Sheila Kennedy, a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (FAIA), is an American architect, innovator and educator. She is a professor of architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a founding principal of Kennedy & Violich Architecture, Ltd. (KVA), with her partner Frano Violich, FAIA, in Boston, Massachusetts.  

Kennedy will present a lecture at 4:30 p.m. Monday, March 10, in Ken and Linda Sue Shollmier Hall, Room 250 of Vol Walker Hall, on the University of Arkansas campus, as part of the spring lecture series in the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design and in partnership with the University of Arkansas Libraries. 

In her lecture, “Collective Energies: Architecture for a Shared Social and Ecological Commons,” Kennedy will ask if and how architecture might offer spaces, strategies and respite from the current culture of divisiveness.  

Kennedy will present a set of architectural works that are designed to support a shared social and ecological commons. Projects included in the lecture are collective spaces for interdisciplinary research in university buildings, public spaces that engage and integrate the forces of nature, and residential mass timber buildings constructed with wood that is community supported and locally sourced from forest lands.  

Through these works, architecture is understood as a platform that brings diverse communities together in a spirit of generosity that allows for reflection on the important issues of the time. Each project contemplates conditions for a contemporary materiality in architecture — wood, stone and concrete, along with living matter like plants, wind, sunlight and water movement.  

Kennedy leads KVA’s material research unit MATx, where which she works with business leaders, universities and public agencies to question and shift the material culture of architecture to advance decarbonization and expand material circularity in the built environment.  

Kennedy’s built work with her KVA team has been recognized with two Holcim Foundation North American Awards for Sustainable Design and Construction, multiple European Masterprize Awards for Design Excellence and many design awards from the American Institute of Architects.   

Throughout her career, Kennedy has received the Innovator Award from Architectural Record magazine; the Berkeley Rupp Prize for Distinguished Practitioners from University of California, Berkeley; the Innovation Green Grant from the Lemelson Foundation; and an MIT Bose Innovation Fellowship.  

Kennedy’s design work has been exhibited at the United States Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in Italy; the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum in New York; the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany; and the TED conference in California.   

Kennedy has been invited to share her work at the United Nations headquarters in New York, on National Public Radio, BBC World News, CBS Spotlight on Design, CNN Principal Voices, Wired, Elle magazine, The Economist and The Wall Street Journal.  

The school is pursuing continuing education credits for this lecture through the American Institute of Architects. 

This lecture is free and open to the public. Seating is limited.