FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – An applied research facility centered on Arkansas timber and wood products that will offer University of Arkansas students hands-on experience with innovative design and construction materials is another step closer to becoming reality.
The Anthony Timberlands Center for Design and Materials Innovation marked a milestone in the construction process on Tuesday, Sept. 17, with a “topping out” ceremony. More than 120 people gathered at the site of the future center to celebrate this construction industry tradition, which, for this building and its cascading roof plane, recognizes the positioning of the highest point of the structure. Attendees also signed the wooden structural beam that will be the last piece to be installed in the overall structure next month.
The Anthony Timberlands Center is part of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, the state’s only school of architecture and design. Directly supporting the university’s land-grant mission, this new facility will serve as the hub for the Fay Jones School’s ongoing design-build and graduate programs, collaborative efforts with partners in the state’s forest industries, and outreach programs that address critical issues including housing inequality.
The Anthony Timberlands Center is designed by Grafton Architects, of Dublin, Ireland, in partnership with Modus Studio of Fayetteville, the architect of record. Grafton Architects is led by co-founders Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, recipients of the 2020 Pritzker Architecture Prize and the 2020 Royal Gold Medal for Architecture.
“The Anthony Timberlands Center represents the University of Arkansas’ ongoing commitment to research and innovation that directly serves the people of our state,” said Chancellor Charles Robinson. “As a land-grant institution, we invest in projects like this to drive economic growth, address critical issues such as affordable housing and sustainability, and prepare our students to lead in industries that are vital to the continued prosperity of our state and nation.”
The Fay Jones School has increasingly fostered the development of the forest economy through the applied research of timber and wood initiatives in architecture and design, as an important intersection of complex social, ecological, cultural and economic issues that are relevant far beyond state boundaries. This new center for fabrication, research and development is constructed significantly from and focused on Arkansas-sourced timber and wood to the benefit of the Arkansas environment and economy.
Arkansas, a state that is nearly 57 percent forested, is the eighth largest timber producer in the United States and fourth in solid pine products.
“Given the state’s prominence in timber production, the research excellence of the University of Arkansas, and the national reputation of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, Arkansas is uniquely positioned to respond to the local, national, and global trend toward the use of wood in construction and other industries,” said Peter MacKeith, dean of the school.
The Anthony Timberlands Center is one of three applied research capital projects in particular — along with the Institute for Integrative and Innovative Research (I³R) and the Multi-User Silicon Carbide Research and Fabrication Facility (MUSiC) — that will revolutionize the U of A’s research infrastructure and the university’s positive impact on the state and beyond.
“As a center for education in design, advanced fabrication, and material research and development, with a particular focus on Arkansas-sourced timber and wood, the Anthony Timberlands Center will build on the rapid and productive commitment of the Fay Jones School and the University of Arkansas to sustainability and the emerging innovative timber economy in the state and the nation,” MacKeith said.
Specifically, the Anthony Timberlands Center will promote an array of initiatives that include:
- innovative applications for new and existing wood products into architecture and construction
- development of innovative and affordable housing prototypes
- education of the next generation of students in renewable resources and low carbon design and construction
- utilization of wood products that are the result of additive and advanced manufacturing, including 3D printing and robotic assisted construction
- analysis of the acoustics and life cycles of buildings, especially those constructed from timber and wood
“The Anthony Timberlands Center for Design and Materials Innovation will give our students, our faculty and our industry partners a cutting-edge facility that is both a proof-of-concept and a hub for research and fabrication,” said Margaret Sova McCabe, vice chancellor for research and innovation. “It announces to the world that the University of Arkansas is a leader in wood and timber research, design and application.”
INNOVATIONS OF MASS TIMBER
Mass timber, also known as engineered wood, is created from a range of wood products and adhesives, making it stronger and more durable than regular lumber. A number of important properties make mass timber ideal for design and construction. The engineered wood is fast and easy to install and generates almost no waste on the construction site. Important also, wood stores carbon dioxide absorbed from the atmosphere.
Fay Jones School students learning in the Anthony Timberlands Center will benefit from the building, the programs it houses, as well as the collaborative relationships it fosters, as these collectively create an expanded understanding of sustainability — one that moves beyond embodied energy and carbon sequestration to consider broader social questions such as affordable housing across the income spectrum.
