Housing Northwest Arkansas Initiative Launched at Fay Jones School

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FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design will launch the Housing Northwest Arkansas initiative – a program focusing on the lack of affordable housing in the region for residents and newcomers at all levels of income. The initiative will include an advanced design studio, a regional symposium, and a design competition, all in the spring 2018 semester. Housing Northwest Arkansas is supported by a $250,000 grant from the Walton Family Foundation.

“The steady growth of Northwest Arkansas, as with many cities and regions across the nation, compels focused attention on new visions of housing design for the region,” said Peter MacKeith, dean of the Fay Jones School. “The Fay Jones School is very pleased to partner with the Walton Family Foundation in this effort, as it opens new territories of collaborative design research and creative practice for us, and reinforces our design emphasis on issues of imperative value for the region, state and nation. The combination of events – the design studio, the symposium and the competition – is designed to be of maximum public impact and value.”

All three elements will explore the synergy of inclusive and attainable housing with sustainable urban development. The project will examine housing as a community-informed design that provides the best scenario for individual residents and the broader community.

The advanced design studio for the spring 2018 semester will focus on housing design research and design prototypes for the Northwest Arkansas region. Visiting practitioners Anne Fougeron of Fougeron Architecture in San Francisco, California, and Kent Macdonald of California Polytechnic State University, in San Luis Obispo, will co-teach this studio with Carl Matthews, head of the Department of Interior Design, and Alison Turner, clinical assistant professor in architecture. Enrollment will include senior-level design students in the Fay Jones School. Studio products will include a print publication, a website and a design exhibition.

The regional symposium will be held Feb. 4 and will include an intense series of public presentations and moderated discussions by regional and national experts on housing policy, finances, design, development and construction. The symposium will provide participants with a comprehensive overview of issues, challenges and design examples in attainable and mixed-use housing.

Symposium events will take place in Fayetteville and Bentonville, and they are intended for a public audience. Fay Jones School faculty will serve as moderators. Additional details will be released in early January. Symposium proceedings will be published both online and in print.

Finally, the invited competition will focus on the design of attainable housing that embraces local challenges, culture, values and vision for Northwest Arkansas. Nationally and internationally recognized design professionals will be invited to submit designs for a mixed-use, attainable housing development, including live-work units, on a site in Bentonville.

The five-member competition jury will include Anne Fougeron, chair; Fay Jones School faculty members; and other national housing experts. Competition results will be published online and in print, and they will be shown in a public exhibition.

Stephenie Foster, an alumna of the Fay Jones School’s architecture program, helped prepare the Housing Northwest Arkansas proposal and will continue to work with the school as grant coordinator for the project.

About the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design: The Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas houses professional design programs of architecture, landscape architecture and interior design together with liberal studies programs. All of these programs combine studio design education with innovative teaching in history, theory, technology and urban design. A broad range of course offerings equips graduates with the knowledge and critical agility required to meet the challenges of designing for a changing world. Their training prepares students with critical frameworks for design thinking that also equip them to assume leadership roles in the profession and in their communities. The school’s architecture program was ranked 26th in the nation, and the 12th best program among public, land-grant universities, in the 16th Annual Survey of America’s Best Architecture and Design Schools, a study conducted in 2015 by the Design Futures Council and published in DesignIntelligence. For more information, visit fayjones.uark.edu.

About the University of Arkansas: The University of Arkansas provides an internationally competitive education for undergraduate and graduate students in more than 200 academic programs.