Reese Rowland

Reese Rowland is a principal at Polk Stanley Yeary Architects.

Rowland was lead architect of the award-winning Heifer International headquarters, the Greater Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce building, and the Acxiom River Market Tower in Little Rock, Arkansas. The Heifer building was designed to consume fifty percent less energy than a comparable office tower, includes a massive cistern for rainwater collection, and a parking lot made of recycled crushed building material. Said Rowland in 2003, "What we want to do is say buildings don't have to sit in a sea of asphalt. What we want this building to do is really challenge people to rethink what an office building can do."

The Heifer site, which will eventually include a global village and education center is designed to form a circle. The inspiration for this layout came from the daughter of Dan West, founder of Heifer. Said Rowland in 2008, " "Almost in passing, she mentioned that her dad always said no matter where he went in the world, all the important decisions were made when people sat in a circle. ... It's almost like a pebble hitting a pool of water. You get these concentric circles of influence. It's the perfect setup for a little microcosm of the world on these 22 acres." In March 2008 Rowland said of the Murphy Keller Education Building: "The inspiration of the building is really a continuation of that larger circle of life idea that we set up for the entire plan for the campus. The design is influenced by the 'Heifer story.' When they give an animal to a family and they pass that animal off to the next family ... it just creates these concentric rings of influence throughout a village and throughout a countryside. We set up the entire master plan for their campus based on concentric rings from that idea."

Rowland is currently working on the renovation and expansion of several historic River Market buildings into the Arkansas Studies Institute to open in the fall of 2008.

Rowland was born in Clarksville and graduate of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. He was inspired to become an architect by watching Mike Brady, fictional architect and father of the Brady Bunch. "Architecture really is a calling. You get beat up so bad in school. If you don't love it, you're not going to stick with it," he said in 2008.

References

• "Blue Ribbon for a Green Building," Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, January 13, 2008.
• Andrew DeMillo, "Heifer Puts the Shovel to HQ Site in October," Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, August 22, 2003.
• Kane Webb, "Forward to the Past: Mister Roberts (Re)builds His Dream House," Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, February 24, 2008.