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Auburn University

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Marlon Blackwell Architects in Fayetteville, Arkansas has received a 2016 National Design Award for Architecture from Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. The design firm was recognized “for exceptional and exemplary work in” architecture design for its body of work. Marlon Blackwell, a 1980 Auburn architecture graduate, is principal and founder of Marlon Blackwell Architects. For more, click here.
 
At the AIA National Convention in Philadelphia in May, the AIA presented a short documentary film on Rural Studio, Auburn University’s community-oriented, design-build program dedicated to improving the western Alabama region with good design. The Rural Studio film launches the 2016 Film Challenge, inviting filmmakers and architects to team up and tell stories of how architecture is solving a problem facing us today in communities, big or small, across the country. Visit here to learn more about the AIA’s Film Challenge.

The Rural Studio contributed to two international art and architecture exhibitions this spring: the XXI Triennale di Milano open from April to September of this year in Milan, Italy, and the 15th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice (La Biennale Architettura 2016) opened May 27th Images will be featured in the Summer Issue of StudioAPLA.

University of Arkansas

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Peter Mackeith  Begins Tenure As Dean Of The Fay Jones School Of Architecture

 

Peter MacKeith began his appointment July 1, 2014, as the new dean of the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas. He arrives in the school after a distinguished 15-year career at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, where he rose to tenured full professor and associate dean. He is an internationally recognized design educator whose work encompasses architectural design, design research and publication, and exhibition curation and design. He has spent 25 years as a liaison between the design cultures of the United States and the Nordic nations, particularly Finland.

Links to interviews and announcements about Peter may be found here:

Marlon Blackwell, Distinguished Professor and head of the Department of Architecture in the Fay Jones School of Architecture, has received a $50,000 fellowship grant from United States Artists, a national grant-making and advocacy organization. United States Artists awards several fellowships each year, under names such as Ford, Rockefeller and Knight. Blackwell, who was awarded a Ford Fellowship, is one of 34 artists to receive a 2014 United States Artists fellowship. The Fellows were selected from 116 nominated artists living in the United States and Puerto Rico and were chosen by a panel of expert peers in each artistic discipline. Blackwell, honored in the Architecture and Design category, is a nationally and internationally recognized teacher and one of the nation’s most respected regional modernist architects. He is founder and principal at Marlon Blackwell Architects, based in Fayetteville. Blackwell is the second faculty member from the Fay Jones School to receive this prestigious honor from United States Artists. Steve Luoni, director of the University of Arkansas Community Design Center and a Distinguished Professor, was named a Ford Fellow in 2012. The Fay Jones School joins the ranks of Columbia University, the University of California, Los Angeles and Southern California Institute of Architecture for having multiple members of their faculty selected in the USA Fellows program since it began in 2006.

For additional information, see: http://newswire.uark.edu/articles/25586/blackwell-named-ford-fellow-in-united-states-artists-fellowship-program

 

Vol Walker Hall Project Short-Listed for 2014 World Architecture Festival Awards

The home of the Fay Jones School of Architecture – the renovated Vol Walker Hall with its new addition, the Steven L. Anderson Design Center – has been chosen as a finalist in the 2014 World Architecture Festival Awards, the world’s largest architecture design awards program serving the global community.

More than 400 projects from more than 40 countries were short-listed across 31 individual award categories for the festival, to be held this week in Singapore. The Vol Walker Hall project is one of 16 short-listed projects in the Higher Education and Research category. This project is the only one in its category to represent the United States.

For additional information, see: http://newswire.uark.edu/articles/25335/vol-walker-hall-project-short-listed-for-2014-world-architecture-festival-awards


Fay Jones School Architecture Program Receives Eight-Year Reaccreditation from National Board

The professional Bachelor of Architecture program in the Fay Jones School of Architecture recently was granted an eight-year term of reaccreditation by the National Architectural Accrediting Board.

“The team believes that the Fay Jones School of Architecture provides an active learning environment that emphasizes knowledge through drawing, modeling, and experiential design,” stated the visiting team in its summary. “Administration, faculty, and students are committed to design for a new decade that engages community, new technologies, and environmental awareness. The team was impressed with the vitality of the student body, their dedication to community engagement and sustainability, and their passion for architecture.”

In July, the National Architectural Accrediting Board met to review the Visiting Team Report, the product of a three-member team’s visit to the Fay Jones School in February. The directors of the National Architectural Accrediting Board voted to continue full accreditation for the new maximum term of eight years. The Fay Jones School architecture program is scheduled for its next accreditation visit in 2022

For additional information, see: http://newswire.uark.edu/articles/25087/fay-jones-school-architecture-program-receives-eight-year-reaccreditation-from-national-board 

Marc Manack and Frank Jacobus, both assistant professors of architecture in the Fay Jones School of Architecture and co-principals of the architecture firm SILO AR+D, have won an award for their project, the Super Sukkah.

Their project was one of the 10 cutting-edge sukkahs selected in the competition, “Sukkah City STL 2014: Between Absence and Presence.” The 10 winning projects, chosen from a field of 33 entries, were created both by individuals and teams of architects and designers from around the country. The winning projects of the competition will be on display from Oct. 7 to 12 at Washington University in St. Louis. Each winning entry receives a $1,000 honorarium to defray construction costs.

For additional information, see: http://newswire.uark.edu/articles/25417/fay-jones-school-professors-design-among-winners-at-sukkah-city-stl-2014 


Creative Corridor Project in Little Rock Honored by American Society of Landscape Architects

A plan to transform four neglected blocks of Main Street in downtown Little Rock into an arts district has won a 2014 Honor Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects. Faculty and staff members of the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas designed this award-winning work.

