Fay Jones School Faculty Recognized in National Architectural Education Awards Program

Three University of Arkansas faculty members have been recognized with national accolades by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture in its 2019-2020 Architectural Education Awards program.

Stephen Luoni, director of the U of A Community Design Center, is one of five educators selected this year to receive the 2020 ACSA Distinguished Professor Award. This award is intended "to recognize individuals that have had a positive, stimulating, and nurturing influence upon students over an extended period of time and/or teaching which inspired a generation of students who themselves have contributed to the advancement of architecture," according to the association's website.

Jessica Colangelo and Charles Sharpless were selected for an Honorable Mention in the 2020 ACSA Faculty Design Award category for their Salvage Swings project. This award "recognizes work that advances the reflective nature of practice and teaching by encouraging outstanding work in architecture and related environmental design fields as a critical endeavor," according to the website.

Luoni, Colangelo and Sharpless are all faculty members in the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design. Their awards will be handed out during the ACSA 108th annual meeting, planned for March 12-14 in San Diego.

"The Fay Jones School's faculty continue to distinguish themselves in every design discipline, in both the academy and in practice," said Peter MacKeith, dean of the school. "These ACSA recognitions to professor Luoni — a faculty member at the zenith of his career — and professors Sharpless and Colangelo — faculty members at the onset of their promising careers — outline a department of architecture faculty of range and depth, whose ambition is matched by their talent. The school congratulates them on their accomplishments and this national recognition."

Luoni is a Distinguished Professor and the Steven L. Anderson Chair in Architecture and Urban Studies in the Fay Jones School. In 2003, he joined the U of A faculty and became director of the Community Design Center, which is an outreach program of the school.

Since the ACSA Distinguished Professor Award was established in 1984, some 150 professors have been recognized. Past U of A faculty members to receive this award were Fay Jones in 1984-1985 and John G. Williams in 1987-1988.

The 2020 ACSA Distinguished Professor jury noted that "Stephen has a remarkable number of awards and funding for work in an underserved area. The University of Arkansas Community Design Center develops new professional opportunities while creating a strong community impact and impressive design work."

Recipients of the ACSA Distinguished Professor Award and the AIA/ACSA Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural Education constitute an advisory leadership council within ACSA called the College of Distinguished Professors, membership to which is one of the highest honors the ACSA can bestow upon an educator.

"While the award recognizes my design studio teaching and the establishment of U of A Community Design Center as a teaching office in urban design and research over the last 17 years, none of this would have been possible without investment in the center by the university and school administration," Luoni said. "Indeed, investment in the center's infrastructure has allowed us to triangulate design education, research and delivery of professional design services by a skilled professional staff in advancing public-interest design and broader prosperity within Arkansas and beyond.

"Only a handful of university-based design programs — MIT, Yale University and the University of Minnesota, for example — have managed to do something similar," he said. "This award is another signal of our impacts in setting the national conversation on reinvention of the commons to address resilient deficits in housing, transit, food insecurity, aging, urban watershed stewardship and shrinking cities. I am deeply humbled by this recognition from my colleagues and ever grateful for the university's long-term investment in the Community Design Center."

In his nomination letter, Daniel Friedman, a former recipient of the ACSA Distinguished Professor Award, said that Luoni and the Community Design Center "expand the circumference of the traditional community design problem-world to include everything from real estate development and agricultural economy to regional watersheds, food security, circular micro-economies, recombinant housing typologies, public health, and ecosystem-activated suburbs." Friedman is also the former dean of the College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Washington in Seattle and former dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa.

This wide range of Community Design Center projects have garnered more than 150 regional, national and international awards. The center regularly collaborates with allied professionals in multiple disciplines, and projects have been sited from Arkansas to South Dakota, from Hawaii to Kigali, Rwanda. All of the center's award-winning projects are available for public access on the center's website.

