The Walton Family Foundation Wednesday announced three new projects, including a park and school, for the Northwest Arkansas Design Excellence Program, which aims to improve the architectural quality of new public buildings and spaces in Benton and Washington counties.
“The Northwest Arkansas Design Excellence Program gives us an opportunity to support the unique urban fabric in five of the largest cities in the region,” said Karen Minkel, Home Region Program director for the Walton Family Foundation. “Schools, nonprofits and municipalities will have access to talented designers who will help us reimagine and enhance our built environment.”
The 2016 projects are:
- A municipal campus in downtown Springdale that will include a new criminal justice facility and renovated administration building. The new campus will allow the city to consolidate municipal departments and open property for the downtown revitalization.
- A 5-acre park in downtown Siloam Springs’ Medical Springs Park. The grant to the city of Siloam Springs will fund the design of a splash pad, amphitheater, landscaped areas, open green spaces and a new farmers market venue.
- Thaden School in downtown Bentonville, which recently announced that award-winning architects Eskew+Dumez+Ripple of New Orleans and Marlon Blackwell Architects of Fayetteville will design its 30-acre campus master plan, school buildings and landscape.
This year, 16 firms were added to the inaugural pool of 36 designers selected in 2015. The program includes more than 50 architecture and landscape architecture firms from 15 states, the District of Columbia, Canada and Denmark.
The inaugural projects in 2015 include a 51,500-SF performance arts space for TheatreSquared in downtown Fayetteville; a 28,000-SF adaptive reuse project for the Rogers Historical Museum in downtown Rogers; and a 44,000-SF facility and half-acre playground for the Helen R. Walton Children’s Enrichment Center in downtown Bentonville.
The Northwest Arkansas Design Excellence Program provides financial support to entities such as school districts; county, state or local municipalities; and nonprofits that intend to develop space for public purposes.
The nine architecture and seven landscape architecture firms that join the program in 2016 include:
- Allied Works Architecture – New York, New York
- Andropogon Associates – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Architecture Research Office – New York, New York
- CARBO Landscape Architecture – Baton Rouge, Louisiana
- Design Workshop, Inc. – Aspen, Colorado
- Fougeron Architecture – San Francisco, California
- Kevin Daly Architects – Santa Monica, California
- Krueck + Sexton Architects – Chicago, Illinois
- Gehl – Copenhagen, Denmark
- Marble Fairbanks – New York, New York
- MASS Design Group – Boston, Massachusetts
- Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects – Charlottesville, Virginia
- Reed Hilderbrand Landscape Architecture – Cambridge, Massachusetts
- Rogers Partners – New York, New York
- Ross Barney Architects – Chicago, Illinois
- W Architecture & Landscape Architecture – New York, New York
The program’s pool will reopen in 2018.
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