University of Arkansas School of Architecture Named in Honor of Late Architect, Professor Fay Jones

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The University of Arkansas Board of Trustees voted Friday, Jan. 16, to name the School of Architecture in honor of the late architect Fay Jones. The naming of the school is made possible by a multimillion-dollar gift, announced in February 2008, by Don and Ellen Edmondson of Forrest City, former clients of Jones.

In sum, the Edmondsons have contributed nearly $12 million to the School of Architecture over the years.

“Thanks to the generosity of Don and Ellen Edmondson, we have a historic opportunity to name the School of Architecture in honor of Fay Jones,” said G. David Gearhart, chancellor of the University of Arkansas. “Jones’ international reputation helped to make the School of Architecture one of the nation’s premier programs, and it is entirely appropriate for his name to be forever linked with the school and the University of Arkansas.”

“We are proud to be the Fay Jones School of Architecture,” said Dean Jeff Shannon, a former student of Jones who interned in his office. “We are tremendously grateful to Don and Ellen for the opportunity to honor Fay, and for this transformative gift that will allow us to build on our strengths and create new areas of excellence.”

A native of El Dorado, Ark., Fay Jones achieved international fame for designing soaring sacred spaces and modern homes warmed by native materials. He received numerous awards, culminating in the nation’s highest architectural honor, the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal, presented in a 1990 White House ceremony. The AIA later honored Jones as one of the country’s “10 most influential living architects” and ranked his masterwork, Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, Ark., as the fourth best building by an American architect in the 20th century.

Jones attended the earliest architecture classes offered at the university, graduated in the first class of architecture students, and eventually returned to teach for 35 years and serve as the school’s first dean.

Among his students was Don Edmondson, a 1958 graduate of the university’s Sam M. Walton College of Business. Edmondson credits his lifelong fascination with architecture to Jones’ lectures on the subject in a freshman arts appreciation course.

“Fay inspired me to aspire, to do well in life, to reach those goals that I wanted to reach. And on top of that list was to live in a Fay Jones home,” he recalled.

Thanks to a successful career directing franchise businesses, which included Kentucky Fried Chicken, a Holiday Inn and Taco Bell, Edmondson eventually realized his dream. He and his wife Ellen commissioned Jones to design their Forrest City home and just about every aspect of its furnishings, from the mailbox to letterhead, dinnerware and cocktail napkins. The Edmondsons continue to enjoy their home after 29 years there, but say that the close relationship that they developed with Jones and his wife Mary Elizabeth “Gus” Jones was ultimately the most rewarding aspect of the project.

“We were blessed by this relationship, and now we have an opportunity to pay Fay back for what he gave us,” Edmondson said. “I always wanted the School of Architecture to be named after Fay, and a planned gift is the way we could do it. We hope that by making this commitment, we will inspire other people to support the School of Architecture.”

Gus Jones said she was delighted by this latest development.

“I think Fay would be so pleased to have his name on the school he loved, where he spent so much of his life,” she said. “This is all possible because of the Edmondsons’ generosity ¬¬– they are like modern-day Medicis in their support of art and architecture.”

The School of Architecture will celebrate its new name with a series of events to take place April 3-5. Plans include:

•    A symposium on Jones’ work that will include Robert McCarter, a noted scholar of Jones’ mentor Frank Lloyd Wright; Roy Reed, a former New York Times columnist who conducted an oral history with Jones; and Robert Ivy, editor-in-chief of Architectural Record and author of Jones’ monograph.

•    A lecture by Glenn Murcutt, the 2002 Pritzker Prize laureate and the 2009 AIA Gold Medal honoree.

•    A bus tour of Jones’ Fayetteville projects led by his former partner Maurice Jennings.

•    The premier of Sacred Spaces: The Architecture of Fay Jones, a documentary by award-winning filmmakers and University of Arkansas faculty Larry Foley and Dale Carpenter.

Jones’ sketches, plans and models will be on display in the Fay Jones Archives on the lower floor of Mullins Library. For more information and to register to attend, visit the School of Architecture’s Web site at http://architecture.uark.edu/514.php.

The School of Architecture began more than sixty years ago with architecture classes offered in response to the post-World War II building boom. The architecture program was recently ranked 20th in the nation in Design Intelligence’s 10th Annual Survey of America’s Best Architecture and Design Schools, considered definitive in the field. The School of Architecture also was included with a rank of “notable distinction” in a new, comprehensive list of America’s World-Class Schools of Architecture compiled by James P. Cramer, editor of Design Intelligence.

-30-

CONTACTS:

Jeff Shannon, dean

School of Architecture

479-575-2702, jshannon@uark.edu

Don Edmondson, donor

870-633-2717

Kendall Curlee, director of communications

School of Architecture

479-283-9174, kcurlee@uark.edu.

KEYWORDS: UAhome, Faculty-Staff, Alumni, Students, Media, Architecture