Bill Mackey

Lecturer in Architecture

Programs

  • Architecture
  • School of Architecture
Bill Mackey

University of Arizona - Downtown

520-664-4847
mackeyiv@arizona.edu

Areas of Expertise

  • 19th and 20th century housing
  • Design methodologies
  • Public space
  • Social and political construction of space

Biography

Bill Mackey is a principal of Worker, Inc., a firm specializing in art and architecture. The work explores human connections to built environments and bridges the theory and practice of social sciences, planning, architecture and art. Engagement simultaneously includes public, academic and professional fields.  

For over 25 years Bill has practiced architecture in the Tucson region. Projects range from private to public, hi-end to low-end, private garages to a 182-unit multi-family housing development and restaurants, zoos, jails and elementary schools (sadly, programmatically similar).  

He has poked fun and embraced (with love and hate) the landscape of Tucson and the policies in place that help create it. He presents critiques in public exhibitions, books and ephemera. He is asked to present work at the Museum of Contemporary Art and impromptu “art” events organized by (un)established artists of Tucson. He is sometimes taken seriously and has sat as a commissioner with the Tucson Pima County Historical Commission, a stakeholder for the development of Accessory Dwelling Units in the city of Tucson, a member of the steering committee for Affordable Housing for the Elderly of Tucson, asked to give presentations at neighborhood associations, schools and the Development Services Department at the city of Tucson, and written reports and studies for the Drachman Institute of the College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture at the University of Arizona. 

Bill has received grants from the Graham Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Tucson Pima Arts Council and the Arts Foundation for Southern Arizona and Tucson. His clients keep calling him back and refer him to other people. 

Bill has taught as a lecturer at the School of Architecture, the Honors College and the Department of Geography and Regional Development at the University of Arizona since 2006. 

Courses Taught

  • ARC102 Foundation Studio
  • ARC201 Performance Studio
  • ARC202 Dwelling Studio
  • ARC301 Land Ethic
  • ARC302 Urban Housing
  • ARC451 Elective Studio
  • ARC497 Capstone Prep 
  • ARC497/597 Special Projects, Exhibition
  • ARC497/597 Urban Explorations
  • ARC498 Capstone Studio
  • ARC510 Advanced Design Studio
  • ARC909 Master’s Project
  • HNRS207H Urban Exhibition
  • GEOG375 Metropolitan Tucson

News, Research and Projects

Guess That Arroyo cover

Architecture Lecturer Bill Mackey’s Book ‘Guess That Arroyo’ Sheds Playful Light on the Tucson Region Watershed

“Arroyos on the desert are magic,” writes CAPLA Lecturer in Architecture Bill Mackey in the introduction to his new bilingual book Guess That Arroyo: Tucson, developed in collaboration with the Watershed Management Group's River Run Network.