Museum Store, Transit City Plan Make Short List in 2012 World Architecture Festival

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The Museum Store at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville made the short list in the Shopping category at the World Architecture Festival. (Photo by Timothy Hursley)

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Two projects designed by faculty and staff of the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas have been chosen for final consideration in the 2012 World Architecture Festival Awards, the world’s largest architecture competition.

The festival received entries from around the world in 17 categories of completed buildings, 14 categories of future projects and two categories of landscape projects.

The Museum Store at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville is one of seven short-listed projects in the Shopping category. The store was designed by Marlon Blackwell Architect, a firm based in Fayetteville. Blackwell is a Distinguished Professor and head of the architecture department in the Fay Jones School.

Fayetteville 2030: Transit City Scenario, an unbuilt design by the U of A Community Design Center, is one of 14 short-listed projects in the Masterplanning category. The design center is an outreach program of the Fay Jones School. Its director is Steve Luoni, also a Distinguished Professor in the Fay Jones School.

These projects represent the United States in those two categories.

The Museum Store is organized by a series of parallel cherry plywood ribs, which form the ceiling and the millwork on the rear wall. Likened to the ribbed underside of a mushroom, the surface undulates to create an elegant sectional profile. The form and structure of the ribs resonate with the shapes and geometry of the museum, which was designed by architect Moshe Safdie. The museum has had more than 500,000 visitors since it opened in November 2011.

Transit City Scenario, an unbuilt design by the UA Community Design Center, made the short list in the Masterplanning category of the festival.

The Fayetteville 2030 project was sponsored in part by a 2011 planning grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, with matching in-kind resources provided by the city of Fayetteville. This scenario models a future based on development of a streetcar system on College Avenue connecting the downtown and University of Arkansas campus area with the Northwest Arkansas Mall. Recognizing that more than half of Fayetteville’s environment projected to exist by 2030 has not yet been built, the plan shows how 80 percent of future growth could be encouraged to create a model city for smart growth.

In the 2011 festival, two projects by Blackwell were named to the short list. The St. Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church in Springdale was selected in the Civic and Community category, and the Ruth Lilly Visitors Pavilion in Indianapolis was selected in the Display and Visitor Centres category. The Springdale church won the 2011 award for its category in that festival, held in Barcelona, Spain.

This year, both large and small firms will compete as equals when presenting their designs to international judging panels and festival delegates at the festival in Singapore from Oct. 3-5.

A distinguished Super Jury will unite for the festival finale and cast their vote to decide which project will be named the World Building of the Year 2012. Super Jury members are architects Moshe Safdie, who designed Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; Ben Van Berkel; Neil Denari; Juergen Mayer H; Mok Wei Wei; and Yvonne Farrell.