About The Sunsphere
Knoxville’s skyline contains a giant gold ball balanced on top of a blue steel tower. The Sunsphere was created as the symbol of the 1982 World’s Fair, and unlike most temporary fair architecture, it never left. More than four decades later, the 266-foot structure still looks like someone parked a piece of optimistic retro-futurism in the middle of downtown.
The sphere itself is roughly five stories tall and covered in gold-colored glass. World’s Fair Park says each pane incorporates 24-karat gold, producing the reflective surface that makes the structure visible from across the city. During the fair, visitors could ride upward for an observation deck and restaurant while the sphere represented the event’s energy theme.
The fair ended, but the Sunsphere remained. Its observation deck went through long periods of closure and limited use before returning as a public attraction. Today visitors can once again ride to the fourth-floor observation level for panoramic views of Knoxville, the Tennessee River, World’s Fair Park, the University of Tennessee campus, and the distant mountains.
World’s fairs have a history of producing architecture that is spectacular, temporary, and difficult to explain afterward. Knoxville kept its giant gold sphere. That decision left the city with something far better than a normal observation tower: a permanent 1982 vision of the future still hovering over the same park.