"At every increment of practice and teaching, Professor Luoni perfects a hybrid design methodology that blends empirical and analogical reasoning in continuous adaptation to the complexities of context, enriched by critical readings and ethical scrutiny," Friedman wrote. "They refresh the potential of architecture and urban design to engage the full confluence of human and natural systems, demonstrating novel solutions to difficult problems that shape public life."

Colangelo and Sharpless, who joined the Fay Jones School faculty in fall 2018, designed the Salvage Swings pavilion through their architecture practice, Somewhere Studio. Colangelo is an assistant professor of architecture, and Sharpless is a visiting assistant professor of architecture. This was the first time that they applied for this ACSA honor.

Salvage Swings was constructed from cross-laminated timber (CLT) that was salvaged from the shipping palettes for the newest residence hall on the U of A, Adohi Hall. The pavilion consists of 12 repetitive modules that frame swings and views of the surrounding landscape. The open framework of the pavilion hosts a variety of activities, including picnics, concerts and hide-and-seek games.

The pair hired two architecture students as research assistants, who helped mill the panels, along with members of the Fay Jones School's fabrication lab.

"We are proud to see Salvage Swings recognized by ACSA with a Faculty Design Honorable Mention amongst an impressive group of peer projects and selected by a jury comprised of leading educators from MIT, Harvard University and the University of Arizona," Colangelo said. "We are honored that Salvage Swings has received multiple national award recognitions, as it reinforces the strengths of the Fay Jones School team of faculty, students and staff that collaborated to realize the project."

Salvage Swings is currently installed at the Scott Family Amazeum in Bentonville.

About ACSA: The mission of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture is to lead architectural education and research. Founded in 1912 by 10 charter members, ACSA is a nonprofit association of more than 200 member schools in several categories, with more than 5,000 architecture faculty represented. Unique in its representative role for schools of architecture, ACSA provides a forum for ideas on the leading edge of architectural thought. Issues that will affect the architectural profession in the future are being examined today in ACSA member schools. The organization seeks to empower faculty and schools to educate increasingly diverse students, expand disciplinary impacts, and create knowledge for the advancement of architecture.

Fay Jones School Faculty-Led Projects Win 2019 Architect's Newspaper Best of Design Awards

The University of Arkansas Community Design Center and Somewhere Studio, an architecture practice led by U of A professors Jessica Colangelo and Charles Sharpless, were recognized in the 2019 AN Best of Design Awards. The annual competition is sponsored by The Architect's Newspaper.

The AN Best of Design Awards is a premiere North American awards program open to design professionals for interiors, buildings, landscape, urbanism and installations in the United States, Mexico and Canada. There were more than 800 entries in 47 categories for this year's awards.

The Community Design Center received an Honorable Mention in the Unbuilt–Education category for the U of A Center for Farm and Food System Entrepreneurship and an Honorable Mention in the Unbuilt–Public category for the 7Hills Homeless Day Center. Sharpless and Colangelo were awarded an Honorable Mention in the Temporary Installation category for Salvage Swings.

The design center is an outreach program of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas, and its director is Steve Luoni, a Distinguished Professor and the Steven L. Anderson Chair in Architecture and Urban Studies. Colangelo is an assistant professor of architecture, and Sharpless is a visiting assistant professor of architecture, both in the Fay Jones School.

The Center for Farm and Food System Entrepreneurship, designed for the U of A Division of Agriculture, is a training center for future farmers near the university campus in Fayetteville. The center models new concepts and technologies in farming — from organic vegetable production in fields and greenhouses to machine repair, marketing, business planning, value-added food innovation and cooking.

"The project articulates the farm as a next-generation civic infrastructure central to community well-being," Luoni said. "The Center for Farm and Food System Entrepreneurship addresses food cycles beyond the growing phase to include nutrition, value-added consumption and waste."

Entry to the complex is layered through successive landscapes that open to a central barnyard, with a formal training loft at the edge of the fields. The structure is engineered from glue-laminated timber and cross-laminated timber. These contemporary, sustainable materials extend and expand the heavy timber traditions in barn technology, Luoni said.