The Creative Corridor, designed by the University of Arkansas Community Design Center and Marlon Blackwell Architect won an Honor Award for Analysis and Planning, one of five awarded. This is the design center’s sixth ASLA award and the fifth that they have received in this category. The ASLA award represents the highest recognition in landscape architecture design and planning open to North American organizations for work underway worldwide. Thirty-four award-winning projects were selected from more than 600 entries.

For additional information, see: http://newswire.uark.edu/articles/25463/creative-corridor-project-in-little-rock-honored-by-american-society-of-landscape-architects


Fay Jones School Partners With Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

Fay Jones School of Architecture students and faculty have a unique opportunity to be involved with the public display of a 60-year-old house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville acquired the Bachman Wilson House, built in 1954 near the Millstone River in New Jersey. It has been disassembled and transported to the museum’s 120-acre grounds, where it is being reconstructed. This home is one of Wright’s “Usonian Houses,” a group of 60 middle-income family homes that were typically small, single-story structures with no garage and minimal storage. They used native materials, flat roofs and cantilevered overhangs, and emphasized a strong visual connection between interior and exterior spaces.

In collaboration with Crystal Bridges, Fay Jones School students, led by Santiago R. Pérez, Assistant Professor and 21st Century Chair in Integrated Practice, are in the final “prefabrication phase” of a three-semester effort to design, develop and fabricate a small architectural interpretation pavilion for the Bachman Wilson House reconstruction on the museum grounds.

This initiative is a confluence of “Design-Build” and “Digital-Fabrication” cultures and practices, informed by Usonian principles, into a hybrid DESIGNFAB practice model, championed by Pérez. In conjunction with the Pavilion project, Pérez delivered a lecture at Crystal Bridges titled “Rethinking Wright: Adapting Usonian Principles in 21st Century Architecture.”

In addition, during the fall 2014 semester, Fay Jones School students will analyze and document the reconstruction of the house for inclusion in the Historic American Buildings Survey, under the leadership of professor Greg Herman.

For additional information, see: http://newswire.uark.edu/articles/23407/fay-jones-school-partners-with-crystal-bridges-museum-of-american-art 

http://newswire.uark.edu/articles/24337/perez-to-present-rethinking-wright-lecture-at-crystal-bridges-on-may-21

 

University of Arkansas

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A National Endowment for the Arts grant is a first step toward the revival of the historic, 60-block Pettaway neighborhood in Little Rock, by blending new development within the fabric of that turn-of-the-century urban neighborhood. 

The $30,000 grant, awarded to the University of Arkansas Community Design Center and the Downtown Little Rock Community Development Corp., will fund the creation of the Pettaway Neighborhood Revitalization Plan. 

The grant recipients were among 1,145 nonprofit national, regional, state and local organizations recommended for a grant as part of the NEA’s second round of fiscal year 2011 grants. This design grant was part of the federal agency’s Access to Artistic Excellence Program. In total, the NEA will distribute more than $88 million to support projects nationwide. 

The Community Design Center, an outreach program of the Fay Jones School of Architecture, works to advance creative development in Arkansas through education, research and design solutions that enhance the physical environment. The Community Development Corp. steers investment activity in the Pettaway neighborhood and develops single-family housing in the area. 

The Community Design Center will spend 10 months generating the Pettaway Neighborhood Revitalization Plan. Designers hope to develop methods for urban infill that integrate contemporary innovations – such as green streets, transit-oriented development, urban agriculture, low-impact development live-work housing configurations – with existing historic buildings. They are using models they’ve already developed and applying them at a broader, neighborhood scale. 

“Like all well-established urban areas, the Pettaway neighborhood offers a rich mixture of lifestyle opportunities in the architecture and land uses close to downtown,” Steve Luoni, director of the Community Design Center. 

The plan will combine urban development with affordable housing and public transit planning. Ecological-based storm water management methods will be studied, including green streets, low-impact development, rainwater gardens, bioswales and stream restoration. Designers will propose that the city extend its downtown trolley system into a commuter streetcar system along a trunk line, which will connect the Pettaway neighborhood to the downtown business district and North Little Rock’s downtown. 

Affordable housing configurations with mixed uses will cater to artists and others employed in creative, innovative fields, while serving the neighborhood’s established constituents. The project team will explore an open space and landscape plan that will link underused parks with new pocket parks, drainage corridors, community gardens, recreation areas and pedestrian areas. 

Though the neighborhood is already strongly committed to and supportive of changes, this plan will better guide the development corporation actions. “Something like this can bring the bigger vision for what the neighborhood can be,” said Scott Grummer, executive director of the Downtown Little Rock Community Development Corp. “This, in turn, helps guide the corporation, the neighborhood and other developers in decisions they make for future developments.” 

The revitalization plan will be presented to the Pettaway neighborhood next spring. 

This plan will build on the MacArthur Park District Master Plan – a plan created by the Community Design Center that has won five national and two state design awards. Segments of that plan are slated for construction this year. In that plan for MacArthur Park, which borders the Pettaway area, one of the more visionary options was to build a pedestrian bridge over the interstate, which literally divided MacArthur Park, and reconnect the park and downtown to the Pettaway neighborhood. 

“There’s so much revitalization potential currently being exhibited in Little Rock that will allow it to flourish as a great mid-sized city,” Luoni said. “This plan will return low-density urban neighborhood options to the table, providing a mix of classes with affordable choices for living downtown.” 

