7 Community-Oriented Spaces Nodding To Nature

Whether in Bentonville, Arkansas, or Avignon, France, libraries, visitor centers, even a college dorm seamlessly meld 21st-century advancements with materials and forms sourced from the great outdoors.

Tour Inspiring Community Spaces Informed By Nature

Heartland Whole Health Institute by Marlon Blackwell Architects

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Having already completed the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art store and Eleven restaurant, the Fayetteville firm returns to the 134-acre campus in Bentonville, Arkansas, for two additional projects: a six-story parking deck and this stellar 85,000-square-foot structure devoted to wholistic well-being. Taking cues from the Ozarks landscape, and the materials composing it, the exterior is clad in local Giraffe Stone and pre-weathered brass fins, the latter inspired by the surrounding hardwood forests, while its volume echoes the region’s bluffs, caves, and rivers. A pecanwood-lined dogtrot and travertine stair beckon visitors inside, where a gallery, café, and event spaces are topped by three floors of offices for this nonprofit and two others founded by Alice Walton.

Portlandis by Kossmanndejong & MVRDV

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The Port of Rotterdam is Europe’s largest, so it is fitting that its authorities have commissioned the exhibition design and architecture firms, both Dutch, to fashion a visitor center that’s now being compared to a Gesamtkunstwerk. Indeed, the structure’s five stacked, shipping-containerlike volumes in thermally efficient steel Quadcore, and wrapped with a ruby-red staircase, are no less than sculptural. The 39,000-square-foot interiors center on a 72-foot atrium fitted with a kinetic submarine-yellow installation and three floors of port-related exhibits. Above them is a spacious restaurant and roof deck offering panoramic views of the North Sea.

Bibliothèque Renaud-Barrault by Jakob+MacFarlane

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Dominique Jakob and Brendan MacFarlane metaphorically refer to this renovation of a 1985 concrete library in Avignon, France, by architects Béatrice Douine and Jacques Prunis as “the tree,” as it too offers a protected place to sit, slow down, and spend a quiet moment. Central is the birchwood staircase, imagined like a tree trunk, albeit one with built-in bookshelves, that leads to a new roof canopy that shades as it harvests solar power. The 25,000-square-foot program also responds to the digital revolution, meaning it’s no longer just about books: the auditorium and now skylight-capped courtyard used for community-engaging lectures and film screenings.

Hazel McCallion Central Library by RDHA

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This renovation and expansion of the 1991 library in Mississauga, Canada, showcases the Toronto studio’s expertise in public architecture, respect for existing structures, and embracing of 21st-century innovation. Rounding out the original atria’s octagonal shapes into a smooth cylindrical volume, now the space is gloriously skylit, suspended with a cloudlike arrangement of industrial felt circles on aircraft cables that diffuse light and absorb sound and, beneath it, a dynamic LED mobile by Nathan Whitford that symbolizes the flow of information. Surrounding them and below-grade are podcasting suites, 3D-printing stations, a VR and gaming lounge, community teaching kitchen, meditation rooms, and outreach/counseling-services areas, all leading up to the top-floor’s newly glass-enclosed, pink-carpeted reading room.

Tekαkαpimək Contact Station by Saunders Architecture

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Tekαkαpimək is Penobscot for as far as one can see, an apt name for the 5,800-square-foot mountaintop visitor center and among the many instances in which the project displays its collaboration with the alliance of Indigenous nations called Wabanaki, of which the Penobscot Nation, a federally recognized Native American tribe in Maine focused on protecting its heritage and the environment, is a member. Other priorities for the Norway-based studio, known for harmonizing contemporary aesthetics with natural landscapes, were interpretive materials that would capture the site’s nuanced history; sustainable, climate-resilient construction; and a warm, inclusive setting. Beyond the facade of raw, locally harvested cedar shingles are Douglas fir–lined exhibition spaces with precast-concrete flooring where “deep walls” serve as structure and seating, framing views of the refugelike surroundings through the large expanses of bird-safe glass punctuating the cantilevering wings, which face in the four cardinal directions. All Wabanaki cultural knowledge and intellectual property shared within this project is owned by the Wabanaki nations.

Sam Ibrahim Building by CEBRA Architecture & ZAS Architects + Interior

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Featuring copper-inlaid insulated-glass facade panels, the handsome 208,000-square-foot newbuild, with architecture by CEBRA and interiors a collaboration with architect of record ZAS, provides five floors and 20 classrooms formulated with neuroarchitecture, i.e. the idea that spatial design influences cognition, to accommodate different learning styles. Take the Collaboratorium, which supports group work with custom tiered nightclub-esque booths; the Keystone, its horseshoe layout, white-oak and maple woodwork, and LED ceiling strips combine the effectiveness of traditional tiered classrooms with the intimacy of a seminar room; or the communal central atrium, the faceted stair volume housing an auditorium. It’s phase one in a master plan that shifts the University of Toronto Scarborough away from being a suburban commuter school reliant on cars to one that’s pedestrianized.

Helen Diller Anchor House by Morris Adjmi Architects, BCV Architecture + Interiors & Brand Bureau

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Tasked with conceiving a dorm tailored to the needs of transfer students to UC Berkley, California, many of whom come from low-income backgrounds or are first-generation college students, MA’s LEED Gold Certified–pending structure, 450,000 square feet across 14 stories, combines neoclassical architecture with Berkeley eclecticism, as witnessed in the facade’s gray brick, metal grid, live native greenery, and 7-foot-square windows. In addition to 244 apartments, the interiors offer such perks as a dining room by BCV that’s paneled in redwood salvaged from a felled Sequoia National Park tree, plus a ground-floor amenity lounge and an 8,600-square-foot fitness center both by BB.