FAYETTEVILLE, ARK. — Architecture professor Darell Fields is offering sleek housing to would-be modernists on a middle class budget. A flexible prefabricated housing system and prototypes for innovative new building components that Fields has developed will be displayed and sold in Sho, a new showroom-cum-production lab located at 620 N. College Ave., Suite 105, in Fayetteville, behind Lacuna Modern Interiors. Sho, Lacuna and Cooper Architects will celebrate the grand opening of the new complex from 5:30 to 10 p.m. Thursday, June 28. Light refreshments will be served.

Fields’ prefabricated housing features spacious interiors with a custom look and feel, such as this kitchen design for the L-E house.

The living room of Fields’ Patio house.

Fields’ primary products at this point are the L-E house and Patio house, both two-story, 2,000-square-foot prefabricated homes that Fields will build to order in partnership with a local developer. The system is groundbreaking on several fronts: cost, to start.

“A lot of architects are interested in prefabricated construction, but in the end the prices are astronomical. You might as well have a custom-built house,” Fields said. For about the cost of a typical spec home, his designs offer luxury options such as built-in furniture and a sustainable green roof accessible from the master bedroom suite. The most important benefit is intangible, yet palpable even in Fields’ two-dimensional design images.

“It’s all about sculpting space.” Fields said. “The spaces are interconnected, unique and well designed. You would never see these kinds of spaces in a spec house — it’s like night and day.”

The pristine white walls, high exposed ceilings and polished concrete floors within Sho embody the clean domestic environment that Fields has in mind. He plans to use the space for art openings, readings, seminar workshops and other events. Adjacent to the showroom is the Superbia production lab, equipped with a rapid prototyping machine, high tech adhesives and traditional tools. It’s in this compact space that Fields pursues innovative production research, such as a window that can be hung on the wall like a picture; Fields is pursuing a patent for the design. He is also developing radiant floor heating that was initially dreamed up by Frank Lloyd Wright. Fields is eager to realize ideas envisioned by modernist pioneers: “Maybe now the technology has caught up with the concepts and we can implement these things in a new way,” he said.

Following the grand opening, Sho will be open by appointment, but chances are good that visitors might catch Fields and some of his students at work in the lab.

“I will be spending my waking hours here,” he said. Fields also plans to use the showroom to launch his interdisciplinary journal Appx, which will be published by the University of Arkansas Press this summer.

“The idea that I can have a space for practice, publication and production — all of the stuff that I do — is very exciting,” he said.

“We are very pleased to support Darell Fields’ multifaceted research interests,” said Jeff Shannon, dean of the School of Architecture. “His scholarly work, design research and production of housing and associated building components present a tremendous learning opportunity for our students.”

Originally from Dallas, Texas, Fields received his Bachelor of Science in architecture from the University of Texas at Arlington. He earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in architecture from Harvard University and taught at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and Northeastern University before joining the School of Architecture faculty in 2005. He has won awards in numerous national and international design competitions and has initiated and participated in projects in Dallas, New York, Boston and Tokyo.