For the past two years, the Fay Jones School of Architecture has partnered with the Community Development Corp. to design and build two affordable, sustainable homes in the Pettaway neighborhood. Both homes are located on East Commerce Street. 

Luoni said the school’s design/build program and this new neighborhood plan approach revitalization from different scales. “We’re going to look at the building blocks of good neighborhood development and planning, with an aggregate thinking that exceeds what one can accomplish on a single piece of property,” he said. “The design/build program serves as an exemplary model for what can be accomplished through building typology at the micro-scale. They are building stunning, high-concept houses that are affordable.” 

University of Arkansas

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Fay Jones School of Architecture

The Fay Jones School was twice ranked No. 1 in a national survey of “top brands” in architectural education, according to a survey conducted by the Design Futures Council. The results were published in the November/December 2012 issue of DesignIntelligence. The Fay Jones School was included in this survey of the “top brands,” a sampling of architecture school brand strengths based on surveys and interviews by DesignIntelligence editors. The school tied for No. 1 in the nation in the “Top for Regional Respect and Admiration” category, sharing that distinction with California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo and the University of Oregon. The Fay Jones School also tied for No. 1 in the nation in the “Best Small School Design Program” category, sharing that with Rice University and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

The Fay Jones School is also ranked 19th in the nation in the 13th annual survey of “America’s Best Architecture and Design Schools,” a study conducted by the Design Futures Council and also published in the November/December 2012 issue of DesignIntelligence. The survey lists the top 20 undergraduate architecture programs for 2013.

In this ranking, the Fay Jones School was the eighth best program among public universities. Since its last ranking by DesignIntelligence, in 2008, the school has improved one spot overall and three spots among public universities.

The renovation of Vol Walker Hall and the addition of the Steven L. Anderson Design Center, designed by Marlon Blackwell Architects, is more than halfway finished. Keep up with the progress on our blog dedicated to the project, “Architecture in the Making.” It features photo galleries and webcam views with time-lapse photography.

Stephen Luoni, director of the University of Arkansas Community Design Center, has received a $50,000 fellowship grant from United States Artists (USA).

A 2012 USA Ford Fellow, Luoni was one of 54 artists to receive a fellowship from United States Artists, a national grant-making and advocacy organization, which awarded 50 unrestricted grants of $50,000 each. The recipients were announced at a Dec. 2 ceremony hosted by actor/director Tim Robbins, which also featured performances by new and former fellows, held at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

Luoni is a Distinguished Professor of architecture in the Fay Jones School, where he is also the Steven L. Anderson Chair in Architecture and Urban Studies. The Community Design Center, an outreach program of the Fay Jones School, specializes in interdisciplinary public works projects combining landscape, urban and architectural design, with a focus on shaping urban design approaches to issues of sustainability.

This award is the largest that Luoni has personally received. In the seven-year history of the USA Fellows program, this is the first year for Arkansas to be represented. He shared the spotlight with other USA Fellows who included author Annie Proulx, choreographer Tina Brown and jazz musician Jack DeJohnette.

Faculty, students and alumni of the Fay Jones School were recognized with awards from the Arkansas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

Design awards and other awards were given during the annual AIA Arkansas State Convention, held in September at the Hot Springs Convention Center. School faculty, alumni and students won all four awards given – three honor awards and one merit award.

In addition, Tim Maddox (B.Arch. ’02), managing principal at deMx architecture, received the 2012 Emerging Professional Award at the ceremony. And, George Wildgen, a former Professional Advisory Board member for the school, received an Award of Merit at the awards ceremony.

David J. Buege, Fay Jones Chair in Architecture at the University of Arkansas, accepted a Tenured position as Professor of Architecture as of Fall 2012. Buege previously served as director of the architecture program. He has also been director of the architecture program at Philadelphia University, and has taught at Auburn University, Mississippi State University, and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He taught a seminar at Auburn’s Rural Studio for several years and was interim director of the Rural Studio in 2007-08.

He has worked in the offices of Eisenman Architects and Bartos-Rhodes Architects in New York.

He received a B.S. degree in Environmental Design from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, studied for one year at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York, and received his M.Arch. degree from Princeton University.

In addition, architecture professor David Buege was selected as one of the “30 Most Admired Educators for 2013.” The DesignIntelligence staff solicited input from design professionals, academic leaders and students. They said Buege “brings a clarity and consistency of rigor, focus and exploration to his work with faculty, administration and students. He has become well known for high standards and getting the best out of each person he works with. He makes the difficult easier to understand.”

Assistant Professor Marc Manack comes to the Fay Jones School of Architecture from Cleveland, Ohio, where he founded and is currently principal of the architecture and design firm SILO AR+D. Manack’s teaching responsibilities include design studios, professional practice, and design theory seminars that support his research interests in repositioning computation’s disciplinary agenda. Manack has taught previously at the Kent State University College of Architecture and Environmental Design and at Ohio State University’s Austin E. Knowlton School of Architecture.

Assistant Professor Frank Jacobus comes to the University of Arkansas from the University of Idaho.  As a new faculty member at the Fay Jones School of Architecture Frank teaches Design I and Honors Research Methods.  Frank is a registered architect and has a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and a post-professional MArch II from the University of Texas at Austin.  His thesis research at the University of Texas focused on the affects of emerging technologies and media on the discipline of architecture and was selected by the architecture faculty as the “Outstanding Masters Design Study”.  While in Austin he was an invited member to a project titled “Resilient Foundations: The Gulf Coast after Katrina”, which was exhibited at the 10th annual architecture show at the Venice Biennale.  Frank’s research while at the University of Arkansas has primarily centered on our evolving perceptions of the built environment and the effects of emerging media and technology on the conceptualization of that environment.  Frank believes deeply in the educational value of continually testing architectural projects through physical making.  His work has been published widely in conference proceedings and journals.  Frank resides in Fayetteville, Arkansas with his wife Emilie and his two sons, Topher and Benny.

