By Shannon Sturgis Local architect Reese Rowland has designed buildings all over central Arkansas, including the Arkansas Studies Institute.

LITTLE ROCK — Chances are, you don't know Reese Rowland, but you've been in one of his buildings. Which is what passes for fame among architects. The buildings themselves are the celebrities.

Perhaps every semi-educated person on the globe has seen the graceful white curves of the opera house in Sydney, or the terra cotta dome of the cathedral in Florence, but it's a stretch to say that even one percent of humanity could connect one with JÃ,rn Utzon and the other with oldman Brunelleschi himself.

And that one percent? You could call them the architecture nerds, the dorks of design, the folks who at some point in life got a certain thrill out of building stuff. Whether from concrete and steel I-beams or, as in most cases, Legos and Lincoln Logs.

There aren't a lot of folks who can wander through Little Rock's newer districts and point at one glass-framed structure after another and say: Reese designed that. Yes, that's a Rowland original. Yet, considering the growing number of Reese Rowland signature buildings in Little Rock, and across Arkansas, there really should be hundreds of folks who can do just that.

Thousands of commuters on Interstate 30 see Rowland's work every day, either in the Heifer International headquarters to the east or the Acxiom building looming immediately to the west. Or the just-opened Arkansas Studies Institute nearer the Arkansas River. They just don't know it.

A good number of Rowland's fans/well-wishers, got together on a stormy Tuesday night recently to hear a lecture from the principal and project designer at Polk Stanley Rowland Curzon Porter Architects of Little Rock. Rowland talked about the work he's done in Little Rock, detailed some of the special assignments he's worked on, and outlined the ideas/ideals he keeps in mind when he works. Or as he put it, the "story of time, place and purpose" and "the craft of space, making spaces that inspire."

Which is maybe how Rowland thinks of architecture. Not so much the act of building buildings, but of making spaces where people live and work. And what spaces can he claim? There's the still-slick, still-new headquarters building for the Little Rock Chamber of Commerce at the corner of La Harpe Boulevard and President Clinton Avenue; the one with the big flat-screen TV out front. There's the Acxiom building just south of the River Market and, out in west Little Rock, there's Acxiom's data-storage facility. There's also Heifer's new education center. And the Arkansas Studies Institute building, which is actually the combination of three buildings, one brand-new, and the other two dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Apologies for all others that were missed.

All of which makes quite a body of work for one, still-young architect working in a still-small town like Little Rock. Rowland, 42, is married with two young sons who both made an appearance in his presentation. They seem to weigh heavily on his mind. There's a shot of them wandering near the old Rowland family home outside Paris, Ark., and some old family photographs of kinfolks that have long-since died. They are flat-browed men and tight-lipped women, folks born to the land in ways that most of today's office-bound workforce could hardly comprehend. Rowland seems to have an extraordinary preoccupation with the past and the future, with time, and how generations pass into generations. You might call it an occupational hazard.

Most folks might go to work each day just working till happy hour, without much thought to how that day's work will weather the years, how it will be remembered, analyzed, discussed and maybe even destroyed. But an architect has to think about that stuff. He has to think about today, next year, next decade, next century.

Which might explain the vocabulary that Rowland uses to describe his work: Time, place and purpose, speed and movement, juxtaposition, honesty, and stewardship. The name of his lecture that rainy night: Creating Place Through an Architecture of Meaning. (It was part of a series called the Art of Architecture put on every year by the Arkansas Arts Center.)

The idea being that these principles didn't just guide the design of Rowland's buildings. The buildings are supposed to express them as well. Sort of an architectural time capsule or bookmark for future generations, a statement of what Arkansas's capital city and its population were thinking around the turn of the 21st century. Meaning these aren't just the principles and ideals of one Reese Rowland, architect, but of the rest of us as well.

Hot Seat: Reese Rowland:

What would you eat for your last meal? A good filet, a loaded potato and Cajun gumbo.

If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would it be? I have been to Italy, and it is unbelievable - the greatest collection of significant architecture in the world. I would want to return there again and again.

When you were a kid, what did you want to be? A carpenter. At age 4 or 5 I watched the building of an addition to the family house, and my grandmother bought me a children's tool box, which I carried around the entire time. I think I wore the builder out. It was my first official construction administration of a project.

What historical era would you like to live in? The height of the Roman Empire; however, being a Christian of German decent, I might need to rethink that : A Germanic Christian probably would not have fared well in the Empire ... my admiration for the Coliseum might not have been as strong as it is now.

What book has had the biggest effect on your life and why? Probably like most, the Bible. Every meaningful truth and belief in my life comes from that book.