“A Story Book of Timber”

Anthony Timberlands Center for Design & Materials Innovation

Fay Jones School of Architecture + Design, University of Arkansas
Dedication Day / August 29, 2025

PREFACE

Peter MacKeith
Dean and Professor of Architecture
Fay Jones School of Architecture + Design
University of Arkansas

“A Story Book of Timber” is how Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Grafton Architects have described their aspirations and conceptions for the Anthony Timberlands Center for Design and Materials Innovation. With the completion of substantial construction by Nabholz Construction in July, 2025, and the onset of design studios, workshops, lectures, and seminars in the Center as of August 18, 2025, the project’s story – while demonstrably substantial – is still being written, and will continue to be written long into the future through the ongoing work of the Fay Jones School’s faculty, students, and staff.

But this is indeed a project with a rich story, of many voices and many contributors, and as with many stories, an adventurous journey from its very beginning in 2016, through the challenges and rewards threaded all through its design, development, and construction between February 2020 and this day of dedication.

Beyond the specifics of design, engineering, and construction amidst a period of years characterized by a global pandemic, a world-wide recession, extreme inflationary cycles, interrupted supply chains, and constrained labor and materials availability, this is a story more dramatically about the sustaining virtues of legacy and love.

Legacy in the first place in its presentation of an essential natural resource of Arkansas – its forests, and therefore its timber and wood products – as a vital presence not only in the traditional agricultural economy and rural vernacular architecture of the state, but in the state’s current agricultural economy, contemporary architecture, and culture of innovation. Legacy secondly, in the identifiable commitment of a proud and distinguished Arkansas forests family to the sustained presence of the family and company name in built form, but more importantly to that family’s investment in research, education, and innovation that such philanthropy makes possible. By extension, thirdly, from the Anthony family’s expanded legacy to that of the many, many families and communities across the state with equal rootedness in Arkansas’ forests. And legacy too, by virtue of the collective commitment by so many across the state and nation to the fortunes of the Fay Jones School and the University of Arkansas, through the achievement of a building of superior value and future benefit to all citizens. Here as well, there is the ambitious legacy of the land-grant public School within a land-grant public University, ever devoted to serving the citizens of Arkansas and the welfare of the state through its teaching, research and service.

The oldest story in the world, however – the one that also binds all the stories of the Anthony Timberlands Center together into an inter-woven narrative – is of course the story motivated by love, in this circumstance, love expressed through superior architecture and construction in multiple directions: love of family, love of fellow citizens, love of materials and craft and building something well, love of place and purpose, love of education.

On Dedication Day, August 29, 2025, for the Anthony Timberlands Center for Design and Materials Innovation.

Peter MacKeith Dean and Professor of Architecture
Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design
University of Arkansas

READ “A Story Book of Timber”

About the Project

This visionary center, funded by a generous gift from John Ed and Isabel Anthony, matching contributions from the university, and state support, emphasizes Arkansas-sourced timber innovation to benefit the local environment and economy. Located within the university’s Art and Design District in Fayetteville, the center reflects a commitment to cutting-edge sustainability, exceptional design, and interdisciplinary collaboration.

With construction underway since 2023, the Anthony Timberlands Center aims to set a new standard in architectural excellence and sustainable building practices, reaffirming the university’s leadership in design and material innovation.