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Jan 30, 2024

Anthony Timberlands Center gains award recognition

Though not even built yet, the Anthony Timberlands Center for Design and

Though not even built yet, the Anthony Timberlands Center for Design and Materials Innovation is already winning awards.

The Timberlands Center, part of the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville's Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, was recently named the Overall Winner in the AR Future Projects Awards 2023, announced by The Architectural Review, according to the university. Named the Future Project of the Year 2023, the center was the only North American project recognized, and it also won the award for education, a new category this year.

"Itself a lesson in timber construction, the building aims to educate new practitioners and inspire the use of wood in construction, consolidating the prominence of Arkansas in the timber industry," according to The Architectural Review. The Timberlands Center, expected to open next fall, is a "tremendously accomplished piece of architecture, and a great building in which to learn about timber technologies," as well as a "fascinating progression of [Grafton Architects'] work away from concrete," the magazine said.

The center is being designed by Grafton Architects, a Dublin-based firm whose co-founders won the 2020 Pritzker Prize, considered one of the top prizes -- if not the top -- in the field of architecture, according to the university. It will be located not on the main UA-Fayetteville campus, but, rather, in the university's new Windgate Art and Design District, on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in the southern part of the city, and when it opens, it will join -- among other university buildings -- the Studio and Design Center, which opened for classes in January.

The Timberlands Center will house the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design's graduate program in timber and wood. It will also be an epicenter for its multiple timber and wood initiatives, as well as the home for the school's existing design-build program and an expanded digital fabrication laboratory.

The latest cost estimate for the center is $33.5 million, a majority of which is covered by private donations, with the rest paid by university funds. The four-story, 44,800-square-foot center will include studios, seminar and conference rooms, faculty offices, a small auditorium and a public exhibition space.

Launched in 2002, the AR Future Projects awards are a window into "tomorrow's cities," according to the university. Spanning a dozen categories, they celebrate excellence in unbuilt and incomplete projects, and the potential for positive contribution to communities, neighborhoods and urban landscapes around the world.

The Architectural Review is "one of the world's leading architectural journals," and receiving this recognition "positions the university and the state to an international dimension," Peter MacKeith, dean of the Fay Jones School, said in a news release from the university. "Our selection of Grafton Architects and Modus Studio, together with the entire team of consultants, has paid dividends time and again over the last several years, and this award augurs well for the long-term significance of the undertaking."

The Timberlands Center will feature a fabrication shop as its largest and most active space, encompassing a large central bay with a metal workshop, seminar room and small digital lab, as well as a dedicated space for a large CNC router, according to the university. A pair of covered outdoor teaching terraces and a 12,000-square-foot pedestrian plaza known as Anthony Way will be located on the western side of the center, an area that will also include a grove of softwood and hardwood trees of the same species that represent those native to the state and commonly used in manufacturing and construction.

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