Two Projects Led by Fay Jones School Faculty Named Winners in PLAN Awards 2020

wo projects by the University of Arkansas Community Design Center and Marlon Blackwell Architects have received top honors in The PLAN Awards 2020, an international design awards program sponsored by The Plan magazine.

The PLAN Awards highlight projects in urban design and planning, landscape architecture, architecture, interior design, product design and transportation engineering. More than 1,000 project entries from more than 460 architecture and design studios from around the world were made across 21 main categories in this year's contest. Winning projects and other honors were determined by a 10-member international jury.

The center's design for the Center for Farm and Food System Entrepreneurship was named the Winner in the Education category for future projects. And the Lamplighter School Innovation Lab, designed by Marlon Blackwell Architects, was named the Winner in the Education category for completed projects. Together, these projects topped 53 shortlisted projects in these Education categories.

Another project by the center, the 7hills Day Center Complex, received a Mentioned in the Health category for future projects.

Marlon Blackwell is founder and co-principal of his Fayetteville-based design practice. He is a Distinguished Professor and the E. Fay Jones Chair in Architecture at the U of A. He received the 2020 Gold Medal from The American Institute of Architects and was named the 2020 Southeastern Conference Professor of the Year.

As part of his firm's mission, Blackwell said they started focusing more in the past 10 years on educational projects, from primary school to collegiate, with the aim to "really elevate those facilities to the quality of the teaching and curriculums that happen in them, so they are places for inspiration and aspiration."

The Innovation Lab was the flagship structure for several projects Blackwell's firm is doing for the Lamplighter School's campus, which serves students in kindergarten through fourth grade. As an applied learning school that embraces collaboration and flexibility, they needed updated facilities that enrich their culture of learning through doing and making.

"It's one of those projects that is extremely resolute. Everything works. Everything from the forms to the space to the details to the campus setting," Blackwell said. "And that came out of an intense process, where we really paid attention to what the school needed and desired, and then did our best to try to exceed that."

The Community Design Center is an outreach program of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design. Steve Luoni, who directs the center, is also a Distinguished Professor and the Steven L. Anderson Chair in Architecture and Urban Studies at the university.

"While our work is focused on finding solutions for complex social issues ranging from homelessness to food security and the development of low-carbon neighborhoods for sprawling low-density environments, we are very pleased that the projects are being recognized for design leadership," Luoni said. "Importantly, the recognition reinforces our project sponsors' standing in securing the political will and resources necessary to implement challenging public-interest work.

"The U of A Division of Agriculture's Center for Farm and Food System Entrepreneurship will enhance farmer certification in a state where the average age of a farmer is 58, while helping to create a larger value-added food economy alongside the state's commodity food supply chains," he said. "We are also quite proud that the 7hills Day Center Complex, which we designed to be a human-centered facility with interior courtyards and extensive porch areas to serve Fayetteville's homeless population, was recognized as a leading care facility. It is one of a handful of such facilities nationally to be shaped by 'trauma-informed' design. This extends the University of Arkansas' leadership in public-interest design and the fight for community resiliency as a critical public good."

In addition to the two Community Design Center projects selected for honors, four additional projects by the center and its collaborators were shortlisted in several categories of the awards program, with three of those projects advancing to become finalists.

The Urban Watershed Framework Plan, designed in collaboration with the U of A Resiliency Center, was a finalist in the Landscape category for future projects. The Wahiawa Value-Added Agricultural Product Development Center, designed by the center and Urban Works Architecture in collaboration with the Resiliency Center, was a finalist in the Production category for future projects. The Circle, designed by the center and Marlon Blackwell Architects, was a finalist in the Urban Planning category for future projects. The center's project, the Watershed Conservation Resource Center, was shortlisted in the Education category for future projects.

Below are more details about the two winning projects designed by the U of A Community Design Center and Marlon Blackwell Architects.

"A New Center for Farm and Food System Entrepreneurship: Fayetteville, AR" is an immersive farmer training program that models new concepts and technologies in farming, as well as a public facility for hosting gatherings that celebrate value-added food products. The center, part of the University of Arkansas' and University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture's farm operations near campus, is the public face of agriculture where farmers and the public meet.

