Today, the Ledger, a 230,000 square-foot fully flexible office building in the heart of downtown Bentonville, tops out. The project, conceived of and designed as a collaborative effort between Marlon Blackwell Architects, Michel Rojkind, Christian Callaghan, and Haruka Horiuchi, serves as a new civic connector between the commercial and arts corridors.
Located on South Main Street, the building prioritizes urban sustainability and wellbeing through design interventions like a 3,900-linear-foot bike and pedestrian path on the building’s six-story façade. As a nexus point within the city’s abundant network of bikeable trails, the Ledger’s forward-looking approach affords commuters a bike-to-work option.
Courtesy of WeWork
The Ledger’s flexible interior programming design, led by Christian Callaghan and Haruka Horiuchi, scales to accommodate the needs of a range of workers, from individuals to multi-departmental teams. The design also facilitates opportunities for focused concentration, collective interaction, and communal gathering, fostering myriad ways of working. Throughout the building, natural light, views of the city, and outdoor access–with open-air terraces on every floor–enrich user experience.
Courtesy of WeWork
Of the project, Marlon Blackwell, Principal, said: “The Ledger continues our collective dedication to creating environmentally responsive projects that emphasize positive user experience and wellbeing through links to nature within the built environment. We are grateful for the immense contributions to the project by Michel Rojkind, Christian Callaghan, and Haruka Horiuchi, all of whom acted as equal design partners from the project’s inception to its construction. It is because of their efforts, and the guidance of Cushman & Wakefield/Sage Partners, that this visionary community hub for Bentonville is being realized. This rewarding process has reaffirmed how private development should work because it provides the city with the gift of superb public spaces.”
Michel Rojkind adds that: “Today’s topping out ceremony not only celebrates a dynamic, vibrant building in downtown Bentonville, but also the flexibility and resiliency needed in workplace design, especially following the pandemic. A typology that shifts the inside out, blurring the boundaries between where the street ends and the building begins, assures the intricacies of pedestrian life are lifted into the building as a continuation of the lively streets. But most importantly, the Ledger represents the coming together of amazing minds and human beings, and shows a glimpse of the future in how buildings, people, and the environment should seamlessly interlace.”
Courtesy of WeWork
Construction of the Ledger, led by Nabholz Construction, will continue throughout 2021, with the opening scheduled for early 2022.
Architecture Design Team
Marlon Blackwell Architects (Marlon Blackwell, Meryati Johari Blackwell, Justin Hershberger, Will Burks, Ryan Camp, Ethan Kaplan, Scott Kervin, Paul Mosley, Ari Sogin)
Formerly of WeWork (Michel Rojkind , Christian Callaghan, Haruka Horiuchi, James Slade, Adrian Yau, Arie Salomon, Danielle Kemble, Edwin Garcia, Fiona Ho, Ian Gu,Isaac Smeke, Ivonne Gama, Yoshio Fukumori)
