Architecture: Eye Candy, Arkansas Times

Canceled: Art of Architecture lecture

Leslie Newell Peacock — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:00:00 -0500

Because of an American Airlines computer glitch in Dallas, Kevin McClurkan, scheduled lecturer for the Architecture and Design Network's Art of Architecture event tonight, can't make it. The event will be rescheduled.

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Reminder: Lecture: Ennead Architects

Leslie Newell Peacock — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 10:00:00 -0500

The Architecture and Design Network continues its Art of Architecture lecture series tonight with Kevin McClurkan, a founding partner and management principal of Ennead Architects (formerly known as the Polshek Partnership) in New York. The talk is 6 p.m. at the Arkansas Arts Center; a 5:30 p.m. reception will precede the talk.

McClurkan is an Arkansas native and earned his B.A. in architecture from the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the UA, where he received the Edward Durell Stone Award for Excellence in Design in 1983. The Polshek Partnership designed the Clinton Presidential Library; a project they will complete in 2014 is shown in the artwork above.

McClurkan is working with Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects on the renovation and expansion of the Robinson Center.

The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, email ardenetwork@icloud.com.

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UA architects wins collaborative award

Leslie Newell Peacock — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 11:12:00 -0500

The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture awarded the University of Arkansas Community Design Center its Collaborative Practice Award for the CDC's "Building Neighborhoods that Build Social and Economic Prosperity: Manual for a Complete Neighborhood," a collaboration between the Fay Jones School of Architecture and the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology in Rwanda. The project team included Stephen Luoni, director of the center; Korydon Smith, formerly with the Fay Jones School; Peter Rich, an architect from South Africa who was the 2011 John G. Williams Visiting Professor in the Fay Jones School; and Jeffrey Huber, assistant director at the center. Participating students were Samuel Annabel, Andrew Arkell, Ryan Campbell, Enrique Colcha Chavarrea, Long Dinh, Hanna Ibrahim, Kareem Jack, Tanner Sutton and Ginger Traywick.

The Community Design Center won a second award as well: the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture/American Institute of Architects Housing Design Education Award for the Pettaway Pocket Neighborhood. The project team for the Pettaway Pocket Neighborhood, which would be located on a block of land owned by the Little Rock Downtown Community Development Commission and has won other awards as well, were Luoni, Huber and Cory Amos, project designer at the center.

Read the UA's press release on the jump for more details.

Community Design Center Wins Two Awards from Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture

Design projects in Kigali and Little Rock recognized

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The University of Arkansas Community Design Center recently received national accolades from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture for separate projects focused on housing design education in Arkansas and an international outreach effort in Rwanda.

The Community Design Center is an outreach program of the Fay Jones School of Architecture.

The Community Design Center won a 2012-13 ACSA Collaborative Practice Award for Building Neighborhoods that Build Social and Economic Prosperity: Manual for a Complete Neighborhood. This program was one of four this year to win this award, which honors the best practices in school-based community outreach programs.

This project was a collaboration between the Fay Jones School of Architecture and the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology in Rwanda. It involved the effort to construct a 2,000-unit neighborhood that reflects Rwanda’s new national sustainability initiative.

“Involving more than 1½ years now, this is an ongoing effort that has engaged various components of the school,” said Stephen Luoni, director of the center. “The basis of the Fay Jones School submission is a publication for the Housing Ministry of Rwanda that illustrates sequential development tactics for transitioning Kigali’s informal settlements to fully serviced housing and neighborhoods.”

The project started in a fall 2011 studio lead by Korydon Smith, formerly with the Fay Jones School, and Peter Rich, an architect from South Africa who was the 2011 John G. Williams Visiting Professor in the Fay Jones School. Several students continued working on the project through independent studies in spring 2012 and through internships at the center in summer 2012. All of that work culminated with the publication of this award-winning manual that offers specific design solutions and housing prototypes for Kigali.

“Only 5 percent of Rwandans have access to credit, so development is driven by a do-it-yourself culture, which, in a rapidly urbanizing country, is particularly chaotic,” Luoni said. “We are hopeful that our partnership with our colleagues in Kigali will result in policy, urban and livability advancements. In the meantime, our students have enjoyed life-changing learning experiences.”

