AZURE_2014_07_08.pdf

winner
Architecture
> 1,000 square
metres
Vol Walker Hall
and The Steven
L. Anderson
Design Center
Location: Fayetteville, Arkansas
Firms: Marlon Blackwell Architect and
Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects Team:
Marlon Blackwell, Mark Herrmann, David
Jaehning and Joe Stanley with Meryati
Johari Blackwell, Jonathan Boelkins,
William Burks, Angela Carpenter, Craig
Curzon, John Dupree, Conley Fikes,
Laura Lyon, Sarah Menyhart Bennings,
J. B. Mullins, Bradford Payne, Michael
Pope, Kimberly Braden Prescott, Stephen
Reyenga, Reese Rowland, Michelle Teague,
Jim Thacker, Christopher Thomas and
Wesley Walls.
Marlon Blackwell’s eponymous studio
in Fayetteville builds thoughtful, economically
styled projects that range
from houses to retail interiors. Polk
Stanley WilcoxArchitects has offices in
Little Rock and Fayetteville, and it draws
from decades of experience in institutional
design, particularly in health care
and education. marlonblackwell.com,
polkstanleywilcox.com
When vol walker hall first opened its
doors in the 1930s, it was a library.
Since 1968, it has been home to the
University of Arkansas’s architecture
school, and though its stately
presence is beloved the building
had reached its limits, especially in
providing adequate studio space for
a growing student body. Only new
construction could fix that problem,
so local firm Marlon Blackwell
Architect partnered with Polk
Stanley Wilcox Architects to bring
the old hall into the 21st century.
Their first move was to scoop
out the structural core, leaving
the perimeter untouched on three
sides. On the western edge, they
added a four-storey volume that
matches the original building’s
dimensions, a gesture that lets the
twin structures complement each
other’s similarities as much as
express their differences.
In other hands, the addition
could have become a jarringly
futuristic bauble, out of synch with
the campus’s regal surroundings.
But Blackwell’s firm has a sharp
eye for clean-lined, modernist
forms. The new wing, called the
Steven L. Anderson Design Center,
corresponds to the original beaux
arts building in visual weight,
and both are clad in limestone. The
reimagined western facade injects
a fresh layer of contemporary
design: its curtain wall is veiled by
slats of fritted glass angled to funnel
daylight in while blocking out the
late afternoon sun.
The centre now houses that badly
needed studio space, along with
a lower-level auditorium lit from
above by second-floor windows.
Traffic flows freely throughout
the two buildings via a glassed-in
corridor with two sets of stairs.
The narrow passage also doubles
as a chamber for filtering in natural
light. Even on the interior, old and
new are juxtaposed, but neither
vocabulary overwhelms the other.
It’s not often that such subtlety can
be so commanding as well.
“This is an extraordinarily deft
project in the way it respects
what’s new and what’s old. It’s
precisely of its place and could
not be anywhere else.”
Charles Waldheim, juror
52 jul ⁄ aug 2014 az awards annual azuremagazine.com