She is a lifelong mentor.”

Together, their decades-long partnership has earned dozens of AIA honors at the local, state and national levels, while their teaching has earned national awards from the AIA and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. Their research and scholarship have appeared in leading academic journals as well.

And the work continues. Shelton recently completed his Ph.D. in practice research, while Stuth is on track to complete hers in 2027. More than two decades into their partnership, they have built a practice, a family, and a life around architecture.

They have taught, researched, and challenged each other to see what might be possible next. They share many of the same interests but don’t always approach things the same way. Those different perspectives have become part of what makes their partnership work.

“We respect each other so much that our differences ultimately complement one another,” Shelton said. “They make us stronger.”

That may be the simplest way to understand what they have built, both in their work and in their lives.

Together.