Amber Ellett, NCARB, LEED AP joins the faculty of the Fay Jones School of Architecture as a Visiting Assistant Professor, teaching courses in architectural design, environmental technology, and site phenomenology.  She previously taught at the College of Architecture, Art, and Design at Mississippi State University, where she was a Visiting Assistant Professor teaching courses in architectural design, active building systems, and foundational drawing.

Ellett is a registered architect and holds a Master of Architecture from the University of Nebraska and a Bachelor of Science in Design (Architecture), Studio Art Minor with honors and high distinction from the University of Nebraska. 

Angie Carpenter is teaching as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the third-year studio in fall 2012 / spring 2013. She received her Master of Architecture degree in 2012 from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Carpenter is an Alumna of the Fay Jones School of Architecture.

Heather McArthur is teaching as an Adjunct Instructor in the third-year studio in fall 2012. She has a Master of Architecture from the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.

University of Arkansas

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The University of Arkansas Community Design Center (UACDC), in partnership with the Downtown Little Rock Community Development Corporation (DLRDC), received a $30,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to prepare a Neighborhood Revitalization Plan for the Pettaway Neighborhood in downtown Little Rock. The grant is one of approximately 20 to 25 grants typically scheduled in the NEA’s annual Access to Artistic Excellence program emphasizing preservation of cultural and historic districts. Planning work will take approximately 10 months and begin this summer.

 In the spirit of the Obama administration’s livable communities initiative, the Pettaway revitalization plan will combine urban redevelopment with affordable housing and public transit planning. The plan will incorporate “low impact development” watershed management featuring green streets that link underutilized parks with new pocket parks, drainage corridors, community gardens, recreation, and pedestrian plazas. A Regulating Street Plan will address transit development patterns in anticipation of a streetcar transit line connecting Pettaway with the downtown business district. A land-use plan will feature pocket neighborhoods with diverse, affordable housing types and mixed uses. The revitalization plan will use townscaping principles with public art to link existing and new neighborhood fabrics that create imagable places within the Pettaway neighborhood.

For the second year, the school partnered with a Little Rock group to design and build an affordable, sustainable home for the historic Pettaway neighborhood. The result is a two-story, 1,000-square-foot, cantilevered home.

Students started the fall semester creating designs in pairs, under the direction of Mark Wise, Visiting Professor. They narrowed those six down to three options – the core, the curtain, and the cantilever designs – that they presented to the community. The cantilever concept won them over, with its two rectangles, stacked and perpendicularly rotated. “It was probably the most exciting and the most kind of conceptually clear design,” Wise said. With four students returning from last year’s project, this house was also a departure from that design. Students built the two modules in a warehouse in south Fayetteville and, in May, shipped them to Little Rock, to finish working on the house.

The house will go on the market for purchase through a continued collaboration with the Downtown Little Rock Community Development Corp. This collaboration on design build homes, expected to continue for the next several years, is intended to help revitalize this neighborhood, which was struck by a 1999 tornado.

The size of the lot — about 40 by 100 — required a compact design to fit the house and onsite parking. The house has two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, with an open living, dining and kitchen area downstairs, with a half-bath. Over time, the yellow hue of the cypress rainscreen will weather into a subtle silver, resembling an old barn. To carry the weight of the cantilever — 18 1/2 feet on the front and 11 feet on the back — the long, north and south walls of the top level are big steel trusses. Porches are created in the front and back, expanding the amount of livable space from the small interior footprint. The north wall on the top level is made of Polygal, a translucent polycarbonate material. They wanted this for its insulation value, cost and look. The translucent wall exposes the truss required for the cantilever.

This optional studio is a uniquely holistic educational experience for students, Wise said. “They have a better understanding of the whole process — from design to doing drawings to building it. And the more they know about how things go together, the better they can put things together.” In this program, students also interact with and learn to have empathy for professionals connected to architecture. They realize the importance of clear drawings, as well as timelines, budgets, and being able to adapt when issues arise during the construction process. 

University of Arkansas

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Community Design Center Receives National Award 

A plan that uses modern techniques to revitalize a historic neighborhood in Benton earned the University of Arkansas Community Design Center a 2011 Residential Architect Design Award. 

The Community Design Center received a Merit Award in the On the Boards category for the Ralph Bunche Neighborhood Vision Plan. 

Forty projects were selected out of 824 entries for recognition in the magazine’s 12th annual design awards competition. This is the most comprehensive housing design awards program in the country, according to the magazine’s website. 

Across 15 categories, this year’s jury selected one Project of the Year award, 10 Grand awards and 29 Merit awards. Full coverage of the winning projects will appear in the March/April issue of Residential Architect and at www.residentialarchitect.com. 

This Merit Award is the second Residential Architect design award earned by the Community Design Center, an outreach program of the Fay Jones School of Architecture. 

The Community Design Center worked for the first time with the Central Arkansas Development Council, whose main goal is to “build prosperity in low-income communities,” said Steve Luoni, center director. The plan focused on a 100-plus-year-old black neighborhood in Benton, a town of about 29,000 people located about 25 miles southwest of Little Rock. Just south of downtown Benton, the neighborhood occupies a prominent hill with views of downtown. 