The project team included Luoni, Smith, Rich and Jeffrey Huber, assistant director at the center. Students in the fall studio were Samuel Annabel, Andrew Arkell, Ryan Campbell, Enrique Colcha Chavarrea, Long Dinh, Hanna Ibrahim, Kareem Jack, Tanner Sutton and Ginger Traywick. Arkell and Ibrahim were both Honors College students.

Marlon Blackwell, head of the architecture department in the Fay Jones School, wanted the visiting John G. Williams professor to undertake a project with local or global outreach. He and Rich discussed potential projects centered on present-day issues.

Blackwell said the fifth-year studio should tackle a larger initiative, as students begin their transition from academia to the professional world. In this studio, students worked with real-world design issues and dealt with stakeholders, just as they would in a firm.

Dean Jeff Shannon provided financial support for students to travel to Kigali for the fall 2011 studio, as well as for the development of the publication on the project.

Other team members were project designers at the Community Design Center; staff with Peter Rich Architects in South Africa; Tomá Berlanda and Sierra Bainbridge, faculty members of the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology; Paloma Vera, an architect with Cano|Vera Arquitectura, in Mexico; and students from the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology.

The Community Design Center also won a 2012-13 Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture/American Institute of Architects Housing Design Education Award for the Pettaway Pocket Neighborhood. This award recognizes the importance of good education in housing design to produce architects ready for practice in a wide range of areas and able to be capable leaders and contributors to their communities. The project was one of two this year to win this award.

The Pettaway Pocket Neighborhood project pioneers new urban neighborhood templates for affordable housing in Little Rock. The project team included Luoni, Huber and Cory Amos, project designer at the center.

“Since housing constitutes 70 percent of metropolitan land use, it is imperative that our next generation of designers thoroughly understand housing and its role in creating livable cities,” Luoni said. “The Pettaway proposal is particularly important for its recall of the lost art of composing middle-scale housing between four and 25 units. The ‘missing middle’ — courtyard housing, patio garden housing, mews housing, villa apartments and cottage courts, for instance — is key to reclaiming high-quality and walkable urbanism. Our students understand this, and we are proud of their accomplishment.”

This project has also received other recognition, including a 2013 Honor Award for Regional and Urban Design from the American Institute of Architects and a Grand Award in the “On the Boards” category in the 2012 Residential Architect design awards program.

Winning projects will be featured at the 101st annual meeting of the ACSA, planned for March 21-24 in San Francisco. All award winners will be published in the forthcoming 2012-2013 Architecture Education Awards Book.

More information about the 2012-13 awards is available at Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture website.

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Coming Friday: Ron Meyers

Leslie Newell Peacock — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 10:23:00 -0500

Ceramicist Ron Meyers is credited with helping revitalize American studio pottery with his functional earthenware vessels and other forms, carved and painted with animals — rats, bats, rabbits, etc. The Arkansas Arts Center opens a show of his work tomorrow, March 22, called "Ron Meyers: A Potter's Menagerie," that will include 100 works by the artist.

Here's his artist's statement, from Red Lodge Clay Center in Montana:

Working in clay and making functional pottery has never been a problem for me. I have never felt the need to dismiss or disregard the concept of function because it was something less than art. I have never found making useful pieces confining or restrictive. In fact, I find that the opposite seems true. The longer I stay involved, the more alternatives and possibilities there are that seem to present themselves. Along with the functional aspects of the piece, I strive to have the end product reflect my own sensitivity and awareness to the material itself and its traditions. The pieces that I'm most pleased with are those that come closest to best integrating the form and surface, the spontaneity and fluidity of the clay along with the object's use.

As you can see from the flier above (click to enlarge), the Friends of Contemporary Craft will bring the artist and the film "Ron Meyers and the Usual Suspects" to the Arts Center on April 7. The event begins at 5 p.m.; tickets are $5 for FOCC members and $10 for non-members.

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Billie Tsien at Arts Center March 5

Leslie Newell Peacock — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 15:16:52 -0600

The Architecture and Design Network is bringing in famed architect Billie Tsien to lecture at the Arkansas Arts Center at 6 p.m. Tuesday, March 5. (The original post said March 7; Tuesday is the 5th. Apologies.)

