U of A Community Design Center, Resiliency Center Project Wins Green Good Design Award

Rendering courtesy of U of A Community Design Center

The University of Arkansas Community Design Center, in collaboration with the U of A Resiliency Center and Urban Works, has been awarded a 2020 Green Good Design Award for Green Architecture for the Wahiawa Value-Added Product Development Center in Wahiawa, Hawaii.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The University of Arkansas Community Design Center, working with the U of A Resiliency Center and Urban Works, has been awarded a 2020 Green Good Design Award for Green Architecture by the European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies and the Chicago Athenaeum: Museum for Architecture and Design.

The winning proposal, the Wahiawa Value-Added Product Development Center in Wahiawa, Hawaii, repurposes an existing downtown warehouse as a food innovation maker space for college students. Projects will focus on the incubation and commercialization of value-added food products through the recycling of nearby agricultural waste streams.

"This new maker space entails parallel development of a new curriculum by the University of Hawaii Community Colleges system that combines food science and design," said Stephen Luoni, director of the Community Design Center. "The goal is to commercialize production processes and knowledge transfers in the creation of new markets in food and food-grade cosmetics through applied learning and design."

The Community Design Center is an outreach program of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the U of A. Luoni is also a Distinguished Professor and the Steven L. Anderson Chair in Architecture and Urban Studies.

Luoni and his team worked with Urban Works Inc., an architectural firm in Honolulu, Hawaii, and with the U of A Resiliency Center. The Resiliency Center, led by Marty Matlock, executive director, is an interdisciplinary research, education and outreach center hosted by the Fay Jones School, in collaboration with the Sam M. Walton College of Business and the College of Engineering at the university. This is the fourth time the Community Design Center and Resiliency Center have received a Green Good Design Award together, and the fifth such award for the Community Design Center.

The project also was shortlisted for a 2019 World Architecture Festival Award in the Education-Future Project design category.

The Wahiawa center is part of an island-wide portfolio of cooperative food hubs and facilities being developed by the Hawaii Department of Agriculture to support the development of local food supply chains.

"Hawaii imports more than 93 percent of its food despite being the most remote occupied landmass on Earth," Luoni said. "Essentially, our team asked, 'How do we think like an island again?' Resiliency for Hawaiians is tied to the reconstitution of local food chains, along with renewable energy supply and affordable housing."

The design reorganizes the big box structure of the existing warehouse into a series of three lofts: a public loft for visitor events and product sales; a production loft for product design, processing and packaging; and an administration loft with classrooms, conference space and an office area. Strategically carved courtyards in combination with new roof monitors introduce natural light and exterior views into an otherwise windowless interior. New cladding of gold-colored metal skins - in solid and perforated layers - provides updated public frontages on Wahiawa's main commercial street.  

The design complies with recently enacted U.S. Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) regulations, a set of stringent science-based protocols to prevent food contamination in food handling facilities. Production processes will include baking, juicing, fermentation/pickling, distillation for alcoholic beverages, development of food-grade cosmetics and packaging.

The Green Good Design Award aims to bring public appreciation and awareness to global design projects that emphasize sustainability and ecological restoration. Winning designs will be exhibited at venues in Europe, the United States and South America.

Award winners are listed on the Chicago Athenaeum website.