Tatu Gatere's photograph of slums in Nairobi, Kenya, is part of "Element Space," an exhibit through March 20 at sUgAR gallery, 114 Central Ave., in Bentonville. An opening reception will be from 5:30-8 p.m. Friday, March 5. Other architecture school honors students exhibiting work are Felicia Ramirez, Emma Kessinger, Devin Eichler, Nick Jabs, Aaron Kimberlin, Esteban Ayala-Medel, Thomas McKnight and Hanna Ibrahim.

The 'Sacred Spaces' filmmakers recently won the Best of Festival King Foundation Award in the Broadcast Education Association's Festival of Media Arts. They will be recognized at an awards ceremony in April at the BEA convention in Las Vegas.

The story of architect Fay Jones captivated filmmakers Dale Carpenter and Larry Foley. They, in turn, captured his life and work in the documentary Sacred Spaces: The Architecture of Fay Jones.

The 60-minute film was shown in February to a crowd at the Fayetteville Public Library. It also will air on the Arkansas Educational Television Network at 9 p.m. March 25 and at 1 p.m. March 28. The film is available on DVD, as part of a new collaboration between the University of Arkansas Press and the university's Fay Jones School of Architecture.

Carpenter and Foley, both journalism professors at the university, spent about a year and a half on Sacred Spaces. (Click here to read more about the process.) The film premiered in Giffels Auditorium in Old Main, during the April 2009 ceremony to rename the school for Jones, who died in 2004. Its production was partly funded by a grant from the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program and by an endowment to the school by Don and Ellen Edmondson, former Jones clients. Bonus features on the DVD include the renaming ceremony and a symposium discussing Jones and his architecture.

Jones, an Arkansas native, was in the first class of architecture students at the university, taught at the architecture school for 35 years and served as its first dean. In 2000, The American Institute of Architects named Jones one of the 10 most influential architects of the 20th century and recognized his Thorncrown Chapel as the fourth most significant structure of the 20th century.

"I've always liked his organic style of architecture, of wood and glass and being out among nature. But as I got into the program, I became a huge fan of Fay Jones," Foley said. "I began to realize that not only was he a great architect -- an architect who brought a lot of attention to our university and to this part of the country -- but he was a brilliantly creative and talented man who touched a lot of lives."

The film begins with footage of Peter Jennings introducing Jones at the 1990 ceremony in Washington, D.C., where he's being honored as a Gold Medal recipient by the AIA. The filmmakers interviewed Jones' wife and daughters, as well as former clients, students and colleagues. With Jones' work, they chose to show structures representative of his career, along with interviews with the clients. These include several Arkansas clients: Glenn and Alma Parsons' home in Springdale, Roy and Norma Reed's home in Hogeye, and the Edmondsons'home on Crowley's Ridge in Forrest City.

The filmmakers keyed in on defining moments in Jones' life and career, and tenaciously sought images and sounds to represent them. They also stumbled upon many Jones stories they wanted to share: that his ashes are scattered at Thorncrown; that he considered the Fulbright Peace Fountain the "exclamation point" of his career; and that he continued to create after being afflicted by Parkinson's disease, even sketching his concept of a Sept. 11 memorial.

Ultimately, their film is about Jones, the man behind the architecture that remains. "There's some technical stuff, but it's not a technical story. It's about these people who now live in and are around his architecture, and the relationships that they had with him as a human being," Carpenter said. "If you see a building, you're moved by it. But then when you learn about the person who designed it, it just makes it even more interesting to you and you understand it better."

An overview of the MacArthur Park District Master Plan in Little Rock. (Image courtesy of the University of Arkansas Community Design Center.)

The Connections: MacArthur Park District Master Plan was again recognized, this time with the prestigious 2010 Honor Award for Regional and Urban Design from The American Institute of Architects. This makes the seventh award garnered by the project.