Tsien and her her husband, Tod Williams, were the architects for the 93,000-square-foot Barnes Foundation museum in Philadelphia, the Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago, the David Rubinstein Atrium of New York’s Lincoln Center, the American Folk Art Museum in New York and many other distinguished buildings. There will be a reception at 5:30 before her talk, "HEART/HAND."

From the press release:

Born in Ithaca New York, Billie Tsien received her undergraduate degree in Fine Arts from Yale and her Master in Architecture from UCLA. Currently, in addition to practicing, teaching and lecturing, she serves on the advisory council for the Yale School of Architecture. In 2007 Tsien was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Tsien and her husband, Tod Williams, have been working together since 1977. Their firm, which operates out of a small, unpretentious studio on Central Park South in New York City, has earned wide acclaim for its work. This past December, the American Institute of Architects awarded the firm its prestigious 2013 Architecture Firm Award in recognition of work that “reveals a contemporary sensibility and intelligence.” Given annually, the award is the highest honor the AIA bestows on a firm. It recognizes a practice that has consistently produced distinguished architecture for at least ten years.

Architecture and Design Network includes the Arkansas Arts Center, the University of Arkansas Fay Jones School of Architecture and the Central Arkansas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

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Reed Kroloff, "Changing the World"

Leslie Newell Peacock — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 14:15:42 -0600

The Architecture and Design Network’s Art of Architecture lecture series continues tomorrow night, Feb. 12, with a lecture by Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum director Reed Kroloff. The talk,"Changing the World: One Installation at a Time," is at 6 p.m. in the lecture hall of the Arkansas Arts Center and will follow a 5:30 p.m. reception.

Kroloff was dean of architecture at Tulane University when New Orleans was hit by Hurricane Katrina. He is credited with bringing back 97 percent of the student body and 100 percent of its faculty after the hurricane and he participated in the Bring New Orleans Back Commission. You can read more on Kroloff here and see a video of his 2008 TED appearance.

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Praise for Pettaway project

Leslie Newell Peacock — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 12:35:32 -0600

The Pettaway Pocket Park, whose latest design prize was reported here last week, is the subject of a complimentary article in the Atlantic Cities online publication.

The design was created as a collaboration between fifth-year architecture students in the University of Arkansas School of Architecture and the University’s Community Design Center. Writer Kaid Benfield describes how the Pettaway design came about:

In Pettaway, the students worked with a citizen advisory committee who, among other preferences, wished to avoid flat roofs or metal siding — nothing "aggressively modern," according to Stephen Luoni, director of the Community Design Center. The designers looked for ways to blend traditional architectural elements — porches, balconies, terraces, pitched roofs — with modern principles — open floor plans, abundant light, natural airflow, refined choice of materials. I like what I can see of the results — a fresh look, but one in harmony with the scale and character of period housing in the neighborhood. At least one awards jury referred to the design as a "community within a neighborhood," and that looks exactly right to me.

Even better, the pocket neighborhood could be just the beginning. There is a larger revitalization plan in the works for Pettaway. The Neighborhood Revitalization Manual mentioned above was commissioned by the same set of partners and elaborates a set of excellent principles for restoring the surrounding district. The goal is to bring completeness and ambition again to this once-thriving area whose proximity to downtown positions it well for a revival, and to do so without displacing current residents. Among the concepts discussed in the Manual are a master plan, a form-based code, improvements to walkability, and high-quality infill development.

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Kent Taylor on ACH wing

Leslie Newell Peacock — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 10:39:57 -0600

Kent Taylor of Cromwell Architects and Engineers and David Berry, COO of Arkansas Children's Hospital, will present at talk on the design and construction of the new $121 million south wing of the hospital at 6 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 24, at the Clinton School of Public Service.

The Architecture and Design Network presentation will include a virtual tour of the 258,000-square-foot structure, which houses a new emergency department, expanded cardiovascular and neonatal intensive care units, a new unit for children with blood disorders and 54 beds for patients who require hospitalization.

The lecture is free. To reserve seats, email publicprograms@clintonschool.uasys.edu or call 683-5239.

Series supporters include the Central Arkansas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, the Arkansas Arts Center and the University of Arkansas’ Fay Jones School of Architecture.

