Bentonville, Ark .- (by Cynthia Lescallet, Realty News Report)-a 350 hectare backdrop for Walmart's new headquarters is located in the northwest of Arkansas with a sustainable design plan of an architect in Houston with office buildings with mass wood elements that were produced regionally from southern yellow pin.
The new Home Office Campus of the retailer in Bentonville, Ark.
The 25-building development for 15,000 employees will include the office, retail and a hotel as well as parking structures, fitness center, amphitheater, childcare facilities and a lake. About half of the project construction area is planned for green areas with seven miles hiking and bicycle paths, including elements of the Razorback Regional Greenway.
The park-like project is not only the natural environment and the integration of public access for its adjacent community into the integration of its adjacent community in the USA, but also the largest mass wood application in the USA. It is expected to use 1.7 million cubic feet of the constructed building material, which is known for its sustainability and aesthetics.
Gensler Houston's Raffael Scassera: Timber produces remarkable job environments
As an executive architect in the project, Gensler's Houston office is located on the design of the entire project, which the customer calls his “home office” and not his “campus”.
Gensler is also the design architect of the 12 office buildings of development, which are open at a speed of one month to January 2026. Each, four or five floors and flooded with natural light, has its own design personality, but all have a modular presence and mass wooden interior.
Gensler, a global architecture, design and planning company, is no stranger for the applications of mass wood. The first project in Texas was the first United Bank in Fredericksburg in 2018, and the company further expanded its expertise and the project scale.
Gensler Houston Director Raffael Scassera is a design director of the Home Office Project of Walmart.
He said the design process worked “from the inside out” to consider that they create common and unique functions. The topography of the location blows up, creates interesting visual lines and influence building and equipment placements.
The design team also replied how the customer wanted to better connect his workforce (referred to as an employee “) in order to pursue his inheritance and presence in northwest of Arkansas in honor and design practices, which contain sustainability and intelligent technology.
To support the latter, it was a deliberate decision to search with cross grain mass wood for the building in the buildings. The properties of the renewable material of carbon reduction, fire resistance, strength, isolation and use in the biophilic construction are easier than steel. This concept combines the workers with the natural world for a healthier, quieter workplace.
“The environments that produce (mass wood) are remarkable,” said Scassera.
As a design challenge, Mass Timber requires complex cooperation and coordination at the front of a project between the team for planning, engineering, construction and operation. This is because the mass wood kit of each building is produced outside the location. Its parts are numbered for a specific installation based on exact measurements, for example to be aligned with mechanics, for example.
It is noteworthy that a large part of the mass wood to be used is made regionally from southern yellow jaw.
Lose the fortress atmosphere
On site, the overall design of the project includes a quadrant with different “neighborhoods” in which buildings can work together with related departments and on which a unique amenity or programming – such as the amphitheater or the fitness center – the limits of work, game, the game, the stay, stays, Scassera further blurred.
As the Corporate Campus design says, Walmarts Home Office has turned the telescope of many company connections. Instead of closing the buildings and terrain from its adjacent community, the elements and infrastructure of Walmart in and through the development invite you.
According to Scassera, the project previously seems to be well received by companies Associates with the already operational office buildings, the welcome center, the food hall, the 360,000 square meter fitness center and childcare facilities. “There is a feeling of pride … a new energy level,” he said.
Mass wood projects in the United States are still gaining traction. From December 2024, the latest quarterly figures, there will be 2,338 mass wood projects under construction or completed. The training and support for the wood industry and support for design, engineering and construction, which have been maintaining a lot of mass wood, institutional and multi-family projects since 2013.
March 31, 2025 REALTY News Report Copyright 2025
Pictures: With the kind permission of Walmart
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File: American Sustainability: Walmart HQ is the largest mass wood project in the USA Gensler, American Sustainability: Walmart HQ is the largest mass wood project in the USA Southern Pine, Carbon Reduction, Bentonville