Entries are due Friday, April 15th. 

Revival Architecture, Inc., is pleased to welcome its newest employee, Bailey Peairson. Bailey is a graduate of the University of Arkansas Fay Jones School of Architecture, receiving a bachelor’s degree in architecture with a minor in historic preservation. She and her colleagues received an award for best fifth-year design on a project related to sanctuary spaces for immigrants in Springdale. She will be an architectural intern working towards acquiring her license.

Revival Architecture was founded in 2018, focusing on the restoration and rehabilitation of historic properties. Among its projects are the rehabilitation and addition to the Mississippi County Courthouse in Blytheville and the restoration of the Johnny Cash Boyhood Home at Dyess. 

Recent appointments by Gov. Asa Hutchinson include these to the Arkansas State Board of Architects, Landscape Architects and Interior Designers:

H. Craig Boone, AIA, Van Buren, term expires April 26, 2026, replaces Brooks Jackson.

Julie Kelso, Little Rock, term expires April 26, 2027, replaces William Hall.

Jeffrey Steiling, AIA, Jonesboro, term expires April 26, 2027, replaces Michael Lejong, AIA.

A 2022 Envision design competition: 30 Crossing has been announced by studioMAIN. It focuses on developing ideas and raising awareness for the 20-acre property that will remain after the removal of the spiral I-30 on and off-ramps and the four-block-long Cantrell interchange between Second and Third Streets in downtown Little Rock. This property is located in the center of the River Market District, adjacent to the Clinton Library, Central Arkansas Library System’s Main Campus, Historic Arkansas Museum, Museum of Discovery, residential buildings and businesses.

As part of their agreement with the City of Little Rock, the Arkansas Department of Transpiration will turn this property over to the city as green space for the city to convert to park land, presenting a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the community to help shape what this park land could look like and offer. Envision 30 Crossing challenges participants to propose solutions that improve pedestrian connectivity, provide space for a variety of programming, and foster economic development. In addition to thinking about the green space, we are also looking for you to provide ideas on how to best utilize the heavily shaded area directly underneath the interstate. This is an opportunity to share your big ideas for one of the most visible and heavily traveled areas in all of Arkansas.

The 30 Crossing Envision competition will have three award categories: professional, public and student. We encourage anyone who is interested in sharing their ideas about how to use this property to participate, whether you have any previous design experience or not. Individual participant submissions are accepted, and collaborative group submissions are encouraged. For more information, please visit www.studio-main.org/envision and sign up today.

On March 10, the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas honored the school's first African American graduate, Wallace "Wali" Caradine, Jr., by naming the east entrance of Vol Walker Hall the Wallace Reed Caradine Memorial Entry. Caradine, who was born in 1949 and raised in West Memphis, came to the U of A campus in Fayetteville to study architecture, graduating in 1974 with a Bachelor of Architecture degree. After additional training at the Construction Management Institute in Dallas, he went on to make contributions to both the design and construction industries.

"Wali Caradine's legacy exemplifies the value of openness, accessibility and courage to us all, but perhaps most especially to all of our students," Peter MacKeith, dean of the Fay Jones School, said. "Architecture and design both reflects and shapes our society and our culture. It is therefore necessary for architecture and design education to be open, accessible and diverse in its participants and in its approaches, which also brings immeasurable creative benefits. To name a portal of the Fay Jones School in honor of Wali Caradine is to tangibly embody that openness, that accessibility and that diversity so necessary for a successful design education.”

Caradine began his career as a designer at Pat Kelley Magruder Architects in West Memphis, before eventually founding Design and Construction Associates in 1978, which became one of the largest minority-owned contracting firms in Arkansas. He returned to his first love of architecture and design in the mid-1990s and partnered with Ron Bene Woods to form Woods Caradine Architects, a relationship that lasted more than a decade. Their notable projects included two academic centers for UAPB and the Statehouse Convention Center Expansion in Little Rock and serving as associate architects for the William J. Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock. In 2007, he formed Caradine & Company, where he practiced until his retirement in 2017. He passed away in 2017 at age 68.

A group of faculty and staff in the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design wanted to help students become better designers and better design thinkers by providing a compendium of language and tools. So, they wrote the book The Making of Things: Modeling Processes & Effects in Architecture. They realized they could create something that was a combination of showing how to physically make things and understanding why someone might make something a certain way.

"As an educator, I think that's part of where our students really need to grow is in intentionality and figuring out why they want to do something and how to get the effects that they're trying to get," Frank Jacobus, an associate professor of architecture, said. Jacobus collaborated on this book with Angela Carpenter, fabrication labs manager and a school alumna; Rachel Smith Loerts, visiting instructor in architecture and a school alumna; Justin Tucker, wood fabrication specialist and a school alumnus; and Randal Dickinson, digital fabrication specialist. They started working on the book in 2018 and published their 298-page volume in the fall of 2021 through Routledge.

The ideas were rooted in work Carpenter and Smith Loerts had been doing in the school's fabrication labs to get students familiar with common making processes and also help them know the potentials of using the CNC router, 3D printers, laser cutters and other making equipment. "We were trying to give a resource that they could look at and better understand the processes and the effects," Smith Loerts said.

Despite Labor Shortage, Pandemic

Wrapping up a tumultuous business year 2021, the American Institute of Architects reports that architecture firms ended the year on a "high note with strong business conditions." The Architecture Billings Index (ABI) score for December rose to 52.0, a one-point increase from 51.0 in November. The study conveys overall robust business conditions, continued strong design demand, and record-breaking backlogs, at an average of 6.5 months, despite serious challenges related to the ongoing pandemic and the omicron variant, labor shortages, rising prices and constrained availability of construction material.

"Since demand for design projects has been healthy over the last year, recruiting architectural staff to keep up with project workloads has been a growing concern for firms," AIA Chief Economist Kermit Baker, Hon. AIA, PhD., said. "Architecture is one of the few industries where payrolls have already surpassed their pre-pandemic high, so meeting future staffing needs is a challenge that most firms will need to confront."

Note: If no preferred email address exists on their record, members will need to reach out to memberservices@aia.org to add their email address.