The training complex sits amid working fields and arranges different building types around a metaphoric barnyard. The training loft updates barn technology through the use of a sustainable timber structure engineered from glued laminated timber and cross-laminated timber construction. A reticulated timber structure at the entry porch and public area of the training loft provides a sense of warmth and intimacy within the barnyard, while its opposite edge presents a monumental front to the city, east of the farm.

"A Rich Heritage: The Lamplighter School Innovation Lab" is a modern re-envisioning of a late 1960s design by O'Neil Ford, which was complemented by additions in the 1980s and 1990s designed by Frank Welch. These designs realized the founders' vision for a unique learning environment highlighted by open learning spaces, a close relationship with nature, and a village composition. In 2014, Blackwell's firm furthered the evolution of the campus design, with strategies such as reorganization of the site, renovations of the existing building, and the addition of new structures.

The Innovation Lab is the heart of the master plan clarifying the organization of the campus and connecting the new and existing exterior and interior learning spaces. Programmed with hands-on learning classrooms —  including a woodshop, robotics lab and teaching kitchen — the building suggests a holistic approach to design, systems and learning with a relationship to the natural environment. Filled with light and reaching out to the landscape, the Innovation Lab contributes to the vitality of the existing campus of buildings and spaces, while establishing a 21st century identity.

In the 2019 PLAN Awards competition, one Community Design Center project received top honors, and three others were finalists. That 2019 winning project, Greers Ferry Water Garden, was done in association with Marlon Blackwell Architects and Ecological Design Group.

More details of projects for The PLAN Awards 2020 can be found on The Plan website.

U of A Community Design Center, Resiliency Center Project Wins Green Good Design Award

The University of Arkansas Community Design Center, working with the U of A Resiliency Center and Urban Works, has been awarded a 2020 Green Good Design Award for Green Architecture by the European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies and the Chicago Athenaeum: Museum for Architecture and Design.

The winning proposal, the Wahiawa Value-Added Product Development Center in Wahiawa, Hawaii, repurposes an existing downtown warehouse as a food innovation maker space for college students. Projects will focus on the incubation and commercialization of value-added food products through the recycling of nearby agricultural waste streams.

"This new maker space entails parallel development of a new curriculum by the University of Hawaii Community Colleges system that combines food science and design," said Stephen Luoni, director of the Community Design Center. "The goal is to commercialize production processes and knowledge transfers in the creation of new markets in food and food-grade cosmetics through applied learning and design."

The Community Design Center is an outreach program of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the U of A. Luoni is also a Distinguished Professor and the Steven L. Anderson Chair in Architecture and Urban Studies.

Luoni and his team worked with Urban Works Inc., an architectural firm in Honolulu, Hawaii, and with the U of A Resiliency Center. The Resiliency Center, led by Marty Matlock, executive director, is an interdisciplinary research, education and outreach center hosted by the Fay Jones School, in collaboration with the Sam M. Walton College of Business and the College of Engineering at the university. This is the fourth time the Community Design Center and Resiliency Center have received a Green Good Design Award together, and the fifth such award for the Community Design Center.

The project also was shortlisted for a 2019 World Architecture Festival Award in the Education-Future Project design category.

The Wahiawa center is part of an island-wide portfolio of cooperative food hubs and facilities being developed by the Hawaii Department of Agriculture to support the development of local food supply chains.

"Hawaii imports more than 93 percent of its food despite being the most remote occupied landmass on Earth," Luoni said. "Essentially, our team asked, 'How do we think like an island again?' Resiliency for Hawaiians is tied to the reconstitution of local food chains, along with renewable energy supply and affordable housing."

The design reorganizes the big box structure of the existing warehouse into a series of three lofts: a public loft for visitor events and product sales; a production loft for product design, processing and packaging; and an administration loft with classrooms, conference space and an office area. Strategically carved courtyards in combination with new roof monitors introduce natural light and exterior views into an otherwise windowless interior. New cladding of gold-colored metal skins - in solid and perforated layers - provides updated public frontages on Wahiawa's main commercial street.  

The design complies with recently enacted U.S. Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) regulations, a set of stringent science-based protocols to prevent food contamination in food handling facilities. Production processes will include baking, juicing, fermentation/pickling, distillation for alcoholic beverages, development of food-grade cosmetics and packaging.

The Green Good Design Award aims to bring public appreciation and awareness to global design projects that emphasize sustainability and ecological restoration. Winning designs will be exhibited at venues in Europe, the United States and South America.

Award winners are listed on the Chicago Athenaeum website.

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.