Indeed, one significant area of research in the center will be developing affordable housing prototypes designed and constructed from Arkansas-sourced wood and timber that privilege the innovative use of wood framing, timber-based systems of cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels, and other innovative wood-based technologies. This work will demonstrate the sustainability and cost efficiency in labor and production of wood products. When implemented at scale, the prototypes offer a sustainable solution to a highly prevalent shortage in affordable and attainable housing throughout the region and state.
The 44,763-square-foot Anthony Timberlands Center is located at the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and S. Lt. Col. Leroy Pond Avenue in the university’s Art and Design District. It will include a high-bay fabrication workshop, open-plan studios, seminar and conference rooms, a multi-purpose lecture hall, exhibition gallery, Anthony’s Way entry courtyard, exterior terraces, and areas for grant and research work. Flexible studio spaces will accommodate at least 125 design students who will use studio desks designed and constructed by Fay Jones School students, working with funds provided by Weyerhaeuser.
The project is designed and constructed according to LEED Gold standards. The building is expected to open in spring of 2025.
This innovative building — itself a research tool in the demonstrative potential of advanced timber and wood — already garnered three international honors from the World Architecture Festival 2023 last December. The project won outright the WAFX award in the Building Technology category, was one of nine projects shortlisted in the Future Projects: Education category, and was recognized with the Visualisation Prize as well. In June 2023, The Architectural Review named the Anthony Timberlands Center project as the Overall Winner in the AR Future Projects Awards 2023 and as the winner in the Education category.
PROJECT BACKGROUND AND DESIGN DETAILS
The landscape architecture firm Ground Control joined Grafton Architects and Modus Studio for the Anthony Timberlands Center project. Nabholz is the general contractor for the center.
The design team was selected after a months-long process unlike anything previously done for a U of A building. The Fay Jones School initiated an international design competition that was funded in large part by a grant from the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities.
A total of 69 firms from 10 countries answered the university’s request for qualifications from architects in late 2019. From those submissions, six finalist firms were selected to conceive conceptual design proposals for the new research center. In early 2020, both the external evaluation team and the U of A campus review committee recommended Modus Studio with Grafton Architects as the project team. The University of Arkansas Board of Trustees approved the design team selection in March 2020.
The making spaces of the center will include areas for wood fabrication and metal fabrication, an external fabrication yard, and a 3D printing lab. It will be equipped with a 5-axis CNC router, large format laser cutter, large format water jet, and articulated robotic arms. The gantry crane will have a 5-ton capacity.
More than 62,000 cubic feet of timber is being used in the structure, including several native species. The structural system consists primarily of southern yellow pine cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels manufactured by Mercer Mass Timber in Conway, Arkansas, and Austrian spruce glue-laminated beams and columns supplied by Binderholz. The interior and exterior finishes will be done with samplings from southern yellow pine, black locust, Osage orange, cypress, black walnut, mulberry, loblolly pine, maple, and western red cedar. The landscape design, making reference to the Ouachita Mountains ecology, will include native species such as loblolly and shortleaf pines, black gums, tulip poplars, water oaks, sycamores and maples.
About the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design: The Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas houses undergraduate professional design programs of architecture, landscape architecture and interior architecture and design together with a liberal studies program. The school also offers a Master of Design Studies, with concentrations in health and wellness design, resiliency design, integrated wood design, preservation design, and retail and hospitality design. The DesignIntelligence 2019 School Rankings Survey listed the school among the most hired from architecture, landscape architecture and interior design schools, ranking 10th, 14th and eighth, respectively, as well as 28th among most admired architecture schools.
About the University of Arkansas: As Arkansas’ flagship institution, the U of A provides an internationally competitive education in more than 200 academic programs. Founded in 1871, the U of A contributes more than $3 billion to Arkansas’ economy through the teaching of new knowledge and skills, entrepreneurship and job development, discovery through research and creative activity while also providing training for professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the U of A among the few U.S. colleges and universities with the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the U of A among the top public universities in the nation. See how the U of A works to build a better world at Arkansas Research and Economic Development News.