The University of Arkansas Community Design Center, working with architect William Conway of Conway and Schulte Architects and landscape architect Tom Oslund of Oslund and Associates, both in Minneapolis, designed the plan. Conway and Oslund are both former visiting professors at the Fay Jones School of Architecture. This is the sixth national AIA award won by the Community Design Center, an outreach program of the school.

"We are pleased to have been part of the ongoing efforts by local civic groups and the city to revitalize Arkansas' finest urban park. It's my hope that the national recognition will stimulate further investment into this undervalued but highly livable downtown district by the local development market," said Steve Luoni, director of the center.

MacArthur Park, the oldest park in Little Rock, was cut off from its surrounding neighborhoods in the 1960s, with the construction of interstate highways 30 and 630. In 2008, the city of Little Rock requested proposals to redesign and revitalize the 40-acre park.

Among other comments, the AIA jury said this about the plan: "Great connections back into the city recognize that the edges of the park provide an excellent transition from the harder highway zones to the softer human center of the park. This set of solutions is not only an excellent specific case; it is also a transferable approach to urban reconstruction."

The MacArthur Park plan was one of seven to win an honor award in the Regional and Urban Design category. Selected from more than 700 submissions, the winning 28 projects in the categories of architecture, interior architecture, and regional and urban design will be exhibited at the annual AIA convention in Miami in June. They will also be featured in Architectural Record, the profession's national magazine.

The PorchDog House in Biloxi, Miss., was built in response to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. (Photograph by Tim Hursley, courtesy of Marlon Blackwell Architect.)

A house designed to protect families against hurricanes exemplifies innovative design being created worldwide. The PorchDog House Prototype, designed by Marlon Blackwell and his firm, Marlon Blackwell Architect, was recently named to the short list of projects for the Brit Insurance Designs of the Year. This third annual international exhibition and awards event showcases about 100 projects from seven design disciplines: architecture, fashion, furniture, graphics, interactive, product and transport.

The exhibition opened Feb. 17 at the Design Museum in London. A winner in each of the seven categories and one overall winner will be announced at the March 16 awards ceremony. This event is the museum's "annual exploration of the most innovative, interesting and forward-looking new work in design of all kinds, from around the world," according to the Brit Insurance Web site. Projects were selected from those nominated "by a group of internationally respected design experts, curators, critics, practitioners and enthusiasts," the Web site states.

The PorchDog house was one of seven storm-proof prototypes selected by families in East Biloxi, Miss., where Hurricane Katrina wiped out about 3,500 homes in 2005. It was built as part of Architecture for Humanity's Biloxi Model Homes program, a project partially funded by Oprah Winfrey's Angel Network. Blackwell, chair of the architecture department and professor in the Fay Jones School of Architecture, described the house as a "tough structure responding to a Darwinian moment." (Click here to read more about the design.)

Blackwell said the Brit Insurance Designs of the Year program seems focused on designs rather than designers, meaning that an architectural firm in Arkansas doing a project in Mississippi is part of an exhibit in London. The High Line Park in New York joins the PorchDog house as the only other American project among the 14 in the architecture category, which includes world-renowned architects and firms. "It's a very modest project, and it's being featured in a star-studded place," he said.

The Eureka Springs Carnegie Public Library is located at 194 Spring St. (Photograph by Doug Stowe, courtesy of the library.)

A century ago, construction began on the Carnegie Library in Eureka Springs, one of four built in Arkansas with funds from philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. Community interest and involvement brought the vision for the library to fruition then, said architectural historian and historic preservation advocate Ethel Goodstein-Murphree. Similar support and dedicated stewardship continue today.

Goodstein-Murphree, associate dean and professor in the Fay Jones School of Architecture, presented "It Started With a Building" last month at the Eureka Springs Carnegie Public Library. She considers this building "an intrinsic part of the cultural landscape of Eureka Springs." Located on upper Spring Street beneath a solid stone cliff, it uses the local limestone quarried for use in many commercial buildings downtown. "The indigenous building material embeds the library in Eureka Springs' particular sense of place, but it also has its fine, classical detailing around the doorway that marks it as a public building of substance," she said.

