Planning a trip around architecture tourism requires a bit of strategy. If it's Gothic works you seek, maybe London. Dubai is rich with modernism. Miami is known for Art Deco. Name a city—Venice, San Francisco, Chicago, Mexico City—and you can find great architecture, but you can find great architecture outside of those large cities as well.
The new book, Out There: New Architecture Across America, delivers a guide to energetic architecture across the country. Authors Peter MacKeith, Robert Ivy, and Kathleen McGuigan place a spotlight on 50 architectural firms, including Modus Studio in Fayetteville. MacKeith, who recently retired as the dean of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, came to the Carver Center for Public Radio to talk about the new book.
Also part of our discussion: Marlon Blackwell, founding principal of Marlon Blackwell Architects and recipient of the 2020 AIA Gold Medal. He wrote the foreword for the book. And also with us were three principals from Modus Studio: Chris Baribeau, Jason Wright, and Josh Siebert.
MacKeith says the title of the book refers to an annual issue of Architectural Record launched in the early 2000s when Robert Ivy was editor-in-chief. That annual issue, called "Out There"—
Peter MacKeith: And not by coincidence, that first initial issue had on its cover what we now understand as the Keenan Towerhouse by Marlon Blackwell Architects. And here I'll pass the story on to Marlon.
Marlon Blackwell: Yeah, well, yeah, so I sort of finagled my way into his office in 2000, I think, as a way to kind of have some lunch and actually show some work. Because I think everything I was sending out was going to circular file 13 or something, and I thought, "Well, I'll just go in person, make up a reason to be in New York."
And he was kind enough to see me because I'd met him at a Fay Jones conference here in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and Bob Ivy wrote the Fay Jones monograph, National Book Award winner—really lovely thing. So he was kind enough to see me, and I showed him the work: Honey House, the Tower House. And he just got kind of excited about the work, called in his editors, made me start over, showed the work. He shooed them out, closed the door. He turns around very slowly and says, "I've been thinking about an issue for folks like you out in the middle of nowhere doing work, getting up every day, doing work in your place for the community, based in that."
And he said, "We're going to publish this work as a firm profile. We do several profiles of people like yourself all over the country." And that was the first issue. And then, like Peter said, they never tell you who's going to be on the cover. The Keenan Towerhouse shows up on the cover, which was the first kind of national press that we ever got. And it just kind of blew us away, and then kicked it off. And subsequently, it just kept happening: out there, out there, out there.
It only makes sense that 25 years later that it would become a book. But the definition—now I'm going to kick it back to Peter on this, and we can paddle this back and forth—on the definition of "out there" has evolved.
MacKeith: It has. From that first Architectural Record issue in 2001, and then subsequent issues highlighting practices not just in the United States, but actually Canada as well, and further afield, is one thing. So we can talk about geographical reach, but really the "out there" has to do with out there beyond the accepted or known or recognized centers of media culture, even the known, recognized centers of architectural excellence.
I think the real fundamental ground here is there is across the United States great architecture being made each and every day across the country in small cities, small towns, literally one-traffic-light communities, that is deeply rooted in its place, being designed by architects who care deeply about their communities and want to, in a sense, live and die with their architecture in those communities. It's a civic architecture that is maybe, I think, under-recognized, but needs to be valorized now, perhaps now more than ever given where we are. And I think that's part of the appeal of this, as we have found as we've talked about this book, Out There. It is actually in all of us.
Kellams: 50 firms profiled, some of them in Austin or Philadelphia, but some in Springfield, Missouri, or Mississippi, or Fayetteville, Arkansas.
MacKeith: Absolutely. And here, too, I have to say that there is a rootedness for this book in this community in Northwest Arkansas—in Fayetteville, Springdale, Bentonville, all in between. And that, of course, very much highlights the work of Modus Studio. And as you've also indicated, great people up in Springfield and people in Jackson, Mississippi—it's something of a family altogether. But absolutely, this is what has allowed us to justifiably highlight Modus and the good work they've been doing for many years now in Northwest Arkansas.
