Screening for Mid-Century Modern Architecture Documentary Set for Sunday

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Edward Durell Stone designed the Fine Arts Center at the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville. The 1951 building is included in a new documentary on mid-century modern architecture in Arkansas.

The documentary Clean Lines, Open Spaces: A View of Mid-Century Modern Architecture will be shown at 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 9, at the University of Arkansas Global Campus, 2 E. Center St., in downtown Fayetteville.

Mark Wilcken, a producer at the Arkansas Educational Television Network in Conway, captured his fascination with this building style and the culture that led to it with the 55-minute documentary. He interviewed a diverse group of architects, including faculty and alumni of the Fay Jones School of Architecture. Architecture school faculty members interviewed were Greg Herman, associate professor; Marlon Blackwell, distinguished professor and head of the architecture department, and Ethel Goodstein-Murphree, professor and associate dean, who served as architectural historical consultant on the film. Goodstein-Murphree will join Wilcken at the Sunday screening.

Alumni interviewed include Ernie Jacks (B.A. Architecture ’50), Bob Laser (B.A. Architecture ’50), Charley Penix (B.Arch. ’80) and Reese Rowland (B.Arch. ’90). Homeowners, a representative of the Historic Preservation Alliance of Arkansas, and Hicks Stone, son of Edward Durell Stone, also contributed.

Details of mid-century modern architecture include a flat roof, angled supports, a concrete grill facade, diamond-shaped roof patterns, cantilevered concrete overhangs, and metal and glass panels (particularly those colored aqua green or turquoise blue). The windows of mid-century modern buildings were invariably metal-framed, plate-glass, often sweeping uninterrupted along a building facade.

Examples in the film include several Fayetteville buildings: the university’s Fine Arts Center and the now-defunct Carlson Terrace housing complex, both designed by Edward Durell Stone; also the Fulbright Building (built as the Fayetteville Public Library) and the Southwestern Electric Power Company building, both designed by Warren Segraves, a 1953 graduate of the architecture school. Others around the state include the former First Federal Savings and Loan in Fort Smith, designed by Bob Laser; the Tower Building in Little Rock; and homes in Huntsville and Fort Smith.

Production of the film was funded through grants from the Arkansas Humanities Council and the Arkansas chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

Wilcken’s previous films for AETN include CW150: Remembering the Civil War in Arkansas, on the state sesquicentennial, and Troubled Water, on water resources. His feature on poet Miller Williams, part of the station’s Men and Women of Distinction series, premiered on AETN in January.

Clean Lines, Open Spaces will premiere on AETN at 9 p.m. Nov. 14. For more information and to watch a preview, visit www.aetn.org/midcenturymodern.