The Community Design Center previously received a 2019 American Architecture Award for the project. Members of the Community Design Center, the Fay Jones School and the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences served on the project team.

The 7Hills Homeless Day Center project envisions a new facility for an established care center in Fayetteville. 7Hills provides multiple services for the Fayetteville homeless population, including day services, supportive housing and wrap-around case management for veterans.

"The day center is an anchor component in a community-wide ecosystem of service providers offering overnight shelter, transitional and permanent housing, and meal service," Luoni said.

The day center serves as a business-hours refuge for homeless people seeking one-stop services, he said. These services include temporary shelter, counseling, provisioning, meals, personal hygiene, mail delivery, job search, prescription drug and light medical assistance, and social connection, among other forms of care.

The design features two interconnected buildings with shared courtyard spaces and many windows. The operations center wing provides care services and shelter to the approximately 100 homeless people who use the center every day, while the staff center wing accommodates work areas for more than 20 care professionals.

The project incorporates best practices in trauma-informed design, an emerging sub-discipline within care facility design. Trauma-informed design emphasizes the role of the built environment in supporting recovery from homelessness and resisting re-traumatization.

The design for the day center revolves around four principles: an ethic of hospitality; a variety of indoor/outdoor and public/private spaces; a space perceived by clients as safe, calming and equitable; and a place incorporating connections to the natural world. Exposure to vegetation, natural light and air can reduce stress, enhance mood and elevate sensory enjoyment, Luoni said.

The Salvage Swings project was the winner of the 2019 City of Dreams international pavilion competition hosted by Figment NYC, Emerging New York Architects and Structural Engineers Association of New York. The pavilion was first installed on Roosevelt Island in New York for the 2019 summer season.

Salvage Swings is constructed from cross-laminated timber that was salvaged from the shipping palettes of the newest residence hall on the U of A campus, Adohi Hall. The pavilion consists of 12 repetitive modules that frame swings and views of the surrounding landscape. The open framework of the pavilion hosts a variety of activities, including picnics, concerts and hide-and-seek games.

The project considers how a temporary pavilion can utilize waste and avoid ending up in the landfill. Prefabricated finger joint connections and manageable piece sizes allow for the project to be flat-packed, shipped and assembled on site within a matter of days. The modular design allowed the pavilion to be installed following the summer in new locations and configurations.

Salvage Swings was also named an Honoree in the Architectural Installation/Pop Up category in the 2019 Interior Design Best of Year Awards.

"We are very honored to have Salvage Swings recognized with an Honorable Mention in the Best of Design Awards," Colangelo said. "To us, the awards bring positive attention to the design work being done by our young practice and by the Fay Jones School community."

Winners and honorable mention recipients in the 2019 AN Best of Design Awards are published in a special Design Annual mailed out this month and distributed at industry events and conferences throughout 2020. 

In addition, other Arkansas projects were recognized in this year's AN Best of Design Awards. Studio Gang was the Winner in the Unbuilt - Cultural category for the Arkansas Arts Center, an expansion of the center, located in the historic MacArthur Park in Little Rock. The firm is working with associate architects Polk Stanley Wilcox and the landscape architecture firm SCAPE. And Modus Studio was an Editors' Pick in the Cultural category for the Evans Tree House at Garvan Woodland Gardens in Hot Springs. Garvan Gardens is the botanical garden of the U of A and part of the Fay Jones School. Modus Studio, a Fayetteville firm founded in 2008, is led by Fay Jones School alumni.

Community Design Center Project Shortlisted for 2019 World Architecture News Awards

A project by the University of Arkansas Community Design Center has been shortlisted for the 2019 World Architecture News Awards in Future Projects–Urban Design.

Re-Live Downtown Pine Bluff proposes redeveloping select neighborhoods with multi-family units to provide attainable workforce housing and catalyze investment throughout the downtown area.

The project uses "acupunctural logic" to develop start-up neighborhoods around seven downtown centers of strength to stimulate a pioneer phase of re-investment, said Stephen Luoni, director of the Community Design Center. The center is an outreach program of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design.