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Pettaway design wins 2nd architecture award

Leslie Newell Peacock — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 11:02:31 -0600

The "Rock Street Pocket Housing" plan (also known as the Pettaway Pocket Neighborhood) has brought an American Institute of Architects Honor Award for Regional and Urban Design to the University of Arkansas Community Design Center, the Downtown Little Rock Community Development Corp. announced today.

The pocket neighborhood, designed by Design Center staff and architecture students at the University of Arkansas's Fay Jones School of Architecture for NLRCDC property on Rock Street between 17th and 19th streets in the Pettaway neighborhood, features affordable homes of modern design clustered around a shared greenspace. The award is the second for the Pettaway design: Last year, it won the "On the Boards" Grand Award of Residential Architect magazine.

Juror comments from the AIA website on the award:

This is a great integration of inventive architecture and sustainable urbanism into a traditional, low-income fabric. The project does a very interesting and successful job of comingling variations of public and private space. By creating variations in the housing typology, building placement on the site and landscape treatments, the development proposal has appeal to multiple household types, creates private and shared space, and it completes the urban context of the neighborhood.

It is thorough, achievable, and detailed with a fresh design approach that is also supportive of the context. The individual house designs do a remarkably good job of negotiating fronts to both the street and the communal space.

The project will be featured in Architectural Record magazine and at the AIA’s annual expo and convention this June in Denver.

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VJAA: a Reflexive Practice

Leslie Newell Peacock — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 09:08:05 -0600

Another error!

I mistakenly left out of the print version of the Times art calendar (which is why it's a good idea sometimes to check the online calendar on the homepage) the upcoming Architecture and Design Network lecture set for Tuesday, Nov. 13, at the Darragh Center. So here's notice: Vincent James and Jennifer Yoos, principals of the architecture firm VJAA in Minneapolis, will talk about their approach to architecture and environmental design. The lecture begins at 6 p.m. after a 5:30 p.m. reception.

VJAA received the American Institute of Architects' 2012 Architecture Firm Award and James and Yoos are this year’s John G. Williams Distinguished Visiting Professors for the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas.

Among their recently completed projects: the Hostler Student Center at the American University of Beirut and a Guesthouse, Chapterhouse and Chapel at Saint John’s Abbey and University (see image above). They are now at work on the new Walker Library in Minneapolis, the Welland International Flatwater Center for the Toronto 2015 Pan Am Games, a house prototype for Habitat for Humanity (Detroit)/Public Architecture (San Francisco) and the new African Art Galleries reinstallation at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

The lecture is the second in the Architecture and Design Network's Art of Architecture lecture series this season.

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Fay Jones at Laman Library

Leslie Newell Peacock — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 08:49:51 -0500

“Outside the Pale: The Architecture of Fay Jones,” an exhibit of artifacts on loan from the Old State House Museum and the University of Arkansas, opens today at Laman Library and will run through Aug. 25.

Laman has a connection to the famed UA architect, who was an apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright: He designed the gazebo in the library plaza in the early 1970s.

The exhibit takes its name from a book published by the Department of Arkansas Heritage and will be accompanied by an essay by Robert Adams Ivy, author of "Fay Jones: Architect." Ivy writes:

"Fay Jones architecture begins in order and ends in mystery. His role can perhaps best be understood as a mediator, a human consciousness that has arisen from the Arkansas soil and scoured the cosmos, then spoken through the voices of stone and wood, glass and steel. Art, philosophy, craft, and human aspiration coalesce in his masterworks, transformed from acts of will into harmonies: Jones lets space sing."

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Tonight: "EAMES: The Architect and the Painter"

Leslie Newell Peacock — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 14:34:04 -0500

StudioMain at 1423 S. Main is showing the documentary "EAMES: The Architect and the Painter," about the husband-and-wife design team of Charles and Ray Eames, tonight. Little Rock designer Harry Loucks will give an introductory talk at 7 p.m. The showing is in conjunction with the current exhibition of furniture by UALR Applied Design students.

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Main Street visions

Leslie Newell Peacock — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 10:22:55 -0500

StudioMain, the architecture cooperative at 1423 Main St., will display designs for Main Street by fourth-year students in the University of Arkansas's Fay Jones School of Architecture at the 2nd Friday Art Night event coming up June 8.

