Fay Jones School Projects Win Three American Architecture Awards

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Townscaping an Automobile-Oriented Fabric a plan focused on Farmington, won a 2012 American Architecture Award

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Three design projects in Farmington, Little Rock and Indianapolis – all produced by Fay Jones School of Architecture faculty and staff – have been recognized with 2012 American Architecture Awards.

The University of Arkansas Community Design Center, an outreach program of the Fay Jones School, won two awards, for the Townscaping an Automobile-Oriented Fabric and Pettaway Pocket Neighborhood designs. Marlon Blackwell Architect also won an award for the Ruth Lilly Visitors Pavilion, located at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies and The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design organized this awards program, which honors new and cutting-edge design in architecture, urban planning and landscape architecture.

The program has become the most significant and most comprehensive distinguished awards program in the United States, reflecting the changing state of global architecture and revealing emerging new design directions by today’s foremost practitioners. The annual program also promotes American architectural design to the public at large.

Townscaping an Automobile-Oriented Fabric is a plan focused on Farmington, a bedroom community for Fayetteville that has a five-lane highway for its main street. The highway-to-boulevard plan looks to make the town more pedestrian-friendly, while creating and strengthening social spaces.

Pettaway Pocket Neighborhood, a design by the University of Arkansas Community Design Center, won a 2012 American Architecture Award.

The Pettaway Pocket Neighborhood design pooled five adjacent parcels for housing in one of the more open areas of the Pettaway neighborhood, on property owned by their client, the Downtown Little Rock Community Development Corp. They created a pocket neighborhood, nearly doubling the density by placing nine homes around a shared space.

Both of these projects received support from National Endowment for the Arts grants.

Stephen Luoni is Distinguished Professor and director of the Community Design Center, which has won two previous American Architecture Awards in 2009 and 2010.

The Ruth Lilly Visitors Pavilion, designed by Marlon Blackwell’s Fayetteville firm, won a 2012 American Architecture Award. (Photo by Timothy Hursley)

The Ruth Lilly Visitors Pavilion is part of 100 Acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art and Nature Park, which opened in June 2010 at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. The 3,000-square-foot deck structure is made from ipe wood from Brazil, charred cedar wood from Indiana, steel, acrylic and glass. The ipe wood forms extensive decks; it then folds up to form a wall and folds again to create an extensive shade canopy.

Blackwell is Distinguished Professor and head of the architecture department in the Fay Jones School. He has won one previous American Architecture Award in 2011.

The Federation of Korean Architects in Seoul organized the jury for the 2012 awards program. The competition attracted a record number of projects for new buildings, landscape architecture, and urban planning from the most important firms practicing globally. A distinguished group of Korean architects and educators selected 87 projects for recognition.

In October, The Chicago Athenaeum and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies will present a special exhibition of all awarded American buildings at its annual symposium, “The City and the World,” in Istanbul, Turkey, and in conjunction with the Istanbul Biennial. After the display in Turkey, the exhibition will then travel within Europe. The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication, titled Global Design + Urbanism and edited by Christian K. Narkiewicz-Laine.