Crystal Bridges Museum Store Wins Contract Magazine Interiors Award

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The Museum Store at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art was the retail category winner in the 2013 Interiors Awards, sponsored by Contract magazine. The design is by Marlon Blackwell Architect, a firm based in Fayetteville. (Photo by Timothy Hursley)

The Museum Store at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art was the retail category winner in the 2013 Interiors Awards, sponsored by Contract magazine.

More than 600 members of the design community attended the 34^th annual awards breakfast, which was held Jan. 25 at Cipriani’s 42nd Street in New York.

Marlon Blackwell Architect designed the store for the museum, located near downtown Bentonville. More than 650,000 people have visited the museum since it opened in November 2011. Blackwell is a Distinguished Professor and head of the architecture department in the Fay Jones School of Architecture.

The Interiors Awards program recognizes an array of market segments and is the only juried program to offer recognition of design by category. Held since 1979, the competition is judged by a select group of respected design industry leaders. This year’s jury members were Alan Ricks (2012 Designer of the Year), Dina Griffin, Nancy Keatinge, Margaret Sullivan and Stephen Apking. They narrowed down their winning choices from nearly 400 submissions.

This year, firms and designers with projects located around the world were recognized with awards in 13 categories, including small office, restaurant, adaptive reuse and a new sustainable category. In addition to the project awards, the event also designated a Designer of the Year and a Legend Award.

“The consistency of quality and ideas from designers around the world confirms the emergence of a powerful global interiors dialogue,” the jury noted.

And one of those global interiors is in Arkansas. Created within a 3,040-square-foot curved, concrete space in Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the museum store design was inspired by the work of Arkansas basket maker Leon Niehaus. Blackwell’s interpretation of baskets by Niehaus resulted in a ceiling of undulating cherry wood slats – 224 unique pieces, repeated for effect. The pieces were modeled using computer software, then precisely cut with a computer-directed machine.

“The undulating surfaces reflect the local craftsmanship as well as the design’s relationship to the aesthetic of the museum’s art collection. We don’t know of a more beautiful environment in which to shop,” said the jury of the museum store.

The museum store project is featured in a four-page spread in Contract magazine’s January/February issue. The magazine article points out that Blackwell won a competition among local architects to design the store – and to wrestle with site challenges – in the museum designed by Moshe Safdie.

The architecture project team for the museum store included Meryati Johari Blackwell, Michael Pope, Bradford Payne, Stephen Reyenga, William Burks, Jonathan Boelkins, Angela Carpenter and Casey Worrell. Meryati Johari Blackwell was the project’s interior designer. Pope, Burks, Boelkins, Carpenter and Worrell are all alumni of the Fay Jones School of Architecture.