Anthony

Timberlands

Drawing inspiration from Arkansas’s forested landscapes and its history of industrial and agricultural structures, the design features a pleated roofscape that channels rainwater into a system of constructed wetlands, functioning in much the same way that the Ozark watersheds drain the range’s rocky ridges and forested piedmont.

A series of interwoven spaces within the building celebrate the logistics of material delivery, processing, and manufacture, their integration into academic research and experimentation, and their engagement of the public through the center’s activities and events. Each space flows into the next and each is inflected and informed by its adjacencies. The weave of structure, spatial experience, and educational program suffuses the building as it rises from the heavy rammed earth floors and trunk-like piers of the workshop up through the attic studios and library archive where daylight falls through a canopy of open rafter bays and slatted windows.