FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The six finalist teams in a design competition to envision the planned Anthony Timberlands Center for Design and Materials Innovation at the University of Arkansas will present their conceptual design proposals next week on campus.

The teams will give public presentations of their proposals from 2-7:30 p.m. Feb. 5-6 in Ken and Linda Sue Shollmier Hall in Vol Walker Hall. Overflow seating and viewing will be available in the adjacent Young Gallery, via closed-circuit simulcast.

These six design concepts also will be displayed Feb. 3 through March 20 in the Fred and Mary Smith Exhibition Gallery in Vol Walker Hall. The exhibition is part of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design's public exhibition series. A reception will be held at 5 p.m. Feb. 3 in the gallery, and the public is invited to attend.

The Anthony Timberlands Center for Design and Materials Innovation is planned as an important extension of the Fay Jones School and as a key part of the university's Windgate Art and Design District, a campus district along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard that also houses existing and proposed buildings for the School of Art and University Libraries.

The new applied research center will serve as the epicenter for the Fay Jones School's multiple timber and wood design initiatives, house the school's existing and expanding design-build program and fabrication technologies laboratories, and serve as the new home to the school's emerging graduate program in timber and wood design.

The six finalists — culled from 69 submissions from 10 countries — were selected based on the design excellence of the individual architect or practice at the national and even international level, as well as demonstrated achievements in innovation with materials and construction. All six finalists are accomplished in both professional practice and architecture education.

The presentations on Wednesday, Feb. 5, will begin at 2 p.m. and proceed in the order below, concluding by 7:30 p.m.

• WT/GO Architecture — New Haven, Connecticut
  This newly established partnership emerged out of Waugh Thistleton Architects (Andrew Waugh) and Gray Organschi Architecture (Lisa Gray and Alan Organschi). Waugh was awarded the Royal Institute of British Architects President's Medal for Research for the Stadthaus project in 2010. In 2018, Waugh Thistleton Architects was shortlisted for the prestigious Stirling Prize for the firm's design of Bushey Cemetery in north London, and the firm's 10-story Dalston Works project, completed in 2017 in Hackney, London, is the world's largest cross-laminated timber building. Gray and Organschi both received a 2012 American Academy Arts and Letters Award, and their Ecological Living Module received a HIVE 50 Innovator Award, American Architecture Award and Residential Architect Design Award.
• Dorte Mandrup A/S — Copenhagen, Denmark
  In 2019, cofounder Dorte Mandrup was awarded Architect of the Year by AW Architektur & Wohnen and the Kunstpreis Berlin (Berlin Art Prize), Architecture Section Award. She headlined at the curated international exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia in 2018 and was appointed chair of the prestigious Mies van der Rohe Award 2019.
• Grafton Architects — Dublin, Ireland 
  The firm co-founded by Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrell has been named the 2020 recipient of the RIBA Royal Gold Medal, only the second women-led practice to win the prize. Their building for the Universita Luigi Bocconi in Milan, Italy, won the World Building of the Year Award in 2008 and the RIAI Triennial Gold Medal in 2018. In 2017, they received the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture. 

The presentations on Thursday, Feb. 6, will begin at 2 p.m. and proceed in the order below, concluding by 7:30 p.m.

• Shigeru Ban Architects — Tokyo/New York/Paris
  Shigeru Ban, winner of the 2014 Pritzker Architecture Prize, is as well known for his work in the assistance of humanitarian causes as he is for high-profile cultural projects. He was awarded the 2005 Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize in Architecture and is an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. He was a 2001 Time Magazine Innovator of the Year and recently was featured in The New York Times Style Magazine's 2019 Greats issue.
• Kennedy & Violich Architecture — Boston, Massachusetts 
  The firm's Soft House project in Hamburg, Germany, was a winning competition entry for the International BauAustellung (IBA) and received the 2019 Architecture MasterPrize. The firm received the Holcim Foundation Award for Sustainability in 2014 and 2018. Principal Sheila Kennedy was designated as one of Fast Company's Masters of Design, and she was awarded the 2014 Berkeley-Rupp Architecture Professorship and Prize. 
• LEVER Architecture — Portland, Oregon 
  The firm's design for the 12-story Framework was a 2015 U.S. Tall Wood Building Prize Competition winner, and it is slated to become the tallest mass timber project in the country. The firm's Albina Yard in Portland was the first mass timber construction in the country with domestically produced cross-laminated timber panels. The firm, founded by principal Thomas Robinson, recently completed the Oregon Conservancy Center and is the lead architect for the Adidas North American Headquarters — both exemplars of design in timber and wood.

The design competition is funded in large part by a grant from the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities, through the Mass Timber University Grant Program.

Admission to the exhibition is free. The exhibition gallery is located on the first floor of Vol Walker Hall, and it is open to the public from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays.