Architect Anne Marie Decker to Present 'Architecture as Instrument' Lecture on Feb. 8

Photo by Timothy Hursley

An interior view of the Bennie G. Thompson Academic and Civil Rights Research Center, at Tougaloo College in Tougaloo, Mississippi. (Image courtesy Duvall Decker Architects)

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Anne Marie Decker will present a lecture at 5 p.m. Monday, Feb. 8, 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 and Design lecture series.

Decker is a principal of the architecture firm Duvall Decker Architects, in Jackson, Mississippi.

In this lecture, titled "Public Work: Architecture as Instrument," Decker will discuss how each new or renovated building changes its community. These interventions have consequences in the lives of every person who encounters them. Architects should be responsible in the process of programming, budgets and schedules, but more importantly, they should be responsible to the public value of each project, outside of its lot lines. Architecture can promote cultural growth by becoming alive in our experience, placing us between comfort and challenge, the known and the curious. It can expand our senses, capacity and understanding of who we are and who we want to be.

Enduring form at once resonates between abstract and concrete, engaged and alive; architecture as instrument. The perfect form of a musical note is a mathematical concept until you pull a bow across a violin string. Vibration allows the note to exist, to sound, to resonate in the chamber of the instrument. An abstract idea is made concrete. It is no longer perfect or ideal, but it is vibrating within physical reality. The abstract descriptions and ideas that we imagine, believe and propose are at play in the concrete conditions of experience; building use, dimensions, climate, light and shadow, the nature of the soil, the lay of the land, the physical properties of building materials. Architecture is not a thing, but a transaction between us and our environment. It can act as an instrument that can amplify the abstract and concrete by putting them at play in experience.

Duvall Decker Architects is a design practice whose work includes architectural design, community planning, real estate development, facility management, construction and building care. The firm sees this large group of endeavors as an integration of creative works to make and maintain meaningful public environments. The firm believes that the character of the built environment matters to the population's health and well-being. They develop, design, construct and maintain built environments to leverage the best of human aspirations and foster education and cultural growth. 

The firm is a recognized design and planning leader in the region. Since 2006, the firm's work has received 27 state, regional and national awards for design excellence. Eldon Development's projects are recognized for their innovative strategies of enhancing communities in need and equally promoting social, economic and environmental quality. Dunn Management provides superior facility and construction project management, maintenance and consulting where craftsmanship is the measure of quality.

Decker graduated summa cum laude from Mississippi State University, where she earned a Bachelor of Architecture. In 2004, her alma mater honored her with the Alumni Fellow Award for her achievements in practice. She was the university's Eminent Architect of Practice in 2015, and she held, with her partner Roy Decker, the 2009 Paul Rudolf Visiting Professorship at the Auburn University School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture. She is recognized as a contributor to the advancement of the profession and is often invited to share the firm's work as a lecturer, teacher, design jury chair and published author.

Decker has served on the board of directors of the Mississippi Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and was its president in 2013. She is a member of the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards, and the firm is a member of United States Green Building Council.

This is the Sustainability Lecture, sponsored by Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects.

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

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