“The neighborhood has an internal coherence and is in a beautiful geography, but it suffers from disinvestment. New generations have not recharged the neighborhood,” Luoni said. The longtime residents want their children and grandchildren to move back into the neighborhood. The center attempts to provide a guide for such revitalization, with a redevelopment plan that could spark reinvestment and home ownership. 

The plan uses concepts presented in the Community Design Center’s Low Impact Development design manual, published in 2010, to address infrastructure issues. Based on an already active street culture, the plan intensifies places for assembly and congregation, both formal and informal. “People here know one another. They’ve known one another for a long, long time,” Luoni said. 

The neighborhood is named for Ralph Bunche, a diplomat and educator from Detroit. In 1950, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his mediation in Palestine – becoming the first person of color to be honored with the prize. He was later involved in the formation of the United Nations and was awarded the Medal of Freedom from President John F. Kennedy in 1963. 

Though social connectors such as churches and a park remain, small businesses gradually disappeared. In part, this plan aims to revitalize the community with that neighborhood feel. The Residential Architect design awards program recognizes different market grades of houses, with designs that solve for different social issues, Luoni said. This conceptual neighborhood plan could win an award in the same contest that rewards an elaborate built project. 

“I appreciate the fact that the awards celebrate the different ways that housing solves for different social issues and accommodates different markets,” he said. “It’s not simply rewarding the preciousness of a design. It’s about the robustness of solutions.” 

Faculty News 

Steve Luoni, Director of the UA Community Design Center, has been promoted to Distinguished Professor effective July 1, 2011. Luoni currently holds the Steven L. Anderson Chair in Architecture and Urban Studies. His design and research have won more than 50 design awards, including Progressive Architecture Awards, American Institute of Architects Honors Awards, a Charter Award from the Congress for the New Urbanism, and American Society of Landscape Architecture Awards, all for planning and urban design. 

His work at UACDC specializes in interdisciplinary public works projects combining landscape, urban and architectural design. 

Places Magazine recently published an in-depth profile of UACDC, which kicks off their year-long series profiling community design centers. The article and project images can be accessed at http://places.designobserver.com/ 

Luoni’s work has also been published in Oz, Architectural Record, Landscape Architecture, Progressive Architecture, Architect, Places, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’ hui, Progressive Planning and Public Art Review. 

Mark Boyer, Head of the Department of Landscape Architecture, has been promoted to Professor effective July 1, 2011. Boyer joined the School of Architecture faculty in 1998 

and teaches courses on landscape architecture construction materials and technologies, ecological design studios, and an interdisciplinary course related to alternative stormwater management techniques. His research focuses on green roofs and other sustainable stormwater management technologies. 

His students have designed and constructed a wetlands observation deck, and an Environmental Center boat dock in Fayetteville and assisted in the installation of two green roofs on the University of Arkansas campus. 

Boyer was part of the interdisciplinary University of Arkansas team that designed Habitat Trails, a sustainable neighborhood for the Benton County chapter of Habitat for Humanity. The project has won seven major awards, including a national Honor Award in Analysis and Planning from the ASLA. 

Marlon Blackwell, Head of the Architecture department (and of Marlon Blackwell Architect served as a juror for two architectural competitions this spring. He was one of five Fellows of the American Institute of Architecture who participated in the 2011 Residential Architect design awards program. Blackwell was the Chair of a six person panel, made up of three librarians and three architects, who juried the 2011 AIA/ALA Library Building Awards. 

University of Arkansas

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Creative entities in Little Rock are one step closer to becoming a stronger collective force, thanks to an Our Town grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The $150,000 grant, awarded to the University of Arkansas Community Design Center, Marlon Blackwell Architect and the city of Little Rock, will provide for the initial design phase of a new Creative Corridor on Main Street in downtown Little Rock.

The Our Town grant was one of only 51 grants awarded nationwide, NEA officials announced today in a press conference at the NEA offices in Washington, D.C. Our Town is the NEA’s new leadership initiative focused on creative placemaking projects. In creative placemaking, partners from both public and private sectors come together to strategically shape the physical and social character of a neighborhood, town, city or region around arts and cultural activities. With 447 statements of interest submitted, the NEA awarded $6.5 million in grants to communities in 34 states.

The Creative Corridor is intended to spur comprehensive revitalization of historic buildings and transform a segment of Main Street into a visual and performing arts district in Little Rock, which has a metropolitan area population of about 700,000. The city of Little Rock is the lead partner, and additional partners include nonprofit arts organizations, such as the Arkansas Repertory Theatre, Ballet Arkansas and the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, as well as the Little Rock Downtown Partnership and Reed Realty Advisors.

The Community Design Center, an outreach program of the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, is directed by Steve Luoni, Distinguished Professor of architecture. Marlon Blackwell, whose firm is based in Fayetteville, is also a Distinguished Professor and head of the school’s architecture department. This is the sixth NEA grant awarded to the Community Design Center during the last four years.

 “We are thrilled at this opportunity to triangulate a design partnership among the state’s flagship university, talent in our capital city, and one of the country’s premiere architectural firms. The NEA’s signature grant program gives us the chance to consolidate various cultural resources around urban development unparalleled in the state,” Luoni said.

Blackwell shared Luoni’s excitement, adding that the public-private partnership facilitated by the NEA grant “will allow our design team to speculate on a vision for possibilities – architectural, cultural, civic and more – for the city of Little Rock.”

The Community Design Center will create an urban design plan, managing the project with input from project partners. Blackwell’s firm will provide preliminary conceptual design and visualization services for the renovation and restoration of four existing buildings on Main Street in Little Rock, as well as a parking garage.

