Sharon Johnston, FAIA, and Mark Lee are the founding partners of the architecture firm Johnston Marklee. Since its establishment in 1998 in Los Angeles, Johnston Marklee has been recognized nationally and internationally with over 40 major awards and numerous publications. Both Johnston and Lee are Professors in Practice at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where Lee served as the Chair of the Department of Architecture from 2018-2023.

Projects undertaken by Johnston Marklee are diverse in scale and type, spanning fourteen countries throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Recent projects undertaken by Johnston Marklee include the new, permanent home for the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program (ISP) at Roy Lichtenstein Studio in New York’s Greenwich Village; a renovation of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; among others.

Johnston Marklee & Associates, in partnership with Lamar Johnson Collaborative, envisioned the prismatic building form. The order of the deep, gridded facade conveys a contemporary sensibility with a timeless expression. This generous, pedestrian-scale neighborhood porch frames retail spaces within and echoes the gentle, sloped roofs of churches, gabled sheds, and historic Nashville landmarks, such as the 1902 Arcade in nearby Downtown. The landscape, designed by Grace Fuller Marroquín of Grace Fuller Design, extends the architectural language outdoors with a lush yet ecologically sensitive Southern garden of flowering trees, native grasses, and low-growth plantings that blur the threshold between interior and exterior. The building’s textured interior palette of terracotta, cherry wood paneling, and cream brick create spaces that capture the warmth and layered character of mid-century modernism was designed by Ray's in-house design team in collaboration with Parts & Labor Design.

Invader is one of the most enigmatic and radical artists of our time. He has been “invading” cities around the world since 1998 by skillfully placing his mosaic pieces in the most incongruous of places. By drawing attention to the increasing role of technology in our daily lives, Invader encourages the public to reflect on the implications of this digital invasion. Invader’s creative dexterity knows no boundaries, with the artist having sent his work into outer space as well as having anchored it to the bottom of Cancun Bay. Whether he’s embellishing the Hollywood sign, invading the Louvre, designing the most innovative pair of trainers or using the Rubik’s Cube as an artistic medium, Invader has left an undeniable mark both on the world’s landscapes and on contemporary art.

Ray Nashville’s pool, positioned on the building’s second floor with commanding views of the skyline downtown, serves as the backdrop for Invader’s specially commissioned work, his first ever in Nashville. The anonymous artist, who calls himself an “UFA” (Unidentified Free Artist) and always appears masked in public, has spent over two decades “invading” cities worldwide with ceramic tile mosaics inspired by 1970s-80s 8-bit video games, such as Space Invaders. The mosaic tile intervention features one of his signature designs inlaid across the bottom of the pool along with a frieze of his 8-bit characters running around the waterline.