Fayetteville, Arkansas, 2007

The Fulbright Library Building, built in 1962 and designed by Fayetteville native, Warren Segraves, has been renovated to accommodate the offices of local businesses. Respecting the community and quality of the original building, the structure remained primarily untouched. "Ship in a bottle" is the driving conceptual design motive, by being conscious of the way new interior partitions and 'pods' of space are resolved with the building skeleton and envelope. The brick walls on the north and south were leaning and failing, so were removed and replaced with a transparent and translucent glass wall system that reacts with the interior interventions and reinforces the "ship in a bottle" concept. The other major design intervention is the creation of a new conference space in the volume that once was the ramp and stair circulation space connecting the original library to the Annex building. Essentially, the glass volume will now house a 'shroud' or 'shell' object suspended in the space to control the interaction of acoustical and visual forces. This project intends to revitalized and preserved the quality of this great Fayetteville building, while inserting modernization and creating a dynamic office atmosphere.