Fay Jones School Marks Namesake's 100th Birthday With Jan. 29 Virtual Celebration

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Fay Jones (Jan. 31, 1921 - Aug. 30, 2004) at Thorncrown Chapel.

The Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design will host a virtual celebration on Friday, Jan. 29, to mark the centennial of Fay Jones' birth. The event will be hosted by Dean Peter MacKeith and Associate Dean Ethel Goodstein-Murphree, who will be joined by special guests.

The namesake of the Fay Jones School, Fay Jones was born on Jan. 31, 1921, in Pine Bluff. The family then moved to El Dorado, where Jones grew up. Jones was a member of the University of Arkansas' first graduating class of architecture students in 1950. He later taught for 35 years and served as the School of Architecture's first dean. He also earned an international reputation for his design work. The American Institute of Architects awarded him the prestigious AIA Gold Medal in 1990. Later, it honored Jones as one of the country's "10 most influential living architects" and ranked his masterwork, Thorncrown Chapel, as the fourth best building by an American architect in the 20th century. Jones died at his home in Fayetteville on Aug. 30, 2004. In April 2009, the School of Architecture was named in Jones' honor.

The virtual celebration for Fay Jones' birthday will be held at 12:15-12:45 p.m. Jan. 29 on Zoom. Join the event via this Zoom link.

As part of this celebration, the deans will announce details related to the AIA Gold Medal awarded to Jones, and an upcoming third edition of the monograph of his design work, "Fay Jones: The Architecture of E. Fay Jones," to be published in collaboration with the University of Arkansas Press.