Thorncrown Chapel and other works of E. Fay Jones to go virtual

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design and the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas with $250,000 to help bring the work of its namesake—the architect and native Arkansan E. Fay Jones—to virtual life through interactive gaming technology.

The funds, awarded through an NEH Digital Projects for the Public grant, will be used by professors Greg Herman and David Fredrick to fully develop Housing the Human and the Sacred, a digital experience that will allow users to explore six of Jones’s architectural creations via touch-based kiosks, virtual headsets, and an interactive internet platform. Housing the Human and the Sacred is a further realization of A House of the Ozarks, a three-years-in-the-making prototype virtual experience that enables users to virtually tour the self-designed Fayetteville home Jones shared with his wife, Gus. Like most of Jones’s work, his family home was designed in accordance with the principals of organic architecture espoused by his mentor, Frank Lloyd Wright.