Kellams: Gentlemen, Modus. I mean, I've spoken with each of you about various projects, and one thing that does come up is the rootedness. I mean, you talk about creating something where you live that you'll drive by every day, and that plays a part into what you do?
Chris Baribeau: Absolutely, yeah. I think I can speak for all three of us that under sort of the wisdom and guidance of Marlon and Ati Blackwell over the years, we've all had our hand working under them and under their guidance. And I think one of the big things learned along that way is be present, be in the place, understand the place, and perhaps—to borrow something from Brian MacKay-Lyons—sort of tilling the soil of a place in that work. And so I think looking to them throughout our careers really resonated with us that we can work at a different scale and can work in our place and do meaningful architecture along the way.
Kellams: One of the Modus projects that's profiled in Out There: New Architecture Across America is the elementary school in England, Arkansas, which not many people drive through England to go through. I mean, you've got to be wanting to go there, so I don't think a lot of people know about it. Tell me about this beautiful building.
Josh Siebert: Well, you know, we got the call roughly in 2018 to get involved with it through some relationships. We spent quite a bit of time in our first 10, 12 years doing a lot of K-12 work, so we built some relationships. And a superintendent had made his way down to England and said, "We really would like to do something nice. It's a community of 2,600 people, roughly, but we don't know what that looks like. At the same time, we don't want anything too fancy."
So they sat down with us, and we helped them pass a millage and were able to kind of engage them in what a pre-K through sixth grade school could look like in a place like that—a place deeply enriched into the agriculture of their community. At the same time, those students are going from there to all over the world and doing different great things, so their environment needed to reflect their space where they're from, and at the same time give them the ability to be inspired to do whatever they want to do.
Good space should happen everywhere. And I, like Chris, follow Marlon's lead. I remember one of the first times as a student under Marlon, he had said, "You know, everybody deserves great space." And this is a community that—we always strive to do that, whether you're—I'm from a small community of 1,800 people in Green Forest, Arkansas—whether you're from a small community or a big place, you have the ability to make a big impact. And so that's your responsibility: to give back in that way. So we always try to till that soil and go hard at it.
Kellams: Marlon, I think about going on a walkthrough with you through the Gentry Library and then Welcome Health, and what you would talk about was the people that were going to be in that space. You mentioned, "See this detail," but it was always people first.
Blackwell: Well, I mean, that's kind of part of the idea of putting purpose first. We like to say we put purpose before profit—maybe a crazy business plan, but I think you have to have the purpose. And for us, people are first. The idea of listening and caring, but we like to say we try to listen very carefully and deeply so that we can act boldly.
And that's in many ways what we've tried to do, is to really help manifest their desires and needs and hopes into something physical that can also be somewhat spiritual, right, and can touch people within. And I think the people who come there—like Josh was saying, I believe everyone deserves great architecture, and especially in places where you might least expect to find it. It raises people's expectations. It improves their reality—what they're surrounded by—and I think enriches their lives in many ways.
And so why not? Why shouldn't we do that? From a design standpoint, I don't think it should be reserved for the few; I think it's something that should be available to everyone. And then we have to find ways to make architecture that can do that, that can feel like—we like to call it instilling a fundamental civic dignity in the work, which in effect means that people feel like they're part owners, they're part authors, and part participants in this framework for life to happen.
That's what drives us in many ways in the work. And I think you'll see that in the book: a lot of the different practices, that's the motivation, that's what drives what they do.
MacKeith: I also want to highlight another common ground amongst the 50 practices, as I see it in my somewhat editorial role. I also want to set up Jason Wright for some commentary, too, that these practices, in our view—speaking from the trio of authors—are not only fundamentally rooted and fundamentally devoted to the people in these communities, but they're also devoted to what we'll call the craft of building, of just building well. And that means coming to terms with financial constraints, but also material possibilities and constructional possibilities all the way down to the scale of detail.
These are buildings that need to stand the test of time, because for many of these communities, like this school in England, it's the only work of significance that's going to be there probably for a long time. So they have to be built well, which is, again, why a practice like Modus is so essential—because it's not only about design, it's about fabrication and about prototyping and about working with materials. And here I just want to again turn to Jason on that side of things for Modus.
Jason Wright: I think trying to come up with a great design in the computer or in sketch form, that's one thing, but then to try to get that across to a construction team and have that pass muster in terms of budget is a whole other challenge. And so trying to find ways to honor the good design ideas but allow them to be realized in such a way that can be built for a budget, therein lies a design problem in and of itself.
And so that's kind of what we've tried to do over the years, is pick opportunities within the design that might see some resistance, but then make sure we either explain them well enough such that they're easily conveyed and understood—therefore not outpriced—or, in the cases that they are outpriced, well, we figure out how to do it ourselves, you know? You've got to get scrappy sometimes. And so that's kind of where the fab side comes in.
Kellams: More from our conversation about the new book, Out There: New Architecture Across America, ahead. We'll continue with a discussion about why architecture matters deeply, whether a home or a place for a bathroom. That's just ahead on this edition of Ozarks at Large.
We continue with a bit more from our conversation inspired by the new book, Out There: New Architecture Across America. We're talking with one of the three co-authors of the book, Peter MacKeith, Marlon Blackwell—who wrote the foreword for the book—and three principals from Modus Studio in Fayetteville, one of the 50 studios featured in the book: Chris Baribeau, Jason Wright, and Josh Siebert. We pick up the conversation with Chris Baribeau talking about some of the public park pavilions in this area designed by Modus.
Baribeau: Could this just be a place for bathrooms? We kind of joke in a lot of our recreational work and pavilion work in that way that the baseline program is a place for respite and a place to go to the restroom, whether it's on a trail or in the middle of a park. But within that, of course, we see great opportunity for breaking outside of the norm, sort of introducing a more energetic idea, a stronger sense of materiality in the work itself that people then get to experience, that you just might not take a chance on in other types or prototypes of architectural work.
So yeah, for us, projects like Centennial Park Pavilion here in Fayetteville or Coler in Bentonville or Osage Pavilion in Osage Park in Bentonville—all of those opportunities, a lot of which are, again, tilling the soil or evolution from our treehouse in Hot Springs that we did many, many years ago with Peter guiding us along the way. So we find all of those opportunities as just another way that people get to experience the potential and power of architecture, even though at the perfunctory level it's just a bathroom building.
Blackwell: Never "just"…
Baribeau: I say that tongue-in-cheek.
Blackwell: I mean, we're trying to interrupt the habitual way in which they see and feel the world, right, and introduce to them this familiarity and at the same time a kind of strangeness to it that I think is enriching and makes everyday life a bit more out of the mundane, a bit more extraordinary, in a way to have a moment of reflection, no matter what the program is.
And that's what architecture is—it isn't always just reserved for the museums and the embassies and the courthouses. Those are great places for it, but what happens if that level of design and thinking happens at a bathroom? We've done bathroom pavilions and carousels, shade pavilions—it's just there for shade, nothing else, and yet that somehow is a place of respite in the kind of madness of the everyday world that makes architecture contribute to someone's well-being.
MacKeith: That's fairly democratic, too. It brings good design to just anybody going down the street. You don't have to go to New York to see it all, or Chicago or LA. It's right here.
Blackwell: It's anywhere. It's on the side of the road. Light and shade are everywhere.
MacKeith: One other thing I would note, Kyle—and here, too, I would invite the principals of Modus to comment on this—is that it may seem coincidental that the origins and the energies of this book emerge from right here in Fayetteville. It emerges from Marlon and his practice with Ati over many years and the kind of spotlight that they have brought. It emerges from, yes, a great school of architecture. It emerges from the Design Excellence Program from the Walton Family Foundation.
It emerges, let's be clear, by virtue of Fay Jones, by virtue of Bruce Goff, by virtue of Chris Risher Sr. and Jr., by virtue of Warren Seagraves, by virtue of Paul Rudolph. There's these forebears, as we call them, which we note in this book as well, that really have laid and cultivated that territory long before.
