Hufft’s Brightwater a Center for the Study of Food Puts Bentonville, Arkansas, on the Map
Food as Wellness: that’s the slogan for Brightwater a Center for the Study of Food in Bentonville, a culinary training program encompassing sustainable farming practices, healthy community relationships, and local sources. Hufft, which designed the school, translated its pedagogy into a ceiling installation of hundreds of plates for the student commons. “It’s ‘art-chitecture’ made from the most basic element of the dining process, arranged in a shape modeled off the Ozark Mountains,” principal Brad Kingsley says. “It’s geography to plate for farm to table.”
Brightwater is part of 8th Street Market, 75,000 square feet of food production and retail spaces, restaurants, and artist murals contained in a former Tyson Foods processing plant. The project, along with Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and support from the Walton Family Foundation, is working to put Bentonville on the map as an arts and culinary destination. Hufft which is headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, has opened a second office there.