A design charrette with the participating nonprofit arts organizations and artist groups will be held this fall. With that input, Marlon Blackwell Architect and the Community Design Center will generate drawings, diagrams and models to illustrate the conceptual design. That will be followed by a presentation to the city of Little Rock and representatives of the symphony, ballet and other artists groups to show the design direction and to elicit feedback. The final presentation of the conceptual design to all partners is slated for February.

Laura Terry, Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture helped to organize a new collaborative student exhibition titled Lines Across at the University of Arkansas Student Gallery, also known as the sUgAR Gallery, located in Bentonville, AR. This exhibit showcases works completed by students from the Fay Jones School of Architecture and the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.

Lines Across contains a collection of drawings from students in four disciplines: architecture, landscape architecture, interior design and fine art. The selection encompasses drawings completed at various scales and in various media.

This exhibition was on display from June 10 through July 23, 2011.

University of Arkansas

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Marlon Blackwell Architect was recognized for their work on three architectural projects. Blackwell is Head of the Department of Architecture. The firm’s design  for the Cottages at Fallingwater won a Grand Award in the 19th annual Custom Home Design Awards, in the On the Boards category. The design was for cottages to house visitors and scholars participating in education programs at Fallingwater, the famous home near Mill Run, Pa., designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Blackwell’s firm was one of six architectural firms chosen to submit a design last year for the juried Architectural Design Competition of Ideas, organized by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, which preserves and maintains Fallingwater.

Blackwell’s Porchdog House was chosen as a finalist for the AZ Awards, an inaugural international design competition sponsored by Azure magazine. The home in East Biloxi, Miss., was created for Biloxi Model Homes, a program for affordable prototype houses designed for the Architecture for Humanity Model Home Program, in response to Hurricane Katrina. The jury reviewed 600 entries submitted from 25 countries and narrowed those down to 52 finalists in 14 categories. Categories are in the areas of design, architecture, interiors, concepts, student work and a jury-created special category. Blackwell’s design was one of six finalists chosen from 80 submissions in the residential architecture category.

The Porchdog House was also included in the May 2011 issue of Architect magazine for the AIA Voices feature. The article is told from the perspective of homeowner Richard Tyler, 51, a single father of three.

Blackwell’s Ruth Lilly Visitors Pavilion, located in the 100 Acres Art and Nature Park at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, was featured in the May issue of Architectural Record and online as a Building Types Study of parks and public spaces.

Korydon Smith, Assoc. Professor, returned from his off campus duty assignment, during which he taught a graduate-level architectural design studio and continued doing research at the University at Buffalo. The graduate program in architecture has four distinct research groups. Faculty and students select one of these four tracks in which to study. Smith taught in the “Inclusive Design” research group.

He worked with Beth Tauke, Professor in the architecture program at Buffalo, to develop a book proposal regarding “Diversity and Design,” which discusses the reciprocal relationship between various design disciplines (media, product, architectural, urban design, etc.) and various aspects of social diversity (race, ethnicity, religion, age, gender, sexuality, economics, etc.). In his words, “How does design affect society; how does a diverse society affect design?”

Smith was based at the IDEA Center (Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access) and worked with them on their ongoing research projects. The IDEA Center is a research center within the UB School of Architecture and Planning.

Smith also spent time completing the manuscript for the architectural theory book he has been working on for New York/London publisher, Routledge. The book is due to be published in 2012.

Pia Sarpaneva, Clin. Asst. Professor, participated in the second International Congress of Architecture titled “The Human Scale in Architecture” in Mérida, Yucatán. Marista University School of Architecture and Design organized the January 2011 event. Carlos Jimenez (USA/Costa Rica), Augusto Quijano (Mexico) and Glenn Murcutt (Australia) discussed their recent work. The three day conference gathered a nightly audience of more than 700 architects and students.

The conference was preceded by a workshop in History of Modern Architecture “Glenn Murcutt: Architecture of Silence” for 30 students from UNAM/Mexico City and Marista Universities. Student team studied and analyzed ten of Murcutt’s houses. The two week workshop concluded in a public review directed by three architects from Mexico City, Humberto Ricalde, Yvonne Labiaga and Fernando Ituarte, and Pia Sarpaneva from the Fay Jones School of Architecture

Lynn Fitzpatrick, Clin. Asst. Professor, was one of three jurors on the 2011 BE Student Design Competition and the 2011 BE Educator of the Year award jury.  Jurors are selected by Bentley® and represented architecture and engineering education and practice. The annual design competition “gives students an opportunity to explore the crucial and rewarding work of designing, building, operating, and sustaining the world’s infrastructure. At the same time, it encourages them to pursue a course of study that emphasizes math and the sciences, which are fundamental to every infrastructure discipline.” (Bentley®) 

The competition drew international entrants in both Student and Educator categories and included high school, two and four year colleges, and graduate level work. Bentley plans to announce the student winners at the students’ institution and the Educator of the Year at its annual Be Inspired: Thought Leadership in Infrastructure event in Amsterdam (November 2011.)

School News

Joey Weishaar wasn’t necessarily trying to win when he and everyone else in his spring Design 6 studio entered the 2011 Lyceum Fellowship Competition, a fellowship that allows architecture students to travel. About 40 Fay Jones School of Architecture students turned in projects the day before Spring Break.

According to its website, the Lyceum Fellowship was established in 1985 “to advance the development of the next generation of talent by creating a vehicle for stimulating perceptive reasoning and inspiring creative thought in our field. Through a unique structure of design competition and prize winning travel grants it seeks to establish a dialogue through design among selected schools of architecture.” A design competition has been conducted annually since 1986.

