Architect Wendy Evans Joseph to Present 'Future of Community Learning' Lecture on Sept. 17

Photo by Thomas Loof

"Larry Robbins House," Department of Management and Technology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Wendy Evans Joseph will present a lecture at 4 p.m. Monday, Sept. 17, in Ken and Linda Sue Shollmier Hall, Room 250 of Vol Walker Hall, on the University of Arkansas campus, as part of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design lecture series.

Joseph, FAIA, is the founding partner of Studio Joseph, an architectural and exhibition design practice in New York City. She creates immersive experiences that capture a collective experience emotionally and intellectually, through projects in museums, places of higher education and in diverse parts of the public realm. She believes in education of the community at large, which she demonstrates through her professional leadership role in non-profit arts.

In her lecture, titled "The Future of Community Learning," she will discuss how design alters content. She will examine how design for learning changes the way that people learn, including outside the classroom in museums, public spaces, libraries and other unconventional places where people congregate and learn. Joseph will show how designing environments for content means more than putting a book on the wall, but involves using materiality, image, light, special configuration, technology and media to evoke emotional and intellectual responses.  

Joseph will explain how three distinct realms define Studio Joseph's goals for community learning — designing together, learning together and living together. Designing together is a highly collaborative process. It begins with well-honed conceptual and functional premise and proceeds toward a physical presence in an iterative, creative manner that engages all participants. Learning together recognizes that the same information is processed in different ways by different people and that personal inquiry changes throughout one's lifetime. This involves making places that hold multiple readings and methods of engagement. Living together speaks to the greater societal aspects of the work acknowledging that even a small forum for learning can have both personal and broad community impact. When diverse people come together for shared activity and learning, it creates a collective spirit that can be harnessed for societal good, and design can foster these connections.

For the past 20 years, Studio Joseph has produced works of distinct clarity and singular vision. The studio has a firm footing in adaptive reuse, working with modern and historic infrastructure to reclaim valuable resources as a commitment to a more sustainable environment. It continues to explore the edges of traditional architectural practice using technology, graphic design, industrial design and spatial exploration to bring bespoke invention to each project.

Her firm has established an international reputation, with more than 100 design awards from the American Institute of Architects, the Society of Registered Architects and the Society of Environmental Graphic Designers among others. In 2014, Wallpaper magazine named Studio Joseph (then known as Cooper Joseph Studio) one of the "Hottest Young Firms" internationally.

Before launching her practice, she was a senior associate of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, where she worked for more than a decade. Her projects include the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, both in Washington, D.C., the New Federal Courthouse in Boston and First Interstate Tower in Los Angeles.

Joseph received a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, with distinction in design of the environment from the University of Pennsylvania, and she is the first woman to hold a Master in Architecture with distinction from Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where she won the Henry Adams AIA Medal, the John Templeton Thesis Prize and a Graham Foundation Scholarship. A recipient of the Rome Prize in Architecture, she was a Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. In 2003, she was elected into the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects, and she was elected Academician of the National Academy of Design in 2012.

The school is pursuing continuing education credits for this lecture through the American Institute of Architects and the American Society of Landscape Architects.

The public is invited to attend. Admission is free, with limited seating.

For more information, contact 479-575-4704 or fayjones.uark.edu.