Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) is designing a campus in Bentonville, Arkansas, for a “STEM-focused university” backed by the Walton family, of the Walmart dynasty.
The Walton family said it is establishing the non-for-profit university “to prepare students to succeed in an era shaped by artificial intelligence and rapid technological change.”
Polk Stanley Wilcox (PSW) will serve as the architect of record. PSW has offices in Little Rock and Fayetteville, Arkansas. It previously designed, with OSD, the new Alice L. Walton School of Medicine at Crystal Bridges, another Walton-funded education project.
The new university campus will measure approximately 422,000 square feet and be built on the site of the former Walmart Home Office. The Waltons completed a new corporate headquarters for Walmart designed by Gensler and SWA in 2025, opening up the plot for development.
Per the masterplan, the campus will have three buildings with naturally weathered, reddish facades and “industrial forms,” BIG said in a statement. Greenspaces and public squares will be sited throughout the campus.
“The new STEM university in downtown Bentonville seeks to bridge the disconnect that often exists between academia and the working world around it,” Bjarke Ingels said in a statement. “For the new campus, we have sought to break down the boundaries between campus and community through a lively new integrated neighborhood for faculty and citizens alike.”
On site there will be an academic building, student residence, and makerspace aimed at “preparing students to succeed in an era shaped by artificial intelligence and rapid technological change,” BIG said.
Ingels noted the “makerspace is conceived as an inhabited showcase, displaying a culture of physical experimentation and rapid prototyping to the passing citizens. It is our hope that this integration of the campus into the community will make higher education as accessible as possible, academically as well as socially.”
The academic building will have a vast open atrium and study, classroom, lab, and office spaces. Clerestories will wash this central space in natural light.
BIG affirmed the design is meant to evoke “Ozark vernacular architecture” with its “dogtrot breezeway” and stacked-shape reminiscent of old log houses common in Northwest Arkansas.
The student residence building is, in plan, shaped like a figure-eight, BIG said. It has two elevated courtyards that sit atop a dining hall and shared amenity spaces.
The building will be oriented so that one courtyard will have ample morning light, and the other will have generous afternoon light.
The Waltons are aiming to welcome the university’s first class of students in 2029. The family also said it will fully cover tuition in the initial year of operation.
