Euine Fay Jones : "architecture is invention, is innovation, but it is also remembering"

During his academic and early professional years, Fay Jones came into contact with some of the most important icons of American architectural production of an earlier generation including: Frank Lloyd Wright, Bruce Goff, Richard Neutra, Bernard Maybeck, Alden Dow and fellow Arkansan Edward Durell Stone. These individuals encompassed the wide range of architectural production in the United States during the first half of the 20th century and exerted a profound influence on Jones as he sought to form an individual approach to design. Through his encounters with each of these individuals and their related design work, Jones managed to emerge as a powerfully independent architect, with a unique understanding of the contemporary architectural climate as well as an intentional distance from the heart of the "modern" milieu.

Initially, this study will focus on the early biographical and academic history of Jones, as seen through the impressive collection of office records, personal files and interviews which are all now part of the Fay Jones Collection. This will lead to a more in depth study of the true extent to which Jones was influenced by the work of Wright and Goff, especially during his early career. Next, this study will focus more specifically on the inventive design process Jones created and its development throughout his career, as illustrated by several important case studies. It is important to note that although these studies are initially presented as part of a biographical narrative, the architectural objects are also products within a set of distinct historical and contemporary series. This is in direct reference to Kublerian analogies, with Jones's work as recent intervals within long historical chains of forms and meanings which will be discussed later.

Although the few case studies presented here are selected from the full gamut of Jones's, which included residences, pavilions and chapels, this essay will not undertake to explore the residences in their full scope. Instead, this study will focus more on the pavilions and chapels that Jones executed throughout his career. As previously indicated, there are multiple ways to read the enormous amount of evidence now preserved with the Fay Jones Collection. There are still many avenues of exploration that are still open and deserving of a scholarship. Through a close reading of Jones's formal design processes and the finished objects he created it is possible to unpack the complex issues of influence and precedent that surround the work of Euine Fay Jones and contribute to the overall trajectory of his career in terms of the use of historical allusion.

Digitization of this thesis was made possible by a generous grant from the Jefferson Trust, 2015.

Thesis originally deposited on 2016-02-18 in version 1.28 of Libra. This thesis was migrated to Libra2 on 2017-03-23 16:34:03.