Luoni also is a Distinguished Professor and the Steven L. Anderson Chair in Architecture and Urban Studies in the Fay Jones School.

"The framework plan targets, bundles and sequences public-sector led development in a designated core to stimulate subsequent market investment throughout the larger downtown," Luoni said.

Once a place of cultural and economic prosperity, Pine Bluff is now a rapidly shrinking city. Many residents have moved away from the downtown area, leaving a vacuum that the plan seeks to reverse.

The plan's triage approach focuses on seven catalytic nodes for community building — a shared street, a lakefront wharf, an ArtWalk celebrating the city's musical legacy of blues and jazz, along with hillocks and residential greens. Neighborhoods will be developed around these community spaces, adding value to housing and further distinguishing the gridiron plan.

The plan features more than 400 units of affordable multifamily housing, with micro-apartments, multigenerational neighborhoods, shared living and congregate housing in the mix. The 28 contemporary walk-up prototypes are compatible with the Pine Bluff tradition of building with brick.

"For every gentrifying downtown in America, 10 are shrinking," Luoni said. "Shrinking downtowns and the cascading resilience deficits that result are significant design challenges in America. It is encouraging to see that our regenerative urban design efforts for small towns can stand side by side with glamorous mega-city development in framing key discussions on urbanism internationally."

Now in its 11th year, the international WAN Awards program recognizes "the outstanding works of innovative, visionary and imaginative architects worldwide," according to the organization's website.

Winners of each category will be announced at an Oct. 24 ceremony in London, England. The other finalists for this category represent projects in Brooklyn, New York; Toronto, Canada; Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province in China; and Fushun County in China. 

Community Design Center Recognized by Fast Company for Homeless Transition Village

A project by the University of Arkansas Community Design Center and its collaborators earned recognition in Fast Company's 2019 Innovation by Design Awards. The "New Beginnings Homeless Transition Village: A Permittable Settlement Pattern" was awarded an Honorable Mention in the Social Good category.

New Beginnings is a transitional housing village in Fayetteville for homeless singles who have insufficient wages and lack access to affordable housing. The complex is designed as a pop-up camp that is compliant with a provisional city permit that only allows temporary structures, providing individuals with an ecologically sustainable stepping stone back to formal housing.

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

"Our village prototype for New Beginnings has allowed us to receive permitting from the city of Fayetteville for a land use and housing type that is otherwise nonconforming in cities," said Steve Luoni, director of the Community Design Center. "The prototype also assists other housing providers struggling to establish housing for homeless in city centers where essential services and employment opportunities are located. Currently, similar projects for homeless populations are constructed in unincorporated areas to escape municipal regulations, disconnecting them from community and opportunity."

Luoni is also a Distinguished Professor and the Steven L. Anderson Chair in Architecture and Urban Studies in the Fay Jones School.

The design for the complex combines individual weatherized sleeping units, a secure perimeter and a 150-foot-long "community porch" for shared services such as cooking, bathing and sanitation facilities. The community porch also provides gathering space and social work offices. The components of the village are designed for disassembly and reuse, avoiding the discard of material in a landfill.

The project was granted a five-year conditional approval by the city of Fayetteville. A formal groundbreaking on the site of a former tent city took place in April 2019. The village is expected to be operational for the coming winter.

Twenty single homeless people will be able to live in the village for six-month terms, receiving both shelter and comprehensive social services. The goal is to support them in stabilizing their lives and transitioning to permanent housing.

New Beginnings was commissioned by Serve Northwest Arkansas, a regional group working to address homelessness and poverty through a shelter-first approach. Kevin Fitzpatrick, University Professor and Jones Chair in Community in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, served as client and programing consultant for the project.