This book focuses on practices right now that are going to be working into the future, but so much of what is happening is actually happening here in Northwest Arkansas in a very centered way. And so to the audience here, I would simply want to reinforce that we are living in actually an intense place of architectural excellence. It may not seem like that all the time, but we are. And Modus is in the middle of it, and there are a host of other practices in the middle of it. And maybe I'll put that question to you all: What's it like to live in the middle of such a fertile location?
Siebert: Well, I think for me, you said it best. It's a legacy of a school and people that have found their way to the school—people like Marlon, the teaching, the influence that he has had to our peers, to people that work with us. There's a lot of great, talented people, and you have to kind of catch the bug, if you will, when you care, your work comes out, and it's concentric to what you're trying to do and the genesis of the idea. How does it relate to the community that you're working with or the people that are going to be using it?
And so as a practice, our talent pool is very rich here. Our school is one of our great resources, because people are coming out of this learning some skills that are just unbelievable. And they do go out to other places and practice, and so for me, when I was reading and looking through the book, it's a sampling of work. When you go to a lot of these other practices, you start to see the breadth of their work as well, and that multiplies.
I think that multiplication is one of the greatest things. I've always said that this school, the legacy might not be just a few individuals; it's really a body of people that are doing things all over the country. You can always find University of Arkansas graduates all over doing some amazing things, so it's exponential. It grows.
I think about Pattern Ives and Chris Brown and people that we know that are kind of in our era, but there's amazing talent that is coming out of this place. It's not just Modus, of course, but we're trying to find a way that we participate in the bigger language.
Baribeau: Maybe I would just add that, relative to the place here in the Ozarks, there's just a certain sort of gritty scrappiness, a will to do better, but to hit the bottom-line practicality along the way that it takes to get things built and to get them built well. I think that is a really powerful source of both inspiration and tenacity in making great work happen. So to be in the center, in somewhat of an epicenter of what's going on here as Peter was suggesting—yeah, it's a powerful thing to tap into, but be willing to really be rooted and be part of it along the way.
Wright: Yeah, I'd say there's a distinct fraternity of folks from the Midwest and Midsouth and Southeast in general. I kind of refer to it as not the Ivy League, per se, but more like the Poison Ivy League.
MacKeith: I thought you were going to say the Kudzu League.
Wright: Yeah, yeah! But yes, we can all sort of relate to our place as a result of operating and growing up down in the thick of it—in the heat, the humidity, and all that. And I think that gets missed probably a lot in other places.
Blackwell: And the stewardship that we're trying to instill in our own practices, but also in the communities, trying to be good stewards of the community—again, it's how do you enrich everyday life, not just on Sunday? So that's really important with the work we're trying to do, and again, it goes to other practices here in Northwest Arkansas and beyond that are all getting up every day, fighting the good fight, and trying to make where they live better. That's all we can do.
Kellams: I don't know, maybe this is too clinical or too cold a word, but it seems like there's respect involved in this architecture—respect for the people who will see it and experience it here.
Blackwell: Care.
Kellams: Better. Care.
Blackwell: A lot of care for the folks because we live here. That's one thing I try to put forward here. When you live in a place, you're not just—a lot of these firms that come in, they're kind of like extraction firms, is what I call them. They extract their profit, they extract those kinds of things, but they don't live here. And it's easy for them to come in uncaring and not have the emotional investment in a project and then leave. It happens all the time, not just here, but everywhere. I find it very disconcerting.
And I think the folks that are here that have put their roots down and have also grown wings to dream big, they're the ones for me that are making the real difference here in the communities and in a place like Northwest Arkansas. And I think that's what, in many ways—we're kind of circling back around to the beginning here—but that's what this book is about in a lot of ways.
Kellams: Marlon Blackwell wrote the foreword to the new book Out There: New Architecture Across America, and he was part of our discussion about that book. We also heard Peter MacKeith, one of the co-authors of the book along with Kathleen McGuigan and Robert Ivy, and three principals from Fayetteville-based Modus Studio: Josh Siebert, Jason Wright, and Chris Baribeau. Modus Studio is one of the 50 firms from across the country included in the book, which is out now from Merrell Publishers.
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