You can judge University of Arkansas Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design Dean Peter MacKeith's professional success by a multitude of metrics: Enrollment in the school has increased; retention and graduation rates have skyrocketed; curricular programs have expanded.
But MacKeith's impact goes far beyond the Fayetteville campus. From the moment he hit the rich Arkansas soil, he began taking stock of one of the state's most beneficial agricultural offerings -- timber production -- and started brainstorming ways he could maximize the economics surrounding it.
"Going back to [my] first encounters of understanding architecture, it's always been grounded in a certain tactility to surfaces and textures and constructions," he says. "There's always been, I think, that innate attraction to the use of wood, either at the scale of the hand or at the scale of the building. All of these things begin to thread together to come to this point where: I'm in a forested state.
"Here's Fay Jones, who can be understood in many ways, but, for some reason, people have not seen the virtuosity that he has with a two-by-four or a two-by-six -- he's really like a Mozart with dimension lumber as the notes of the musical scale. So all of these things just interlace -- right time, right place, right conditions, right people -- to bring all of this forward in a way that still surprises me."
The result of MacKeith's singular focus is striking. In large part due to MacKeith's enthusiasm and advocacy for mass timber -- a general term for wood laminates -- Walmart Inc. chose to use it as its main building material on the 350-acre home office under construction right now.
In August, Canada's Structurlam Mass Timber Corp. started manufacturing mass timber at its new Conway facility, a $90 million investment that brought 130 jobs to the Central Arkansas area. UA has built new residence halls and is in the process of building the Anthony Timberlands Center for Design and Materials Innovation, all using mass timber. The construction material has been popular in Europe for decades -- proponents say its use as a construction material (versus traditional concrete and steel) reduces a building's carbon footprint, consumes less energy and simplifies the building process -- but it was not until fairly recently that the mass timber trend started gaining momentum in the United States. MacKeith's advocacy put Arkansas at the forefront of a construction revolution.
"He's a leader, I would say, not only nationally, but also internationally, in mass timber construction," notes U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman, who calls himself a fan of MacKeith's work and has had him testify before a panel in Washington about the subject. "I think he's just a real asset with the expertise that he brings, for a product that can be very beneficial to the whole state, especially the congressional district I represent where there's so much timber being grown."
"He was an innovator, he was a creator, and he was a collaborator," says Ray Dillon, CEO of Deltic Timber, of his first meeting with MacKeith. "It was a perfect fit for him to become integrated into the forest products industry in Arkansas, and, candidly, he has made a tremendous difference in what's happening here. There would not be a [Cross Laminated Timber] plant in Conway, Arkansas; there would not be dormitories on the University of Arkansas campus made from CLT; or, it's my belief, that Walmart would not be designing its new corporate headquarters [with CLT] if it was not for Dean Peter MacKeith."
POETIC ARCHITECT
In conversation, MacKeith is thoughtful and contemplative, his sentences occasionally peppered with poetic turns of phrase -- not too surprising once you learn that he was an English literature major (along with international relations) in his undergraduate studies at the University of Virginia, and the portfolio he submitted with his application to the Yale School of Architecture for graduate school included poems he'd written in class. His passion for architecture came to him when, on a whim, he took a freshman level class in the subject his senior year.
"Just like every other moment I could describe in terms of transformative education, that lecture and that course changed my life," he says. "Wonderful professor who introduced architecture to everyone listening in not only as the art and science of constructing space and the built environment, but really as a synthesis of politics, economics, finances, philosophy -- just about everything that I was also interested in, but in a tangible, substantial way. That had me hooked from the very first lecture."
There are two themes that reoccur in MacKeith's life story: the benefit of strong family connections and the deep importance of strong educators. The themes collide in MacKeith's father, a passionate educator, a general sciences teacher whose areas of expertise included physics, chemistry and mathematics -- although "these are not subjects that I especially appreciated," comments MacKeith dryly. When he was in third grade, MacKeith distinctly remembers his father coming into his classroom as a special visitor. The elder MacKeith stood in front of the class and, reaching into the bag he was carrying, brought out Styrofoam balls, string and tinker toy sticks, then, as if by magic, began assembling them into something marvelous.
"And, as he's talking -- 'Here's the sun, and here's the earth'-- he's building the solar system in front of us, quite three-dimensionally and very substantially," MacKeith says. "It was just a wonderful science lesson of how to make something abstract real and visible." The episode ended up in the eulogy that MacKeith wrote for his beloved father who passed away in February. "The way I described it was that my father built the known universe for me in front of my eyes. That's what, of course, parents do. And then, of course, in a larger sense, they just continued to say, 'Keep going: This is what we know. You say you want to go into architecture, we don't know a whole lot about that, but we'll trust you and support you in going out and making or finding your own universe.'"
LOOK IT UP
The second of four children, MacKeith has fond memories of his childhood, much of which was focused on his parents' emphasis on education.
"If you had a question, 'Go look it up,'" MacKeith says. Or, "'Let's go to the library every Saturday after soccer practice.' And they were tremendously supportive of me."
That support included becoming avid spectators at the soccer games in which MacKeith started playing around the age of 10.
"I became as addicted to that as I was to reading and writing and drawing," MacKeith says, and he was talented enough to be recruited for his prowess in the sport by a number of colleges.
