The ARK: Rural Botanical Garden for Arkansas | Arkansas Cherokee Village - Arkansas| 2022

Architects: University of Arkansas Community Design Center
Lead Architect: Stephen Luoni
Client: City of Cherokee Village, Arkansas
Photographers: University of Arkansas Community Design Center

The botanical garden and zipline for Cherokee Village, a rural mid-century planned community in the Ozarks, is the centerpiece of new hospitality/eco-tourism landscapes under development. Legacy woodland-wildflower prairie planting assemblages once dotting the managed pre-Columbian landscape of the region are recalled in this now woodland-only ecosystem.

Clearings at the scale of urban blocks are created to house a series of botanical rooms carved into the dense forest cover. Inverted pyramidical rooms negotiate visitor passage along the steep terrain paralleling the drama of nearby Mississippian Mound Builder earthworks that landmark flatter terrain. Perceptions of the wood-screened structures are constantly shifting between monumentality and transparency in accordance with the visitor’s movement.