February 5, 2025 (RALEIGH, NC) – This week, the University of Arkansas honored Raleigh, NC, architect and author Frank Harmon, FAIA, when he received the Fay Jones School Legacy Medal in Architecture.

The award honors and extends the legacy of the School of Architecture and Design’s namesake, American architect and Arkansas native E. Fay Jones (1921-2004) – a legacy that conveys “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.”

“I couldn’t hope for a greater honor,” Harmon said, smiling broadly, when he received word of the award from the School’s Dean Peter MacKeith. “Fay Jones’s buildings fit their surroundings as comfortably as a bird’s nest in a thicket. He was as gentle and courteous in person as his buildings were in the landscape. I admired him immensely.”

Fay Jones’s work, including his widely celebrated Thorncrown Chapel, exude “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,” MacKeith stated in his letter to Harmon. A Legacy Medal recipient should be “an architect whose career and work resonates with these aspects of Fay Jones’ life and work. [And] In the view of our selection committee, your work resonates with the example set by our namesake.”

Frank Harmon, FAIA, has designed sustainable modern buildings across the Southeast for 40 years. He discovered architecture, he says, as a child playing in the streams and woods surrounding his boyhood home in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Recognized nationally as a leader in modern, sustainable, regionally appropriate design, Harmon’s work engages pressing contemporary issues such as placelessness, sustainability, and restoration of cities and nature. From small sheds and houses to 70,000-square-foot corporate headquarters and LEED-certified environmental education facilities, his buildings are specific to their sites and use materials to connect them to their landscapes, such as hurricane-felled cypress and rock from local quarries. Combined with airy breezeways, outdoor living spaces, deep roof overhangs, and unpainted wood, Harmon’s projects embody the vernacular legacy of the South while maintaining a distinguished modernism.

Harmon’s buildings have been published often and have garnered over 200 design awards. In 2013 he received AIA NC’s highest honor, the Gold Medal for Architectural Design.

As the third recipient of the Fay Jones School’s legacy award, Harmon received an inscribed medal and presented a public lecture at the School on the afternoon of January 27. Entitled “Writing and Sketching as Keys to Design,” his lecture emanated from his book “Native Places: Drawing as a Way to See” (ORO Editions, publisher).

For more information on Frank Harmon and his legacy, click here.

For more information on the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, click here.

For more information on “Native Places: Drawing as a Way to See,” click here.