Fay Jones' Birthday Events Feature Awarding of Legacy Medals to Julie Snow, Ken and Liz Allen

In recognition of what would have been the 105th birthday of its namesake, the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design will host special events on Friday, Jan. 30, in Vol Walker Hall on the University of Arkansas campus. 

As part of this special day, Julie Snow, FAIA, a Minneapolis, Minnesota-based architect, and Ken and Liz Allen, residents of Fayetteville, will be honored as the 2026 recipients of the Fay Jones School Legacy Medal 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, the greater region, the United States and internationally.  

"As the design school named for Fay Jones, we celebrate his birthday each year by honoring architects and design advocates whose life and work resonate with his design ethos and principles," said Peter MacKeith, dean of the school. "Fay Jones' life was characterized by a spirit of generosity, a dedication to the place and people of his upbringing, deep relationships with his clients and their commissions, and a commitment to the practice and discipline of architecture. His work, mainly achieved at the scale of residential and small sacred commissions, is characterized by an attentiveness to the particulars of siting and environmental circumstances, and to the specifics of constructed space, configured natural light and the crafting of natural materials. This year, the school is pleased to honor architect Julie Snow, FAIA, and design advocates Ken and Liz Allen with this deserved recognition." 

Snow is being recognized in the category for practitioners beyond Arkansas whose work embodies the ethos of Fay Jones' work. Previous recipients were David Salmela in 2024 and Frank Harmon in 2025.

The Allens are being recognized in the category for Arkansas practitioners and architectural advocates whose work sustains the ethos of Fay Jones' work. David McKee was a recipient of this honor in 2024.

The medal for Julie Snow will be awarded during a 12 p.m. Jan. 30 ceremony held in Ken and Linda Sue Shollmier Hall, with a program that will include an address to students and faculty by Snow.

Celebratory cupcakes for Jones' birthday will be served following the awards ceremony on the first floor of Vol Walker Hall. 

The medal for Ken and Liz Allen will be awarded during the evening Winter Fest awards ceremony, which begins at 5:30 p.m. Jan. 30 in Vol Walker Hall.

About Julie Snow

Julie Snow, FAIA, NOMA, is the founding design principal of Snow Kreilich Architects, a studio-based practice located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The studio's interest in pragmatic and critical programmatic reflection results in innovative designs that expand our understanding of architectural performance. Design strategies engage issues of how architecture performs within each project's social, cultural and economic context. The practice has been recognized with numerous awards, including the AIA's 2018 Architecture Firm Award, which recognizes a practice that consistently has produced distinguished architecture for at least 10 years.

Snow has held several visiting professor positions and taught at the University of Minnesota College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, where she received the Ralph Rapson Award for Distinguished Teaching. In 2011, she was awarded the Architecture Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

About Ken and Liz Allen 

Ken and Liz Allen are both 1980 graduates of the University of Arkansas. Both trace their deep interest in architecture all the way back to the architecture lecture class they took here at the university as undergraduates. Living in Chicago in the early 1980s, that class came to life while touring many Frank Lloyd Wright homes.

By 1984, they were living in Dallas, where they purchased a home that had been designed by the principal of a major architecture firm for his own family. That experience taught them the value and benefit of living in a well-designed space.

Everything, the love of significant and historical architectural works and the desire to live in good design, came together when the Allens retired back to Fayetteville. They knew they wanted to live in a home designed by Fay Jones. By good fortune, in 2012 they were able to purchase Jones' Sequoyah Project, built in the late 1950s on Mount Sequoyah. They are daily amazed and grateful to have the opportunity to make their home in this incredible structure. As stewards rather than owners, they regularly open their home to architecture classes from the Fay Jones School and to national and local architecture tours.

Since returning to Fayetteville, as Senior Razorbacks, the Allens have enjoyed taking classes in architecture history at the Fay Jones School. They also helped initiate a local architecture interest group in Fayetteville that has met regularly for many years.

Because of their experience of living in a Fay Jones-designed home, the Allens purchased the Fay Jones-designed Brothers House in Fayetteville in order to preserve that structure. Knowing that the Brothers House deserved a careful and full restoration, they sold it to the person they knew could do it, architect David McKee. Under McKee's work and stewardship, the restored house has received numerous awards and recognition.

The Allens have endowed a number of scholarships at the U of A, including travel and financial need scholarships at the Fay Jones School. They also provided the initial funding to the endowment that funds preservation projects at the Fay and Gus Jones House. Both are members of the John G. Williams Fellowship of the Fay Jones School. In 2023, Ken and Liz received the Andrew J. Lucas Service Award from the University of Arkansas Alumni Association.

Ken Allen retired as Chief Financial Officer of Texas Industries, Inc. (NYSE). He has taught economics and finance as an adjunct professor at the Walton College of Business. Liz Allen serves on the Board of Directors of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy.

About Fay Jones

Jones, FAIA, was born Jan. 31, 1921, in Pine Bluff and grew up in El Dorado. He later attended the earliest architecture classes offered at the U of A, in the architecture program founded by John G. Williams. Jones graduated in the first class of architecture students and eventually returned to teach for 35 years and serve as the school's first dean. 

In his professional practice, he designed 135 houses and 15 chapels and churches across the country, most of which were in Arkansas. He was a recipient of the American Institute of Architects' highest honor, the AIA Gold Medal, in 1990. He died Aug. 30, 2004, at age 83.