Other team members include Steve L. Marshall, of The Marshall Group of NWA (construction management); John Langham, AIA, LEED AP, of WER Architects/Planners (architect of record); Leslie Tabor (landscape architect); Neal Morrison, PE, of Morrison-Shipley Engineers, Inc. (civil engineer); Richard M. Welcher, P.E., of Tatum-Smith Engineers, Inc. (structural engineer); and Omni Engineers (MEP engineer).

The Innovation by Design Awards honor creative work at the intersection of design, business and innovation. Fast Company editors and writers spend a year researching and reviewing applicants for the annual awards. This year's applicant pool was the most competitive ever, with more than 4,300 entries.

The project will be featured online and in the October issue of Fast Company magazine. The honorees will also be recognized during Fast Company's Innovation Festival in New York, planned for Nov. 4-8. 

Community Design Center and Partners Receive Two 2019 American Architecture Awards

Two projects of the University of Arkansas Community Design Center and its partners have been recognized with 2019 American Architecture Awards from The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.

One winning project is Greers Ferry Water Garden, a conceptual design created by the center in collaboration with Marlon Blackwell Architects and the Ecological Design Group. The other is the Center for Farm and Food System Entrepreneurship, a project designed for the U of A Division of Agriculture.

These are the 11th and 12th Community Design Center projects to receive American Architecture Awards. The center is an outreach program of Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design.

"We are pleased that these combined landscape and architectural complexes — both for the state of Arkansas — are receiving recognition," said Steve Luoni, director of the Community Design Center. "They serve important public interests for the state."

Luoni is also a Distinguished Professor and the Steven L. Anderson Chair in Architecture and Urban Studies in the Fay Jones School. Blackwell is a Distinguished Professor and the E. Fay Jones Chair in Architecture in the school.

Greers Ferry Water Garden at Greers Ferry Dam in Heber Springs updates and completes a plan conceived in the 1960s by Edward Durell Stone, a native of Arkansas and an internationally renowned mid-century architect.

Present-day designers updated Stone's ornamental landscape to support a natural fish hatchery, wetlands, edible landscapes, an improved riparian system, irrigated vertical gardens, wet meadows and a pond ecosystem to showcase niche plant communities and wildlife.

Water from the dam is circulated throughout the site in micro-loops, enhancing nutrient exchange, metabolic cycles and life in this whole-system watershed approach.

"We refreshed Stone's design with greater emphasis on ecological considerations, including a place-based expression of the Ozark landscape toward a more contemporary visitor-centered approach," Luoni said.

The garden combines botanical features with facilities for both the performing arts and installation sites for large-scale public art.

This design has received numerous design awards since its completion in 2017. The project received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the state of Arkansas and the Entergy Foundation.

The second project, the Center for Farm and Food System Entrepreneurship, is a training center for future farmers near the U of A campus in Fayetteville. The center models new concepts and technologies in farming — from organic vegetable production in fields and greenhouses to machine repair, marketing, business planning, value-added food innovation and cooking.

Members of the Community Design Center, the Fay Jones School and the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences served on the project team.

"The center articulates the farm as a next-generation civic infrastructure central to community well-being," Luoni said. "The center is both an immersive program in the rhythms of farm life and a public facility for hosting gatherings that celebrate value-added food products."

Entry to the complex is layered through successive landscapes, beginning with parking gardens in an orchard and continuing through a tractor garage/shop and greenhouses. These portals open to the central barnyard that frames the formal training loft at the edge of the fields.

The training loft extends the heavy timber traditions in barn technology through the use of contemporary sustainable timber construction. The structure is engineered from glue-laminated timber and cross-laminated timber, materials that comprise the cutting edge of wood design.

The open timber structure filled with glass provides a sense of warmth and intimacy within the barnyard, while its opposite edge presents a cladded surface to Garland Avenue east of the farm.

The American Architecture Awards program, started 25 years ago, is a centerpiece of the Chicago Athenaeum and the European Centre's efforts to identify and promote best practices in all types of architectural development and to bring a global focus to the best new designs from the United States. It is the only national and global program of its kind.

Winning projects may be viewed at The Chicago Athenaeum or The American Architecture Awards.