A groundbreaking wooden building in Fayetteville, Arkansas, is revolutionizing how architects think about sustainable construction. The Anthony Timberlands Center for Design and Materials Innovation, located along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, stands as one of North America's most significant architectural projects for the future of low-carbon building design.
The striking structure, designed by Dublin-based Grafton Architects in collaboration with local firm Modus, resembles a series of massive barns stacked together. Starting as a low wooden shed, the building dramatically rises in jagged folds, with its roofline creating sharp angles that culminate in a six-story glass facade facing the highway. Behind this transparent wall, visitors can glimpse robotic arms, whirring drills, and large wooden building components moving on overhead cranes, showcasing the future of timber construction.
"We imagined the building as a storybook of wood," explains Yvonne Farrell, co-founder of Grafton Architects, the Pritzker Prize-winning firm behind the project. "They wanted something hewn, carved, jointed, woven, assembled, layered, laminated – showing all the possibilities of building with timber." The angular wooden structure provides extensive workshop space, studios, and an auditorium for the University of Arkansas's Fay Jones School of Architecture.
Under Dean Peter MacKeith's leadership, the school has embraced a hands-on approach to construction over the past decade. Having worked in Finland for ten years before joining Washington University in St. Louis, MacKeith has been introducing Nordic building philosophies to American architecture. "What does it mean to be a school of architecture in a state that is 60% forest?" MacKeith asks, standing inside the school's new 12,000-square-foot fabrication workshop.
The building represents Arkansas's fourth mass timber construction project since MacKeith's arrival in 2014, following an impressive library addition, student housing complex, and research institute. However, this latest project is by far the most ambitious, pushing the boundaries of what the timber industry can achieve. The state has a substantial timber industry, historically focused on paper, pulp, and dimensional lumber, but MacKeith aims to advance the conversation toward innovative construction methods.
Inside the workshop, intersecting rows of massive wooden joists, beams, posts, and rafters soar overhead, creating what looks like an enormous treehouse designed by Giovanni Battista Piranesi. The structural elements have been significantly enlarged from the original competition design, giving the space a heroic, almost Roman quality. Meter-wide columns of glued laminated timber (glulam) extend from the six-story-high ceiling, intersecting with equally substantial beams designed to support a five-ton gantry crane for moving full-size building prototypes.
A massive queen post truss hangs from the ceiling, partially steel but ironically clad in timber for fire protection. This supports the weight of two studio levels and the auditorium while keeping the workshop floor column-free. Following Grafton's philosophy evident in projects like the Kingston Town House in London, visual connections between studio and workshop spaces were essential. "We wanted a building where thinking and making were inseparable," MacKeith explains, noting that triple glazing helps muffle the sound of whirring robots.
When construction costs doubled from $21 million to $43 million due to COVID-induced inflation and competition from a massive Walmart headquarters project that absorbed regional labor, the school turned the challenge into an opportunity. Students designed, prototyped, and fabricated their own studio desks using interlocking plywood and oriented strand board (OSB), creating furniture more thoughtful and beautifully crafted than any commercial alternative.
Throughout the building, different timber species showcase various applications: white oak for stairs, cherry for handrails, and durable black locust for outdoor terrace floors. The end-grain cobbles on these elevated terraces create the sensation of walking on giant butcher blocks. These outdoor spaces provide welcome breaks where occupants can look across the highway toward distant forests and contemplate how those trees became the wooden structure overhead.
Despite its intended role as a showcase for Arkansas forestry and bearing the name of the state's largest private timber company (which donated $10 million), much of the wood actually came from Austria. "We were originally hoping that the state's mass timber industry would be sufficiently competitive by the time of construction," says Assistant Professor Jonathan Boelkins, who helped steer the project. While Arkansas had previously manufactured large glulam beams for the Crystal Bridges Art Museum, that company went out of business.
Currently, only one cross-laminated timber (CLT) manufacturer survives in Arkansas, producing the floor and wall panels for the project. However, the primary structure came from Austrian giant Binderholz, shipped and trucked to the site in lengths up to 40 feet. Even with 15% tariffs on timber imposed during the Trump administration, the Austrian product remained competitive on both price and precision.
MacKeith remains evangelical about wood's benefits on environmental, psychological, and economic grounds, determined to shift statewide conversations through conferences, workshops, and discussions with government officials. "We're in the middle of the country's fiber basket, and we have all the rivers and roads to transport materials," he explains. Arkansas currently grows two trees for every one harvested, increasing wildfire risk, pest infestation, and creating over 15 million tons of excess biomass annually that could be used for CLT and glulam production.
The school's Urban Design Build studio, led by John Folan, has been pioneering practical applications through student projects ranging from forest education centers to prototype housing for low-wage workers using wave-layered timber technology. "It's a design-to-income strategy," Folan explains, factoring in land and material costs for someone earning $16 per hour. "We start with a nucleus that can be expanded from there." Students have also experimented with 3D printing using waste sawdust combined with clay and soil.
The building's design as a central bay with two side extensions makes it perfect for large-scale construction projects that can be loaded directly onto trucks through the large garage door. "This new workshop will allow us to take traditional technologies and combine them with advanced manufacturing," Folan notes, emphasizing how the facility shapes the entire educational experience around the question: "What happens when you build a city from wood?"
Back in Dublin, Grafton Architects has been inspired by this forest-focused project to pursue additional timber constructions, including an apartment building in Nantes, France; an educational building in Firminy; and a writers' center in South Korea working with local master joiners. "We're not saying everything has to be all timber," explains co-founder Shelley McNamara. "Hybrid structures are often the answer. But here, from our island in the Atlantic, we've tried to make something that expresses the university's culture. We hope the building will be a good teacher."
