Irish architecture firm Grafton Architects, in collaboration with US-based Modus Studio, has completed the Anthony Timberlands Center for Design and Materials Innovation at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. The mass-timber building, featuring a distinctive angular roof, serves as the new home for the university's Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design and marks Grafton Architects' first completed project in the United States and their inaugural mass-timber construction.
The innovative design challenge represented a significant departure for Grafton Architects, whose previous work primarily involved concrete and brick construction. "It was a part of the world we didn't know, and it was an amazingly attractive challenge to take on timber, because most of our projects would be described as in situ concrete or brick," explained Yvonne Farrell, cofounder of Grafton Architects. The project was developed for the school led by dean Peter MacKeith, emphasizing hands-on learning and material innovation.
The building's centerpiece is an expansive 11,000-square-foot workshop on the ground floor, featuring double-height ceilings to accommodate large-scale projects and equipment. Above this workshop space, a lecture hall that doubles as a gallery provides students with views of the active workspace below through strategically placed windows. This unique configuration creates visual connections between students from different programs and generates excitement about the creative process.
"Normally, a lecture theatre is away from a workshop for reasons of noise," noted Shelley McNamara, Grafton Architects cofounder. "We suspended the lecture theatre in the workshop, and the two floors of teaching spaces are above that – a workshop with noisy, dusty machines is overlooked by quiet rooms. They benefit from each other. We don't know any other school of architecture that has put the workshop at the centre – it makes for an exciting place."
The building's upper levels house classrooms, studios, and conference rooms across two floors positioned above the lecture hall. The architectural design thoughtfully addresses Arkansas's climate challenges, with facades designed to minimize intense direct sunlight exposure. The characteristic angular roof profile serves a dual purpose, responding to the region's southwesterly winds while managing heavy rainfall common to the area.
The building's exterior showcases a variety of materials, including glazed panels lining a facade with a protruding upper portion at the tallest end. Other sections feature metal panels, thermally modified southern yellow pine, and red cedar wood cladding. The most striking feature is the cross-laminated timber roof panels made from Arkansas-sourced southern yellow pine, which rise and fall at dynamic angles. Between these panels, large glued-laminated timber gutter beams direct rainwater in what Farrell describes as "canoes" that serve as both spanning beams and gutters, creating an architectural language that expresses function.
Grafton Architects conceived the building as an educational tool itself, with the structure and materials serving as learning resources for students. "We often talk about the building being like a new professor," Farrell explained. "In terms of it being an educator itself, the students will get to know the texture and grain and atmosphere of timber. Then, bit by bit, it's about getting to know dimension. We wanted students to know that every 40 feet there's a big column, that the width of the room down below is 50 feet, so as a young interior designer or architect, you learn a vocabulary of spatial dimension."
The project team aimed to source most timber materials locally from Arkansas, though they encountered limitations due to the region's timber industry not specializing in mass timber construction. Consequently, the majority of engineered wood was imported from Austria. "On one hand, it was necessary to use local material, but also to show what timber can do," Farrell noted. "It was a combination of Austrian technology and what's available within Arkansas. The industry in Arkansas uses smaller elements. This building is trying to encourage the larger-scale use of composite timber spanning larger spaces."
The project is completed by a thoughtfully designed courtyard featuring local Loblolly pine trees, created by American landscape architecture studio Ground Control to provide shaded public space for students to gather and study outdoors. Photography for the project was captured by Tim Hursley, showcasing the building's integration with its Arkansas setting.
Grafton Architects brings significant prestige to this project, having won numerous international awards including the 2020 RIBA Royal Gold Medal, the 2020 Pritzker Architecture Prize, and the Stirling Prize in 2021. The studio's concrete university campus in Lima, Peru, also won the inaugural RIBA International Prize in 2016, demonstrating their expertise in educational architecture across different materials and climates.