New Indianapolis Art and Nature Park Features Blackwell-Designed Pavilion

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The Ruth Lilly Visitors Pavilion, designed by Marlon Blackwell Architect, is part of 100 Acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art and Nature Park, which opened last month at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. (Courtesy of the Indianapolis Museum of Art.)

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Marlon Blackwell’s first national public building is subtly tucked into the woods, making its discovery part of the experience.

The Ruth Lilly Visitors Pavilion is part of 100 Acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art and Nature Park, which opened in June at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. The 100-acre park, located at the site of a former gravel pit and construction area, has evolved through natural reclamation to include untamed wetlands and woodlands, as well as meadows and a 35-acre lake.

“This is a place for site-specific art and one that speculates on the relationship between art and nature,” Blackwell said. He is a professor and architecture department head in the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas.

This project started with a national search for an architect for the park in 2002. Blackwell was eventually selected, and Edward Blake, a landscape architect and founding principal of The Landscape Studio in Hattiesburg, Miss., joined him on the design team. They worked with Guy Nordenson, a structural engineer, of New York.

Blackwell said the design concept for the pavilion came during the initial visit to the site, as he found porous leaves on the forest floor that had been devoured by insects.

“We began to think of that leaf as an analogy to the canopy of the trees in the forest, and how it’s porous and allows light and shadow and water to work their way through,” he said.

He and his Fayetteville-based firm, Marlon Blackwell Architect, knew the pavilion would be located on a volatile site. The park site is surrounded by an oxbow of the White River and is bordered on the east side by a canal. The area has seen three 100-year floods in the last five years.

Because of all this, less than 1 acre of the 100 acres could be built upon. So, the pavilion was placed in the woodlands and rests on steel posts above landscaped mounds, rising above the floodplain.

People explore the visitors pavillion in the new 100-acre art and nature park. (Courtesy of the Indianapolis Museum of Art.)

“We decided that the building could become like an apparition in the woods, floating just above the ground,” Blackwell said.

The 3,000-square-foot deck structure is made from Ipe wood from Brazil, charred cedar wood from Indiana, steel, acrylic and glass. The steel-framed exoskeleton is lined with pieces of 2-by-4-inch Ipe wood (rot-resistant and fireproof) turned on edge to allow light and water to pass through.

The Ipe wood forms extensive decks; it then folds up to form a wall and folds again to create an extensive shade canopy. In an innovative move, Blackwell placed ultraviolet-rated translucent acrylic bars in the spacing between the wood deck pieces to create a surface people can walk on. Lighting underneath the decking makes it glow. Then, sandwiched in between the folded decking is a 1,200-square-foot, glass-enclosed lounge covered by a skylight.

“If the exoskeleton and the deck canopy were conceived as this kind of organic, weathered form, the interior of the lounge was conceived as something very polished,” Blackwell said.

The deck canopy creates dappled light that shifts and changes throughout the day, making it alive with light and shadow.

Because of its secluded location and the lack of extensive views beyond the immediate woods, this place becomes a spot for reflection.

“The idea is that you would come here to begin to interpret the experience of nature and art,” Blackwell said. “It’s just one destination on the journey through the park.”

The park is one of the largest museum art parks in the country and one of only a few that features the ongoing commission of temporary, site-specific artwork. The rest of that journey through the park means encountering the eight inaugural pieces of artwork commissioned for this park. They were created by these artists from around the world: Kendall Buster, Los Carpinteros, Jeppe Hein, Alfredo Jaar, Tea Mäkipää, Type A, Atelier Van Lieshout and Andrea Zittel. (Buster also will be among the speakers featured in the Fay Jones School of Architecture’s 2010-11 lecture series.)

The art and nature park officially opened in June, with a ceremony attended by about 10,000 people including officials and dignitaries such as U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Indiana). Blackwell spoke and offered tours as part of the festivities.

“We’re very excited about this foray into the national scene,” Blackwell said.

His LEED certified pavilion uses water-saving restroom fixtures fed by well water; energy-efficient lighting; and a geothermal heating and cooling system. The structure also contains a small kitchen and restrooms.

With 152 acres of gardens and grounds, the Indianapolis Museum of Art is among the 10 largest encyclopedic art museums in the country. It features significant collections of African, American, Asian, European and contemporary art, as well as a newly established collection of design arts.

“Marlon Blackwell’s Ruth Lilly Visitors Pavilion provides visitors a place for reflection, questioning and analysis of the processes — natural and cultural — at work throughout the park,” said Lisa Freiman, director of 100 Acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art and Nature Park and chairman of the IMA’s department of contemporary art. “This unique structure will help visitors gain a deeper understanding of the relationships between conditions of nature-made and man-made.”

The pavilion, along with the rest of the park, is open to the public from dawn to dusk, seven days a week.