The designs are part of the students' comprehensive studio, directed by architect Marlon Blackwell and professor Tahar Messadi and sponsored by WER Architects. The designs are competitive; visitors to StudioMain at Friday's event (5-8 p.m.) can vote for their favorites for a People's Choice award.

The images shown here are by Patrick Templeton, Calli Verkamp, Kelsey Tucker and Rachael Rabben. The students have spent the past two semesters imagining what Main Street could look like as part of Main Street Creative Corridor planning.

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Designs on Capitol tonight

Leslie Newell Peacock — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 16:39:50 -0500

The Architecture and Design Network is sponsoring an Art of Architecture presentation tonight in the old Supreme Court chambers of the state Capitol, which is celebrating its 101st anniversary.

Talking about the building will be Dr. David Ware, Capitol historian; Gary Clements of Clements & Associates/Architecture Inc.; John Greer Jr., vice-president of WER Architects; and Tommy Jameson of Jameson Architects.

The group is gathering at 5:30 p.m. for a reception; talks start at 6 p.m. Other sponsors include the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas, the Central Arkansas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and the Arkansas Arts Center.

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Pettaway Park plan wins award

Leslie Newell Peacock — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 15:17:49 -0500

Residential Architect awarded its "On the Boards" Grand Award to the Pettaway Park Neighborhood project, collaboration between students in the UA's Fay Jones School of Architecture and staff of the UA Community Design Center.

The design was commissioned by the Downtown Little Rock Community Development Corp. for five parcels it owns on Rock Street between 17th and 19th streets. Stephen Luoni, director of the Community Design Center, and others with the architectural group suggested combining the parcels to create a pocket neighborhood that would place nine 1,200-square-foot homes, each costing around $100,000 around a shared green space. The design will be featured in Residential Architect's March-April issue.

See more images here. The press release follows.

Neighborhood Design Pockets Grand Award from Residential Architect Magazine

Little Rock studio project combines home and urban design

Follow the University of Arkansas on Twitter @uarkansas

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The Pettaway Pocket Neighborhood project has won a Grand Award in the “On the Boards” category in the 2012 Residential Architect design awards program.
The project was a collaboration between fifth-year architecture students in the Fay Jones School of Architecture and the staff of the University of Arkansas Community Design Center, an outreach program of the school.
With more than 800 projects submitted for these national awards, 36 projects – including four Grand Award winners – were chosen among a wide range of housing categories. Winning projects will be featured in the March-April issue of Residential Architect.
The magazine has a circulation of 35,000 and is the official residential architecture magazine of the American Institute of Architects. Its design awards competition is the most comprehensive housing design awards program in the country.
The Downtown Little Rock Community Development Corp. commissioned the Pettaway Pocket Neighborhood project, which architecture students and Community Design Center staff tackled in a design studio last fall. The design was partial fulfillment of a planning grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, with funding from the city of Little Rock.
The Downtown Little Rock Community Development Corp. had five adjacent parcels for housing in one of the more open areas of the Pettaway neighborhood, said Stephen Luoni, director of the Community Design Center. Rather than placing one home on each parcel, designers suggested combining the parcels to create a pocket neighborhood. The move nearly doubled the density, placing nine homes around a shared space.
For the pocket neighborhood, designers took resources typically found in each private parcel and pooled them to create a public realm – including a community lawn and playground, community gardens, a shared street and a low-impact development stormwater management system.
Designers accomplished both urban design and home design in this studio, a difficult feat in one semester. With just nine housing units and a defined, cohesive neighborhood, this project was small enough for students to manage.
“Housing is one of the hardest things that an architect can do, and it’s one of the hardest design studios to teach,” Luoni said. “A designer must draw on every resource at every scale to understand multi-family housing. You really have to understand the social as well as the formal and the technical – while making architecture and place out of it.”
Students started with nearly 30 schemes and gradually refined those through intense discussion. Students created models from their ideas and made their design arguments before classmates and center staff. Those iterations and discussions were a key component of this studio, and their models filled a table during the final semester review.
Students also worked within the wishes of a citizen advisory committee, whose members wanted specific things. They wanted parking at each home, single-family housing, and no flat roofs or metal siding – nothing “aggressively modern,” Luoni said.
So designers looked for ways to blend traditional architectural elements – porches, balconies, terraces, pitched roofs – with modern principles – open floor plans, abundant light, natural airflow, refined choice of materials.
The homes average 1,200 square feet and have two to three bedrooms. There are three housing types – two-faced, tower and extended porch – that are simple forms, a square or rectangle. Affordable pricing – about $100,000 – comes from standardized dimensions and materials. Designers chose to use structured insulated panels and a few types of windows in various configurations.
Luoni saw these upper-level students absorbing specific design parameters and working with city planners, citizens, budgets and construction technologies. All of that combined for a solid design solution.
The jury called the project “fantastic” and “lovely,” noting the variety of unit types and density and the integration of open space in a traditional urban plan.
“It’s using a small palette of materials but allowing a lot of different forms,” the jury noted.
They also liked the way in which the urban plan, which “reads like a landscape sculpture,” creates a shared common lawn and a “community within a neighborhood.”
Luoni said the Grand Award is most impressive because these $100 per square foot houses were competing against ones that cost 10 times that.
“I think what gives us the advantage is, we’re not just thinking about the house. We’re thinking about the total living environment,” Luoni said.
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CONTACTS:
Stephen Luoni, director
Community Design Center
479-575-5772, sluoni@uark.edu