George Hellmuth, a St. Louis architect, designed the library, for which construction began in 1910 and was completed in 1912. With no rules dictating exterior design, each of the 1,679 Carnegie libraries built nationwide was unique, but many followed the fashionable Classical Revival style -- featuring columns, pediments and porticos influenced by ancient Greece and Rome -- preferred for American public buildings of the first decade of the 20th century.

This Carnegie library was built in an era when the public library was still a new and evolving building type. Fusing universal ideals of classical architecture, understood as emblems of public enlightenment, with local practices made the library a noble, yet democratic, architectural situation, she said. Similarly, the intimate scale of the library's interior, nearly domestic in character, reflects the Carnegie program's dedication to the public it served.

Communities across the nation sought Carnegie's support to build public libraries, but they were required to provide a site and agree to levy taxes intended to support a staff and maintain the collection. "There was an incredible reciprocity that made these buildings work," she said. "The relationship gave a sense of ownership and empowerment to the community."

Of the four Carnegie libraries constructed in Arkansas, only the Eureka Springs building and the Conway County Library in Morrilton continue to serve their original function. The former Carnegie library in Fort Smith has been modified for use by KFSM television, and the Little Rock library building was razed in 1964.

The Eureka Springs library is a symbol of cultural continuity made tangible by a landmark building. "The library is an architectural anchor that makes clear to anyone who is visiting Eureka Springs that this is very much a vibrant, contemporary community," she said. "Its vitality today fully fulfills the aspirations of the Carnegie program one century ago."

Designing and building this outdoor classroom at Washington Elementary School in Fayetteville exposed architecture school students to the act of construction as a fundamental component of critical design practice. (Photo courtesy of Michael Hughes.)

The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture has recognized Michael Hughes, an associate professor in the Fay Jones School of Architecture, with its 2009-10 Collaborative Practice Award. This honor for school-based community outreach programs recognizes Hughes' Tectonic Landscapes project, an outdoor classroom for Washington Elementary School in Fayetteville (pictured above). With a stage, pavilion, story area and benches, the roughly 2,000-square-foot space is intended to expand learning opportunities and promote physical activity. A gateway opens onto Maple Street, inviting after-hours use by the neighborhood. Hughes and a group of 32 undergraduate students completed the design-build project over 11 months in 2007-08. The project will be presented at the 98th annual ACSA meeting March 4-7 in New Orleans.

Other projects by Marlon Blackwell, who was inducted as a Fellow of The American Institute of Architects in 2009, have also been recognized recently:

• Blackwell's renovation of the Gentry Public Library, which already garnered a 2009 American Institute of Architects/American Library Association Library Design Award, recently won a Grand Award for Commercial Remodeling over $500,000 from Remodeling magazine.
• His design of the L-Stack House, his home in Fayetteville, already won an AIA Housing Award in 2008. Last year, that design won his Fayetteville firm, Marlon Blackwell Architect, a spot alongside 37 other North American architects and firms at a special exhibition in Moscow, held in conjunction with Zodchestvo, the annual Russian national architecture fair sponsored by the Union of Architects in Russia. The architects, from 15 states, the District of Columbia and Canada, were selected for their "continued commitment to contemporary design as a basic premise of their practice," according to news release. After being displayed in Moscow, the exhibition is expected to travel to other locales in Russia.

 

The deadline is almost here for the 2010 Fay Jones Alumni Design Awards. We need your entries so we can recognize your work.

Any graduate of the Fay Jones School of Architecture may submit projects. The winning projects will be featured in Re:View magazine and on the school's Web site.

For submission guidelines, visit fayjones.uark.edu/488.php.

Deadline: Submissions must be postmarked no later than March 12, 2010.