"I was playing soccer for four years in the Division I program [at the University of Virginia] and was captain of the soccer team by the time I was a junior," he notes. "We were on an upward trajectory -- it was a very intense program that ultimately qualified for the NCAA tournament by the time I was a junior. It was a kind of unique undergraduate experience, to say the least."
After the Architecture 101 class he took his senior year sealed that as his career choice, MacKeith applied and was accepted to the graduate program at the Yale School of Architecture. Post-graduation, he taught classes there for several years.
"I knew, ultimately that I could not stay there forever -- that was going to be far too passive, far too, almost, easy," he says. "And I needed to move out into the world and to challenge myself again. Sometimes, of course, you do things simply out of a kind of therapeutic need."
FINLAND DREAMING
For MacKeith, that need manifested as a Fulbright Scholar application; he wanted to travel to and learn in Finland. He'd grown obsessed, he says, with that country's history of architecture.
"The only way, of course, to confront your obsession is you have to label it, you have to experience it, and you can't look at it from afar," MacKeith says. "The Fulbright Program was the catalytic converter, but then Finland, itself, became a whole other transformational experience."
In total, MacKeith would spend 10 years in Finland, working professionally and teaching at the master's level.
"You stay because of the people -- the friendships you make, the relationships you build, the experiences that you have," he answers when asked what kept him in the country for a decade. "This is where I met my daughter's mother, where we had a child together. We're no longer together, but we have a beautiful child, we're wonderful friends. So, at some level, it's emotional, it's about relationships. Then it's about being committed to the place where your child is and wanting to be part of that society, in that culture, and contribute to it in a way that might seem difficult for an American."
When he was lured away from Finland to serve as the associate dean for the School of Architecture at Washington University in St. Louis, he had no intention of losing that connection with Finland and his daughter, Ada. A stipulation of accepting a position there was that he would be able to travel to Finland every six weeks. Cynthia Weese, who was dean at Washington University at the time, says that deal was worth it.
"He was, hands down, the best candidate," she says. "He had experience in both undergraduate and graduate students [and] had been leading the international graduate program in Finland, so I thought he would be a perfect fit."
Weese says MacKeith came to St. Louis with a wide base of international professional contacts, a true boon to the students studying at Washington University. As he would later do at the University of Arkansas, MacKeith set up the opportunity for students to study in Finland.
"Finland has a wonderful architectural history from the early part of the 20th century through now," Weese says. "And so it's a very important example of a relatively small country -- a quite small country, frankly -- where culture and architecture are entwined in a marvelous way, and it's a wonderful place to learn."
MacKeith's connection to Finland remained so strong that he served as an honorary consul for Finland in Missouri from 2012 to 2014 and, in 2014, was installed as a Knight, First Class, of the Order of the Lion of Finland "in recognition of his contributions to the advancement of Finnish culture," according to the UA website.
RAZORBACK COUNTRY
Ultimately, MacKeith was at Washington University for 15 years; he would meet and marry his wife there, and he put down roots. It wasn’t an easy decision, he says — his wife was born and raised in St. Louis, so both would be leaving behind family and friends — but when an offer from the University of Arkansas came to step into the dean’s shoes, he couldn’t resist the challenge. He had professional contacts and acquaintances at the school — E. Fay Jones Chair in Architecture and Distinguished Professor Marlon Blackwell, for one, who had appointed MacKeith to the school’s professional advisory board. Blackwell says there were many aspects of MacKeith and his career that made him a good choice for the UA, but the work he’s forged in the world of timber, says Blackwell, was both unexpected and impressive.
"I think he recognized that there was a ... kind of manufacturing hole here, even though we're one of the big, forested states," Blackwell says. "We have a great tradition of the lumber industry here. So how does this become educational? How can it become research? In other words, how can we be thought leaders in that? And that's how he was thinking about it: By marrying the two together, you could actually expand programs into graduate programs [and] research, which would generate more resilient economies around the timber industry and help bring it into the 21st century here in Arkansas. It was all there, it just needed somebody to step in and say, 'Let's start making the connections.' And that would make much more robust educational opportunities and much more robust economic opportunities, which is what the university should be doing in many ways -- helping generate opportunities and jobs in the state."
The benefits of mass timber as a building material -- its particular combination of beauty and pragmatism -- will be on full display in the new 45,000-square-foot Anthony Timberlands Center for Design and Materials Innovation at the University of Arkansas. According to a university press release, it will "serve as the epicenter for the Fay Jones School's multiple timber and wood design initiatives, house the school's existing and expanding design-build program and fabrication technologies laboratories and serve as the new home to the school's emerging graduate program in timber and wood design."
The "emerging graduate program in timber and wood design" referenced in the press release is yet another direct result of MacKeith's advocacy.
"I've said many times: I didn't come to this school and university to build a new building," says MacKeith, who took the position as dean a year after renovations were completed for Vol Walker Hall, when the Steven L. Anderson Design Center had just been added.
"I didn't have to. We had the new building. What I did have to do was to build a culture within that building -- a culture of collaboration, interdisciplinary respect, productivity, in a way that a school could almost be more than what it even imagined itself could be. I say this now repeatedly, too: This has always been about being more than what you imagine yourself to be. That's what I think education enables you to do. It's what architecture enables you to do. It's what a university can enable you to do."