Architect Mark Lee to Present 'Architecture and the Ecology of Objects' Lecture on Feb. 2

Photo Submitted

The Vault House, designed by Johnston Marklee & Associates, is located on a beach in southern California. (Photo by Eric Staudenmaier)

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Mark Lee will present a lecture titled “Architecture and the Ecology of Objects” at 5 p.m. Monday, Feb. 2, in Ken and Linda Sue Shollmier Hall, Room 250 of Vol Walker Hall, on the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville, as part of the Fay Jones School of Architecture lecture series.

Lee is the principal of Johnston Marklee & Associates, based in Los Angeles. Since the office opened in 1998, the firm has been engaged in a range of institutional, residential and commercial commissions in the United States, as well as in Argentina, Chile, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland and Italy.

Adopting an interdisciplinary design approach in exploring emergent design strategies and solutions for architecture and urbanism, Johnston Marklee has received several awards, including the 2002 and 2012 Progressive Architecture Design Award, the 2004, 2006 and 2011 AIA Los Angeles Honor Awards, the 2007 Merit Award from the AIA California Council, the 2007 American Architecture Award from the Chicago Athenaeum, the Honor Award from the Westside Urban Forum and the Design Award Citation from the AIA Los Angeles. In 2011, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) commissioned Johnston Marklee to design the new Graduate Art Studios in Culver City. And in 2012, Johnston Marklee was selected to design the Menil Drawing Institute and Study Center in Houston, Texas.

Combining his academic and design expertise, Lee conducts speculative research based on critical reassessments of architectural and urban design history. Developing theories on the urban development and housing at border cities, culture-specific topological landscapes, and new design strategies in material form and technology, he has written and lectured widely on his research. Lee has taught at the Federal Institute of Technology (E.T.H.) in Zurich, the Technical University of Berlin, Rice University in Houston, Texas, Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the University of California, Los Angeles, where he has served as Vice Chair of the Department of Architecture and Urban Design.

In his lecture, Lee will be discussing current and past work by the firm, which maintains a diverse portfolio. Led by Lee and fellow principal Sharon Johnston, Johnston Marklee is unified by a singular conceptual approach to each project where the relationship between design and building technology are explored to create unique works of architecture. While maintaining a deep commitment to architecture history and the discipline’s ongoing discourse, Johnston Marklee draws upon an extensive network of collaborators in related fields to broaden the breadth of design research, which has a particular focus on the arts.

This is the Martha Dellinger Memorial Lecture, sponsored by Jim and Sharon Parker.

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

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