Everything in its Place: In Northwest Arkansas, a design firm responds to a hemmed-in site for a Montessori elementary school with a playfully inventive plan.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Maria Montessori wrote, “Education is a natural process carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words, but by experiences in the environment.”
The centerpiece of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, in Bentonville, Arkansas, is a vast room that rises in a graceful arc of laminated-wood roof beams and swells outward with canted walls of glass as it vaults a pond.
Built in 1962 to house the Fayetteville, Arkansas, Public Library, the Fulbright Building sits in a leafy residential neighborhood on the edge of the city’s historic district and to this day is surrounded by Victorian houses and Craftsman-style cottages.
Project Specs The Fulbright Building Fayetteville, Arkansas Marlon Blackwell << Return to article the People Architect Marlon Blackwell Architect 100 W. Center St., Suite 001 Fayetteville, AR 72701 479.973.9121 p 479.251.8281 f Marlon Blackwell, FAIA (principal) Gail Shepherd, AIA (project manager) Ati Blackwell, Associate AIA Matt Griffith, Associate AIA Chris Brown, Associate AIA Chris Baribeau, AIA David Tanner, Associate AIA Mark Rukamathu, Associate AIA Angie Carpenter, Associate AIA Interior designer: Meredith Boswell and Marlon Blackwell Architect Engineer(s): Gore Engineering Associates, Inc. [structural] GA Engineers Inc. [mep] Consultant(s) Lighting: John Rogers Design Acoustical: Dr. Tahar Messadi Other: Bill
The modest size and budget of the Gentry Public Library (11,970 square feet, at $108 per square foot) belies its importance to the community of Gentry, Arkansas.