The Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design announces its spring 2024 lecture series. Through these carefully selected presenters, the school continues to engage with the broad scope of issues, opportunities and challenges that society and the design disciplines confront today, and to include a diverse array of local, national and international voices.

Brian Holland, assistant professor of architecture, is coordinator of the school's lecture series.

"The Fay Jones School's public lecture series presents the opportunity for all of us in Vol Walker Hall and across campus to take a few moments away from our daily routines in order to be challenged and inspired to think big," Holland said. "Through their design work and research, this semester's speakers are productively engaged with some of the most pressing issues of our time: climate change, the housing crisis, the advent of generative artificial intelligence, and the need for more resilient and sustainable communities. Designers and architects can and must play a role in addressing these challenges, now and into the future."

The lecture series will take place over seven Mondays and three Wednesdays in January, February, March and April and will be available through an online playlist following the completion of the series. In addition to the lecture series, the Fay Jones School will also host several workshops and exhibitions this semester.

Most lectures begin at 4:30 p.m. (CST), and all lectures take place in Ken and Linda Sue Shollmier Hall in Vol Walker Hall on the U of A campus. Andrew Kudless' lecture on Feb. 5 will begin at 4 p.m.

Ahead of the onset of the spring lecture series, the school will celebrate its namesake's birthday with a special recognition event at 4:30 p.m. Jan. 31. David Salmela, FAIA, and David McKee, AIA, will be honored as the inaugural Fay Jones School Legacy Medalists in Architecture. This award has been conceived to honor and extend the legacy of the school's namesake, the architect E. Fay Jones, and his work in Arkansas, for the greater region, and for the United States and internationally. 

The medals will be awarded during a 4:30 p.m. ceremony held in Ken and Linda Sue Shollmier Hall, with a program that will include a short presentation by Salmela and remarks by McKee.

David Salmela has won more than 80 regional, national and international awards, including two national AIA Honor Awards for Architecture and the AIA Minnesota Gold Medal. In 1994, he founded Salmela Architect from his home office in Duluth, Minnesota. His work is greatly influenced by his Finnish roots, in particular the work of Alvar Aalto. His projects reflect a keen awareness of natural light, a sensitivity to the natural environment, and the use of design to achieve an economy of means.

In addition, a half-day of lectures and dialogues for Earth Day is being planned for April 22. Lectures will be provided by two highly regarded thinkers on environmental issues, Anna Dyson and Laurence C. Smith. Additional details will be provided closer to the April 22 event.

The full slate of lecturers include:

Feb. 5 — Andrew Kudless

Andrew Kudless is the Bill Kendall Memorial Endowed Professor at the University of Houston's Hines College of Architecture Design, director of the Advanced Media Technology Lab and founder of Matsys. Matsys has work in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the FRAC Centre in Orleans, France. Kudless' work on Confluence Park won a 2019 AIA National Honor Award. In 2019, he became the first American designer to contribute to Louis Vuitton's Objets Nomades collection. He holds a Master of Arts in Emergent Technologies and Design from the Architectural Association and a Master of Architecture from Tulane University. His lecture is the John G. Williams Distinguished Visitor in Architecture lecture.

Feb. 26 — Johanna Hurme, MAA, AAA, OAA, SAA, AIBC, NSAA, FRAIC

Johanna Hurme is co-founder and principal of 5468796 Architecture, in Winnipeg, Canada. She has taught design at the University of Manitoba, Toronto, Montreal, and in 2019, she was named the Visiting Professor-Morgenstern Chair at the College of Architecture, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. She lectures extensively around the world and is co-author of Innovative Solutions for Creating Sustainable Cities (2018), and platform:MIDDLE, Housing for the 99% (2021). Her lecture is the Warren Segraves Memorial Lecture, sponsored by Modus Studio.

March 4 — Simon David

Simon David, principal and creative director at Office of Strategy + Design (OSD) in New York City, has more than two decades of international experience practicing in New York City, Los Angeles and Thailand as an architect, urban designer and landscape architect. In 2011, David was awarded the national Gabriel Prize by Western European Architectural Foundation. He has taught studios on architecture; urban design and climate change; and the future of mobility and urban communities. His lecture is the Martha Dellinger Memorial Lecture.

March 13 — Susan Jones, FAIA, LEED BD+C

Susan Jones is a practicing architect and the founder of atelierjones, an architecture and urban design firm in Seattle, Washington. Her work has been recognized by national, regional and local design awards, including a national AIA Honor Award, and has been published nationally and internationally. Her lecture is the Miller Boskus Lack Architects Endowed Lecture in Wood Design and Construction.

March 25 — James Binning

James Binning is a founding member of the design-led interdisciplinary practice Assemble in London, England. Within Assemble, he has worked on the design and fabrication of furniture and installation projects, the orchestration of large-scale collective build projects, and the design of public spaces in the United Kingdom and abroad. His lecture is the June Biber Freeman Lecture in Architecture. He will also present a second lecture on March 26 at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts in Little Rock as part of the Architecture and Design Network's June Freeman Lecture Series, which is co-sponsored by the Fay Jones School.

April 1 — Adriana Chávez and Víctor Rico

Adriana Chávez and Victor Rico co-founded Oficina de Resiliencia Urbana (ORU) in Mexico City in 2018. ORU was named an Emerging Voice by The Architectural League of New York in 2023. Chávez holds a Bachelor of Architecture from IBERO, a Master in Urbanism, Landscape and Ecology, and a Master of Architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design. She teaches at Columbia University and has also taught at Pratt. Rico holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Anahuac University, a diploma in public space and safer cities from IBERO, and a Master of Architecture in urban design from Harvard Graduate School of Design. He has taught at Anahuac University and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Chávez and Rico are the Together in Diversity and Design Presenters.

April 10 — Chelina Odbert

Chelina Odbert is founding principal and CEO of Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI), with offices in Los Angeles, Coachella Valley, Nairobi and Stockholm. She was named an Emerging Voice by The Architectural League of New York and a Knight Foundation Public Space Fellow. She has also taught at Harvard University and UCLA. She holds a bachelor's degree from Claremont McKenna College and a Master of Urban Planning from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Her lecture is the Fay Jones School Honors Program Lecture.

April 15 - Amale Andraos, Hon. FRAIC, and Dan Wood, FAIA

Amale Andraos and Dan Wood cofounded WORKac in 2003 in New York City. Andraos is a professor and dean emeritus at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP). Her publications include The Arab City: Architecture and Representation (2016). Wood is adjunct associate professor in architecture at Columbia GSAPP. He holds the 2013-14 Louis I. Kahn Chair at the Yale School of Architecture and has taught at the Princeton University School of Architecture, the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union, Ohio State University's Knowlton School of Architecture, and the University of California Berkeley School of Environmental Design, where he was the Friedman Distinguished Chair. Their lecture is the Ernie Jacks Lecture, sponsored by Marlon Blackwell Architects.

April 22 — Anna Dyson and Laurence C. Smith

Anna Dyson is the Hines Professor of Architecture at the Yale Schools of Architecture (YSoA) and Environment (YSE) in New Haven, Connecticut. She is the founding director of the Yale Center for Ecosystems in Architecture. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), The World Future Energy Summit (WFES) and The Center for Architecture. Her designs for novel systems have won a first-place prize from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) for the Climate Camouflage and Integrated Concentrating Solar Façade systems, Architect R&D awards for the Solar Enclosure for Water Reuse (SEWR) and the Active Modular Phytoremediation System (AMPS). Laurence C. Smith is the John Atwater and Diana Nelson University Professor of Environmental Studies in the Institute at Brown for Environment & Society (IBES) and the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences (DEEPS) at Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island. He has published more than 150 peer-reviewed articles, essays and books including in the journals Science, Nature, and PNAS, and won more than $16 million in research funding from the National Science Foundation and NASA. Their lectures are the Fay Jones School Earth Day Lectures: "The World in 2050 / Towards an Architectural Ecology."

In addition to the lecture series, the school will host three workshops during the spring semester.

Adriana Chávez and Víctor Rico will lead a Together in Diversity and Design workshop in the school the same day as their lecture, working with Gabriel Díaz Montemayor, assistant dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and associate professor of landscape architecture. Chávez and Rico co-founded Oficina de Resiliencia Urbana (ORU) in Mexico City. Chávez and Rico will lead a workshop focusing on their territorial scale mapping and analysis methods and the construction of narratives towards urban-ecological resiliency.

Chelina Odbert will lead an Honors Program workshop in the school in April. Odbert is founding principal and CEO of Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI). She was named an Emerging Voice by The Architectural League of New York and a Knight Foundation Public Space Fellow.

The FAY AI workshop is a three-day event hosted on Feb. 5, 7 and 9 in Vol Walker Hall. The workshop will include presentations from Joshua Vermillion, associate professor at University of Nevada, Las Vegas; Clay Odom, associate professor at The University of Texas at Austin; and Kory Bieg, associate professor at The University of Texas at Austin.

The school will also present two exhibitions. LEVENBETTS' "Thirteen American Houses, Nine City Blocks, Three Wood Dwellings" exhibition will be in the Fred and Mary Smith Exhibition Gallery in Vol Walker Hall from February until June. LEVENBETTS is a New York City based architecture practice, founded by David Leven and Stella Betts in 1997. They focus on design at all scales, including urban design, public architecture, houses and housing, commercial workspaces, exhibitions and furniture. RISE and Fay Jones School will host a student exhibition at the Thea Foundation, in North Little Rock, from Feb. 29 to March 25. RISE (Reinvest in Students Everywhere) was founded by Fay Jones School architecture alumnus Ernest Banks (B.Arch. '18) in 2021 to uplift architecture students of color; support allies of diversity, equity and inclusion; and help those in need of financial assistance while in school.

More information about each of the speakers in this lecture series and details on how to access the lectures online can be found on the Fay Jones School website.