Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design Celebrates Namesake's Birthday With Party Friday

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This circa 1955 drawing by Fay Jones is an early perspective sketch for the Fay and Mary Elizabeth Jones Residence, the home that he designed and built for his family in Fayetteville. The details of this sketch, showing the living room looking north, differ from the final design. (Image courtesy of the Fay Jones Collection, Arkansas Architectural Archives, Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries)

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — In anticipation of what would have been the 95th birthday of Fay Jones on Jan. 31, the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design will celebrate the school's namesake this Friday, Jan. 29. Birthday cake will be served at 4:45 p.m. in the lobby of Vol Walker Hall on the University of Arkansas campus.

The public is invited to attend and join in the celebration with the school's students, faculty and staff.

This celebration will mark the debut of a new rotating exhibit of design work by Fay Jones (FAIA, 1921-2004), to be displayed in Vol Walker Hall. The selections for this ongoing exhibit will come from the Fay Jones Collection in Special Collections in the University of Arkansas Libraries. The school's exhibition team will collaborate with Cat Wallack, architectural records archivist.

Also, Dean Peter MacKeith will provide details of the recent acquisition of the Fay and Gus Jones House, which Jones designed and built for his family in Fayetteville. The school, with the university, has accepted the gift of the Fay and Gus Jones House to the school from the Jones family, and plans to construct a restoration plan for the house, along with a teaching and learning plan in preservation design based on its sustaining presence in the school.

Sami Rintala and Dagur Eggertsson, the spring 2016 John G. Williams Distinguished Visiting Professors in Architecture, will be in attendance and introduced as well. They are partners in Rintala Eggertsson Architects in Oslo, Norway.

A video sequence of historical information on Jones will be displayed throughout the day this Friday on the video monitor in the lobby.

In addition to a sketch by Jones, there will be an exhibit of architectural drawings of the Jones House created by students in a 2010 summer course led by Greg Herman, associate professor of architecture. Measured and drawn to the specifications of the Historic American Buildings Survey, the students' work won first place in the 2010 Charles E. Peterson Prize competition. 

Jones was born Jan. 31, 1921, in Pine Bluff and grew up in El Dorado. He later attended the earliest architecture classes offered at the University of Arkansas, in the architecture program founded by John G. Williams. Jones graduated in the first class of architecture students, and eventually returned to teach for 35 years and serve as the school's first dean. In his professional practice, he designed 135 houses and 15 chapels and churches across the country, but most were in Arkansas. He was a recipient of the American Institute of Architect's highest honor, the AIA Gold Medal. He died Aug. 30, 2004, at age 83.