Only 15 schools are invited to participate, and the University of Arkansas has participated since 2008. Weishaar, a third-year architecture student from Fayetteville, is the second student from this university to win a prize. (Ryan Wilmes won a Merit award in 2008.) Weishaar’s design won second place from about 250 total projects submitted in this year’s competition. The second-place Lyceum fellowship comes with $7,500 for travel.

Design 6 studio mentors were Santiago Perez, Chuck Rotolo and Russell Rudzinski.

Weishaar’s winning drawings and a model are on display through May 16 in the Long Gallery on the first floor of Vol Walker Hall. Gallery hours are from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Many constraints were given by the competition’s project description, which included the program and site: a rest area in northwest Utah, west of Salt Lake City.

Weishaar and other students were given a different program on the same site in their fall semester studio, just to get them thinking about desert architecture. Then, this semester, they focused on large-scale operations that fit in the climate and pure expanse of the region. Students also researched land art installations by Robert Smithson, Michael Heizer, Walter de Maria and others to see how they dealt with this area type.

Even with that basis, it took Weishaar a while to formulate his design. “There’s nothing on this site that gives it any sort of organization or scale,” Weishaar said. Working under assistant professor Perez, Weishaar established early on that he wanted to emphasize the site’s flatness, particularly in the way in which objects above the horizon were expressed.

He did a study early on that he didn’t think would have anything to do with the later product. He made tiny cardboard flaps on the model and shone light on them from different angles, observing the length of a shadow cast by a flap raised just a few millimeters.

He eventually took that strategy and really elongated it. It’s a core concept to the final project.

One of the most important tools for understanding the intent and scale of the project was a physical model, required by Perez as a primary analytical tool. Perez, who is the school’s 21st Century Chair in Integrated Practice, champions the intersection of traditional design tools, such as physical models, with complementary studies using advanced digital modeling and visualization.

In Weishaar’s design for a rest area at the intersection of the Great Salt Lake Desert and Interstate 80, one end of the structure starts at ground level and eventually rises, over a distance of 960 feet, to a 19-foot height. That’s a length of more than three football fields.

But the problem that took him time to overcome, and actually caused him to discard this design solution several times, was the extreme length. No one would want to walk that far in one building.

Yet, he kept coming back to the design and finally devised a solution through how the space was used. He only designated 250 feet of the space with programming — a rest area with a café, motel and restrooms. The remainder of the space is filled with dirt from construction infill.

Movement within occurs through walking, mostly through the use of ramps. Visitors enter in the middle, where they’re only 125 feet from either extreme of the interior space. If they want to walk the entire 960-foot length of the structure, they can walk alongside it or ascend the gradually sloped roof. The structure serves as an overlook to the expanse of this dry region, which has no vegetation and lots of sky. The area experiences some snow, little rain and seasonal flooding, so the important functions of the building sit above ground level, where they can be accessed year-round.

Weishaar has long approached design by eliminating pieces from a design until the resulting design solves more than one problem. With this project, he added an extra outer wall to the side that contains the motel room doors — so it serves as a barrier from the highway, hides the rooms from the road and provides shade for people walking to their rooms. That was also visually pleasing, because it allowed him to bring the outer wall up to the roofline to form a handrail. It also provided a space in which to tuck away a stairway.

As Weishaar prepared his design, he was somewhat excited about the possibility of travel. However, the stress of completing the design soon overshadowed that excitement.

Also, he wasn’t completely confident with his entry. The design is what he wanted, but he struggled to represent that design concept with depictions in drawings. He couldn’t mail judges the 8-foot-long, one-sixteenth scale model — which best shows the design — but he did send photographs.

“So much was at stake on those six pages. I could have easily taken 20 pages,” he said of his portfolio. “It forced a lot of editing.”

Though he’d put in a lot of time and work, he wasn’t emotionally set on winning. So, when he proposed his travel plans — a trip from the northern tip of North America to the bottom of South America — he didn’t think too much about logistics.

That proposal is pretty wild for him, exactly the kind of thing he’d dream up if he didn’t expect to win. He wrote the proposal on deadline, as happens in college, about 1 a.m. the day it was due, while finishing the competition packet. He’d designed a long, skinny building, so he dreamed up a long, skinny travel route.

When he got the call at home on a Sunday, the last day of Spring Break, he was initially thrilled about the second-place win. Then, he realized he had to tell his parents, who knew only vague details, that he’d proposed a trip from Alaska to Chile.

Weishaar doesn’t have $12,000 and six months, which would have been the case for winning first place. He has $7,500 and three months, so he’s going in summer 2012 and is trying to recruit friends to accompany him.

First, though, he’ll go to Mexico this summer for one of the school’s study abroad trips, which will help prepare him for the other trek by improving his Spanish and his on-site sketching skills.

University of Arkansas

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Justin Hershberger has joined the faculty as a visiting assistant professor, co-teaching in the Fall 2nd year Design Studio and assisting the Design-Build Studio led by Mark Wise.

Justin grew up in rural Indiana where he spent his spare time working in his father’s cabinetry shop. He earned his M.Arch from the University of Virginia School of Architecture in 2011 and received the American Institute of Architects’ Henry Adams Medal as well as Faculty of Architecture Awards for both Design Excellence and Public Service. In 2010, he received the Sarah McArthur Nix Fellowship to study three concrete churches in France. While in graduate school, Hershberger was consistently involved in teaching assistantships at both the graduate and undergraduate level focused on craft, making, and building. His thesis work focused on how construction influences and can provide an impetus for design.