Michelle Parks, director of communications
Fay Jones School of Architecture
479-575-4704, mparks17@uark.edu

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Container store

Leslie Newell Peacock — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:30:33 -0600

Hugg & Hall mobile storage are join the shipping container movement, building a new facility for their business almost entirely out of the steel boxes.

Two container homes at 21st Street and Commerce in the Pettaway neighborhood downtown are thought to be the first two containers adapted for living space in Little Rock. (If anybody knows of others, would love to know about it.) Each of those homes use four containers to make 1,300 square feet of living space. The Hugg and Hall building will include a 3,200-square-foot-office building and a 5,000-square-foot workshop.

The availability of the containers stems from the fact that the U.S. imports more than it exports, I'm told, and the containers sit empty at the ports. That they're being recycled as permanent structures is a green idea. They look good, too.

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Art of Architecture: Mid-century modern

Leslie Newell Peacock — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 12:19:23 -0500

The film "Mid-Century Modern Architecture in Arkansas," which focuses on post-war design, from the University of Arkansas's Fine Arts Building to the abandoned Hotel Mountainaire in Hot Springs, will be shown at 6 p.m. tonight at the Arkansas Arts Center, the opener of the Art of Architecture series.

The film was produced by Mark Wilcken of AETN, who'll be on hand for the screening with architectural historian Dr. Ethel Goodstein-Murphree, associate dean of the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the U of A.

A reception in the anteroom of the Lecture Hall will precede the film at 5:30 p.m.

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Cantilever tale

Leslie Newell Peacock — Fri, 20 May 2011 15:06:41 -0500

The Pettaway neighborhood east of Main Street cut a ribbon on another innovative affordable home today: the 2nd Design/Build home of the University of Arkansas School of Architecture. Fourth and fifth year students whittled 12 designs to one, the cantilever structure that is now a reality at 1805 Commerce St.

The second floor is placed at right angles to the first floor, creating a shaded entrance on the ground level and a patio on the second story. (In the photo above, students are removing non-load bearing poles from the front of the house as a conclusion to the ribbon-cutting ceremony; that's the mayor and Downtown Little Rock Community Development Corp. president Stacy Williams you see fleeing from under the second story.) Student Matt Poe came up with the design; a Colorado engineer helped make it work. The students fabricated the two sections of the house in a Fayetteville warehouse. Cranes lifted the sections into place last week; the home ought to be ready for occupation in a month or so.

UA Architecture Department head Marlon Blackwell called the house the "second volume in what's going to be the Greatest Hits" of the University's architecture school.

Besides its cantilever construction, the other striking feature of the 1,000-square-foot house is the north wall of the second story, made entirely of a barely opaque material that resembles glass but is in fact a polymer material called Polygal, said to provide greater insulation than glass. The first floor is the kitchen and living area and the second floor has two bedrooms and a second bath bath.

The house has not been sold, but Downtown Little Rock Community Development Corp. head Scott Grummer said there's a waiting list for homes in Pettaway. It will sell for around $125,000. The first UA Design/Build home is at 1519 Commerce St.

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