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**Visitor Center Design Narrative**

In January 2005 the National Park Service commissioned ajc architects,
of Salt Lake City, Utah, to lead the design of the new Visitor Center
for Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site, in Little
Rock, Arkansas. Construction will begin on the 10,078 square-foot
Visitor Center in June 2006. The Visitor Center will be open by
September 2007, in time for the Park's commemoration of the 50^th^
anniversary of the historic events that took place in 1957.

The Visitor Center will provide new space for three critical
functions. 1. The majority of the facility will be devoted to telling
the story of the local and national events of the 1957 desegregation
crisis. This space will include visitor services, such as information
and orientation to those visiting the site. A multipurpose room will
provide a flexible space for educational and indoor gathering
opportunities at the site. Restroom facilities and a retail sales area,
are also important components of the visitor services. 2. The Visitor
Center will provide a secure repository for the preservation of a
variety of museum archives and objects related to the event, and will
provide a controlled place for researchers to study the collections. 3.
The Visitor Center will house new administrative space for the
management functions of the Visitor Center and National Historic Site.

The Visitor Center will also function as a gateway to the neighborhood.
It will serve as point of arrival and departure for the visitor's
interpretive experience. Early in the design process, ajc architects
collaborated with Quatrefoil Associates, the project exhibit designers,
to invite the community to share their vision for the visitor center.
Input received through two public open houses indicated the community's
desire to harmonize the new Visitor Center and landscape with the High
School and surrounding residential neighborhood. The Visitor Center
design respects the history and character of the High School and
neighborhood through the use of appropriate scale and rhythm, building
materials, and plant and hard-scape materials.

The design of the Visitor Center is composed of five forty-foot-wide
volumes oriented side-by-side along South Park Street. This planning
recalls the original residential property divisions on the block, as
well as the most recent footprint of the previous structure on the site.
The masses vary in distance from the street and vary in height as well,
from fifteen feet to just over thirty feet tall. This approach to
massing helps to reduce the perceived size of the 10,078 square-foot
building, and relates more closely to the scale of the residences in the
surrounding neighborhood. Like most structures in the community, the
building is set back from the corner and preserves visual site lines,
and promotes the pedestrian-friendly atmosphere.

In order to focus the visitors' attention on the exhibits and the
historic neighborhood, the exterior and interior materials and color
palette are deliberately modest. The exterior will be finished with
brick veneer over a steel braced-frame structure. The brick, a low
maintenance and durable material, relates to several structures in the
neighborhood, including Central High School, as well as churches,
commercial buildings, and some residences. The design also incorporates
limited use of concrete, glass, color coated steel and architectural
metal panels.

The use of architectural concrete and storefront-glass are a departure
from the materials typically found in the residential areas of the
immediate neighborhood. The blend of these common construction materials
with historical lines contributes to the Visitor Center's relevance to
historical and current events, and helps to tie it to the larger Little
Rock community. Concrete is used mainly to signal entry points and
outdoor gathering areas. Steel sunshade elements, placed above the
concrete frames, create transitional spaces for the visitor moving from
the outside to the inside. Mullions reduce the scale of window openings,
and reference historical composition of windows found in the
neighborhood.

On the north side of the building, wall-to-wall glass allows for maximum
natural light to fill the open office space. In order to control direct
sunlight, the Visitor Center has limited amounts of glass on the east
and west side. On the south end of the building, an expanse of glass is
set beneath a large roof overhang, and well behind a raised planter. The
diffuse daylight coming through this window is a draw for visitors as
they make their way from the lobby through the exhibits. This window
defines the exhibit's reflection area, and provides a framed view of
Central High School, the Magnolia Service Station and the neighborhood.
In contrast to the controlled light in the exhibit area, clerestory
windows high above the lobby will allow ample daylight to penetrate the
center of the building.

The integration of the architecture and the landscape provides spaces,
scaled for both individuals and groups, for rest and contemplation.
Trees frame the view of Central High School to the southwest with a
pleasantly landscaped foreground. Low plantings serve to buffer the
south sidewalk from the Exhibit Area. The landscaping on the southwest
corner is low and open to maintain the visual and physical connection to
Central High School. The west portion of the site also features a
variety of planters and benches, as well as a covered gathering area for
visitors that wish to view or visit Central High School or the
Commemorative Garden.

The entry points on the east and west side of the Visitor Center will be
designated with a mix of perennials and grasses. Colorful and varied
perennials and grasses in the planters and gathering areas invite
visitors to quietly reflect upon their experience. Landscape buffers
along the north, east, and west edges of the site screen the parking lot
from surrounding residences. Sidewalks are located adjacent to bus
parking zones to allow for safe loading and offloading, and striped
crosswalks connect these walks to a major staging area on the east side
of the building. This allows groups to gather and coordinate before
entering the Visitor Center. Immediately north of the administration
spaces, a small lawn area provides an informal gathering area that can
serve as another staging area, as an area to gather for socializing, or
for employees to take a break.

Although LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)
certification is not being pursued, it is the intention of the National
Park Service and the Design Team to produce a sustainable building and
landscape that is at the level of LEED Silver. The landscape will
consist of species that are primarily native, drought tolerant varieties
that tend to require less maintenance. Water will be applied with an
efficient irrigation system. This system will provide water during the
establishment period, and then turned off and retained for severe
drought conditions only. The main sustainable feature of the Visitor
Center will be a ground-source heat pump mechanical system. This system
will use the earth as a source of heating and cooling. This will
significantly reduce energy consumption - no fossil fuels will be
consumed -which will reduce electricity costs over the life of the
building. Additionally, building materials manufactured and distributed
within a 500-mile radius of the project site will be preferred to reduce
the embodied energy of the Visitor Center. Natural daylight & carefully
controlled environments will ensure a comfortable place to work and
visit. Along with recycled and recyclable products, these design
features will contribute to a sustainable, long-lasting building and
environment for the National Park Service and the neighborhood.