Hershberger also holds a B.S. in Architecture from the University of Virginia School of Architecture (2005). Before returning to school in 2009, he worked in a fine concrete fabrication shop in Charlottesville, Virginia producing countertops, bathtubs, vanities, etc. As the shop manager, he oversaw projects from the initial design phase to installation. Through the work, Hershberger developed his interest in fabrication, craft, and the details of architecture that influence everyday life.

Santiago R. Pérez, Assistant Professor and 21st Century Chair in Integrated Practice has published “Towards an Ecology of Making,” a chapter in a new book edited by Gail Peter Borden and Michael Meredith titled:  Matter: Material Process in Architectural Production.

Pérez has established a new FABLAB at the Fay Jones School of Architecture, focusing on a merger of Craft + Advanced Digital Fabrication, questioning contemporary digital practices and reframing 20th century material – component systems by direct critical engagement through making, in what he terms FABCRAFT.

Hnedak Bobo Competition Winners

The winners of the Hnedak Bobo competition have been announced, with entries submitted by our international programs students who have completed a semester in Rome or Mexico. The Rome Study Center is directed by Professor David Vitalie, and the summer program in Mexico is led by Adjunct Assistant Professor Russell Rudzinski. The competitive prize is sponsored by the Memphis based Hnedak Bobo Group. Jury members Justin Hershberger, Steve Luoni and  Santiago Pérez joined Mark Weaver from Hnedak Bobo in discussions to determine the final winners. The prize was awarded to 5th year student Erica Blansit, for her Rome Program submission- a “Ludoteka” or children’s play and learning center in Trastevere, and a three-student team from the summer 2011 Mexico program; Kenneth Hiley, Akihiro Moriya and Tanner Sutton.

Design Manual for Low Impact Development Wins Second National Award

A visionary handbook for designing low impact development, created by the University of Arkansas Community Design Center, has garnered a second national award. The book Low Impact Development: a design manual for urban areas won a 2011 Award of Excellence in Communications from the American Society of Landscape Architects. This award category recognizes publications, journals and books on landscape architecture with honor awards and one top award for excellence. The manual will be featured at the 2011 ASLA Annual Meeting and Expo in October in San Diego, and in the October issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine.

The Community Design Center is an outreach program of the Fay Jones School of Architecture.

The jury called the manual “beautifully composed and very accessibly written” and “clear, brilliant, attractive, useful, and pertinent. All young people should read this – boy, does it communicate.” It is already a required text in some university engineering courses nationwide.The Community Design Center and the university’s Ecological Engineering Group developed the book under a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission.

New AETN Documentary Captures Mid-Century Modern Architecture in Arkansas

Mark Wilcken, a producer at the Arkansas Educational Television Network in Little Rock, has created the 55-minute documentary, Clean Lines, Open Spaces: A View of Mid-Century Modern Architecture. The film, shot with high-definition technology, will be screened in four cities around the state this month, including one on Oct. 9 at the University of Arkansas Global Campus in downtown Fayetteville. It will premiere on AETN at 9 p.m. Nov. 14.  Production of the film was funded through grants from the Arkansas Humanities Council and the Arkansas chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Wilcken interviewed architects, architecture professors, homeowners and a representative of the Historic Preservation Alliance of Arkansas. All offered helpful tips and advice for finding people and properties. Architecture school faculty members interviewed were Greg Herman, associate professor; Marlon Blackwell, distinguished professor and head of the architecture department, and Ethel Goodstein-Murphree, professor and associate dean, who served as architectural historical consultant on the film. Alumni interviewed include Ernie Jacks (B.A. Architecture ’50), Bob Laser (B.A. Architecture ’50), Charley Penix (B.Arch. ’80) and Reese Rowland (B.Arch. ’90). Hicks Stone, son of Edward Durell Stone, also contributed.

Portal to the Point Design Competition Aimed at Generating Innovative Ideas

Marlon Blackwell is a member of one of five multidisciplinary creative teams selected to participate in Portal to the Point: A Design Ideas Exploration. The teams will focus on public art and design at Point State Park, the most visible landmark in Pittsburgh. About 40 firms from across the country were invited to submit proposals. The final five were selected based on an evaluation of the merits of their proposals and how they’d approach this project, as well as their professional track record, Blackwell said. Blackwell’s firm is the leader of an impressive team that also includes Kendall Buster, a nationally renowned sculptor and a professor in the department of sculpture and extended media at Virginia Commonwealth University; Guy Nordenson and Associates, a structural engineering firm in New York; dlandstudio of Brooklyn, N.Y., led by principal landscape architect and architect Susannah Drake; and Renfro Design Group, an architectural lighting design firm founded by Richard Renfro in New York.

Blackwell is a Distinguished Professor and head of the architecture department in the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas. His firm, Marlon Blackwell Architect, is based in Fayetteville.  Blackwell has worked previously with Nordenson, who was the structural engineer for his Ruth Lilly Visitors Pavilion, located in 100 Acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art and Nature Park, which opened in June 2010 at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. A piece of site-specific artwork by Buster, the emerald green fiberglass and steel Stratum Pier, is also part of the museum’s art and nature park. Buster and Nordenson were also both guest lecturers on the University of Arkansas campus, as part of the school’s annual lecture series last year. Renfro graduated from the University of Arkansas in 1979 with a Bachelor of Architecture.

An exhibition of the designs will be held October 19-23 at the Heinz Architectural Center at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. A public symposium with all the participants is planned for early 2012. A book that documents the process and the resulting designs will be available online, establishing an extended platform for the dissemination of information about the project.

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