HORIZONTV FEATURING BD+C: WATCH EPISODES ON DEMAND AT HORIZONTV
Alice L. Walton School of Medicine to have extensive landscaped connection to woodlands.
Alice L. Walton School of Medicine to have extensive landscaped connection to woodlands.
The design of the new Alice L. Walton School of Medicine in Bentonville, Ark., aims to blend the building and landscape, creating connections with the surrounding woodlands and the Ozark Mountains. Currently in the design development phase, construction of the 154,000 sf building is scheduled to begin in Spring 2023. The plan is to welcome the first class of medical students in Fall 2025, pending accreditation. It will offer a medical degree-granting program that integrates conventional medicine with holistic principles and self-care practices.
The landscape design by OSD includes a network of hiking and biking trails to make it easy for students to reach the school’s sister organization, Whole Health Institute, and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. The site’s landscape features include a woodland meditation and healing gardens, wetland, outdoor classrooms, urban farming space, and a rooftop terrace that connects to balconies, a cafe, and an amphitheater.
The building’s front corner will elevate above the ground, creating a protective canopy that allows community access through and onto the building. Whether arriving by foot, bicycle, or vehicle, the campus will invite students and visitors under the abstracted “bluff shelter” on the building’s public façade. “The design integrates the building into both the site and the community, engaging the land as an abstraction of Ozark geology that embraces the principles of integrated medicine, and the holistic link between mental, physical, and spiritual well-being,” said Wesley Walls, AIA, principal, Polk Stanley Wilcox, the project’s architect.
“Designing the landscape for the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine truly requires an integrative approach that considers the experience, influence, and impact of nature on the mind, body, and spirit,” said Simon David, founding principal and creative director, OSD. The project offers an exciting new paradigm of healing and learning environments that holistically blends building and landscape to create a deeply rooted connection to the Bentonville community, the world-class arts environment of Crystal Bridges, and the wider ecosystem and magic of the Ozarks.”
On the building team:
Owner and/or developer: Alice L. Walton School of Medicine
Design architect: Polk Stanley Wilcox
MEP engineer: Henderson Engineers
Structural engineer: Martin / Martin Consulting Engineers
Landscape architect: OSD
The Kenaitze Indian Tribe recently opened the Kahtnuht’ana Duhdeldiht Campus (Kenai River People’s Learning Place), a new education center in Kenai, Alaska.
In August, SHP, an architecture, design, and engineering firm, broke ground on the new Peck Expeditionary Learning School in Greensboro, N.C. Guilford County Schools, one of the country’s 50 largest school districts, tapped SHP based on its track record of educational design.
A new nine-story, 350,000 sf biomedical research and education facility under construction at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School in Worcester, Mass., will accommodate larger class sizes and extensive lab space.
Gilbane, Core Construction, Skanska, and Balfour Beatty head the ranking of the nation’s largest K-12 school sector contractors and construction management (CM) firms for 2022, as reported in Building Design+Construction’s 2022 Giants 400 Report.
AECOM, Jacobs, WSP, and CMTA top the ranking of the nation’s largest K-12 school sector engineering and engineering/architecture (EA) firms for 2022, as reported in Building Design+Construction’s 2022 Giants 400 Report.
The University of Iowa recently completed its new Stanley Museum of Art, a public teaching museum designed by BNIM.
Sustainability and design flexibility are what higher education clients are seeking consistently, according to the dozen AEC Giants contacted for this article. “University campuses across North America are commissioning new construction projects designed to make existing buildings and energy systems more sustainable, and are building new flexible learning space that bridge the gap between remote and in-person learning,” say Patrick McCafferty, Arup’s Education Business Leader–Americas East region, and Matt Humphries, Education Business Leader in Canada region.
California has allocated $4.1-billion to develop ‘community schools’ that have the potential to transform K-12 education.
Turner Construction, Whiting-Turner Contracting, PCL Construction Enterprises, and DPR Construction lead the ranking of the nation’s largest university sector contractors and construction management (CM) firms, as reported in Building Design+Construction’s 2022 Giants 400 Report.
CBRE, Alfa Tech, Jacobs, and Hill International head the rankings of the nation’s largest construction management (as agent) and program/project management firms for nonresidential and multifamily buildings work, as reported in Building Design+Construction’s 2022 Giants 400 Report.
The Kenaitze Indian Tribe recently opened the Kahtnuht’ana Duhdeldiht Campus (Kenai River People’s Learning Place), a new education center in Kenai, Alaska.
In August, SHP, an architecture, design, and engineering firm, broke ground on the new Peck Expeditionary Learning School in Greensboro, N.C. Guilford County Schools, one of the country’s 50 largest school districts, tapped SHP based on its track record of educational design.
A new nine-story, 350,000 sf biomedical research and education facility under construction at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School in Worcester, Mass., will accommodate larger class sizes and extensive lab space.
Gilbane, Core Construction, Skanska, and Balfour Beatty head the ranking of the nation’s largest K-12 school sector contractors and construction management (CM) firms for 2022, as reported in Building Design+Construction’s 2022 Giants 400 Report.
Each day, our editors assemble the latest breaking industry news, hottest trends, and most relevant research, delivered to your inbox.
