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Thaden School Performance Building

Close Project

Thaden School is an innovative, project-based maker school for grades 6-12. The campus is open and unfenced, woven into an extensive network of regional pedestrian trails, connecting the school to surrounding neighborhoods and an emerging urbanism. Thaden Performance anchors the most prominent corner of the campus on Main Street, welcoming the community with an extended loggia that gestures towards the downtown square.

Thaden’s Performance Building combines natural and cultural references into a concise and powerful whole, referencing the past while looking to the future. The siting strategy, basic form, and materials arise from local agricultural conventions where long gabled forms are oriented east—west to control the sun, clad in corrugated metal. In its articulation, Thaden Performance speaks to the specific colors of gold and green found in Arkansas in the Mima Mounds and the Osage Prairie, native ecosystems that are rekindled in the Thaden campus landscape. Equally invoking modern inventions, the same color is found in the iconic green and gold automotive paints used in the 1960s.

LOCATION / Bentonville, Arkansas
BUILDING TYPE / New Construction
BUILDING SIZE / 23,330 GSF
COMPLETION DATE / August 2022

Marygrove Early Education Center

Marygrove Early Education Center

Lamplighter School Innovation Lab

Lamplighter School Innovation Lab

Crystal Bridges Eleven Servery & Coffee Bar

Crystal Bridges Eleven Servery & Coffee Bar

Ledger City Center

Ledger City Center

Thaden School Bike Barn

Thaden School Bike Barn

Thaden School Performance Building

Thaden School Performance Building

Shelby Farms Park Structures

Shelby Farms Park Structures

Shelby Farms Park Restaurant and Event Center

Shelby Farms Park Restaurant and Event Center

Thaden Reels exterior photo of it's angular modern structure at night

Thaden School Reels Building

Flyrite

Flyrite

The restaurant space showing a beautiful mix of materials of concrete masonry units and plywood

COOP Ramen

Lamplighter School Barn

Lamplighter School Barn

Harvey Pediatric Clinic red metal and glass profile shot looking across parking spots

Harvey Pediatric Clinic

Steven L. Anderson Design Center Exterior exterior made of Indiana limestone, architectural concrete, and fritted glass

University of Arkansas Steven L. Anderson Design Center

Shelby Farms Park Visitor Center seen at sunset featuring a large overhanging 'front porch' overlooking fresh-cut grass

Shelby Farms Park Visitor Center

The church exterior seen at night, made of a box rib metal panel and red cross that shines from the top of a tower

St. Nicholas Eastern Orthodox Church

The low-slung form of the pavilion, bathed in dappled light, hovering above the forest floor, acts as an apparition in the woods

Indianapolis Museum of Art Visitors Pavilion

Tanglewood Cabin

Tanglewood Cabin

Montessori Elementary entrance at night

Fayetteville Montessori Elementary Building

Keenan Tower House lit up at night as it towers over trees in the forest

Keenan TowerHouse

Graphic House

Graphic House

Exterior shot of the glass window walls and metal structure seen at sundown

Fayetteville High School

Blessings Golf Clubhouse seen at dusk lit from inside looking over the cut grass

Blessings Golf Clubhouse

PORCHDOG PROTOTYPE, Biloxi, Mississippi (2009)

Porchdog

Montessori Primary, Fayetteville, Arkansas (2014)

Fayetteville Montessori Primary Building

A wooden floors, walls, and ceilings look out through glass at the concrete museum

Crystal Bridges Museum Store

The building's exterior lit from inside at dusk during a rainstorm

Gentry Public Library

Bella Vista Library

Bella Vista Library

L - Stack House, Fayetteville, Arkansas (2006)

L-Stack House

Interior airy wooden seating area below second flow overlooks with white ceiling and natural lighting

Northwest Arkansas Free Health Center

A view of the buildings beautiful white exoskeleton and night with lights shining from inside

Srygley Office Building

The Fulbright Building

The Fulbright Building

Moore HoneyHouse lit from inside at night with glowing jars of honey shining brightly through the glass

Moore Honeyhouse