Ligatures and Fusions: Joinery and Conjunction in Fay Jones’s Thorncrown Chapel (1980) and Mildred B. Cooper Memorial Chapel (1988)

Abstract

Abstract: The American architect Fay Jones (1921–2004) designed chapels that are recognized for their modern interpretation of traditional ritualistic practices to enrich the spatial, visual, and liturgical experience of worshippers and visitors alike. This note will examine two prominent chapels that Jones designed in Arkansas—the Thorncrown Chapel (1980) in Eureka Springs and Mildred B. Cooper Memorial Chapel (1988) in Bella Vista—to interpret the architect’s material and phenomenological intents in joinery and conjunction. By considering Jones’s interpretation of anthropomorphism in relation to Gothic structural systems, this note offers a comparison of the two celebrated chapels. In both chapels, Jones applied an inconsistent means of joining one material to another to evoke specific spatial and architectural experiences. This note proposes that these material junctions constitute ligatures and fusions. This study defines ligature as a tied or fastened connection, and a fusion as juxtaposition of materials by adjacency. Architecturally a ligature is a junction where one material is fastened to another through the agency of a third element, a mediating element—a connector, or a space—as in the case of the voids at the crossings of the steel roof trusses at Thorncrown Chapel. Fusion is an intersection where one material rests on another, without the assistance of a mediating element—as in the instance of the tall steel columns that rest on the stone lateral walls at Cooper Chapel. Based on these classifications, this essay explores the analogous relationship between human skeletal joints and architectural junctions in the chapels. This comparison demonstrates the nuances of Jones’s orchestration of spatial, material, and structural elements as architectural tropes of the human anatomy. Utilizing sketches, drawings, and photos from the Jones papers housed at the University of Arkansas as well as illustrations prepared for this analysis, this note offers an anthropomorphic interpretation of the details and joinery in the work of Fay Jones.