Walmart unveils 350-acre global headquarters in Arkansas, with landscape designed by SWA

Created in collaboration with a team of architects led by Gensler, the campus revitalizes Walmart’s presence in its birthplace of the Ozarks with a focus on sustainable, high-performance design.

Bentonville, AR, January 17 – Walmart has unveiled its new headquarters in Northwest Arkansas, set on a 350-acre campus designed by SWA, with buildings created by Gensler and other architecture firms. The campus, which will accommodate over 15,000 daily on-site employees, is located in Bentonville, Arkansas—where the company was founded in 1962.

Designed to encourage sustainable transportation, the campus seamlessly connects to regional greenways with a broad network of multimodal trails, anchored by a central pedestrian and cyclist thoroughfare that traces the path of an historic creek. Inspired by regional landscapes, SWA’s design threads native Arkansan ecosystems through the campus over 115 acres of native and adapted plantings, 13 acres of constructed lakes and bioswales to manage stormwater, and 5,000 trees.

“Contemporary workplace design was forever changed by the pandemic—and in many ways, the Home Office anticipated these changes, centering community-oriented design, indoor-outdoor connectivity, flexibility, and social cross-pollination,” says Gerdo Aquino, Co-CEO of SWA. “Like many, we spent the past few years seeking solace in the outdoors and found extraordinary beauty in the landscapes where the Ozarks melt into lowland hills. That was really our jumping-off point: to instill feelings of rootedness, authenticity, and home by folding those ecosystems into the design.”

Knit together by a 6.7-mile network of complete streets, shaded walkways, multimodal trails, and soft-surface paths, the campus design dissolves the boundaries between new facilities and surrounding landscapes, encouraging employees to explore the expansive grounds. The plan also carefully preserves mature canopy in place and relocates trees across campus, integrating familiar landscapes like highlands forest, bluestem prairies, seasonal wetlands, and pollinator habitats throughout.

Weaving through the center of campus, a one-mile forested greenway serves as the Home Office’s primary circulation route, connecting employees to Bentonville via the Town Branch Trail and paying homage to the seasonal creeks and karst geology that once characterized the site through stacked limestone embankments. At its North and South terminus, the path connects to the 40-mile Razorback Regional Greenway, a popular shared-use trail spanning across Northwest Arkansas.

The campus also features Rob’s Trail, a three-mile soft-surface path that loops the site, named after former chairman Rob Walton. Sustainable transportation options are further incentivized through approximately 300 electric vehicle charging stations and 1,000 bike parking spaces on campus. Nearly half its local workforce live within five miles of campus, and Walmart has set an ambitious target of 10% of its associates commuting by bike.

At the North and South ends of campus are more than 13 acres of constructed lakes and bioswales that collect, filter, and redistribute stormwater across a vast irrigation network across campus, treating up to 52 million gallons of water annually.

Beyond the campus’ sprawling forests and meadows, the idea of “big nature” (a nod to the state’s nickname, The Natural State), is carried into the facilities themselves. Largely built with mass timber, the campus’ facility program includes 12 Gensler-designed office buildings; a fitness center designed by DudaPaine Architects; childcare center by Page Architects; Sam Walton Hall and a food hall by Miller, Boskus & Lack; a hotel and welcome center by 5G Studio Collaborative, and Boka Powell; along with central conference and training hall, and more. In collaboration with the architects, SWA also designed WiFi-enabled courtyards and amenity spaces that provide flexible gathering spaces for outdoor work and events.

Nestled beside Sam Walton Hall—a central gathering space on campus—is Helen’s Amphitheater, a terraced venue designed to host events ranging from corporate gatherings to community concerts. Built from locally sourced stone, the design incorporates dogwood trees beloved by its namesake, the late philanthropist Helen Walton. The Walmart Home Office campus serves as a model for the next generation of sustainability-driven corporate campus design. Construction of the campus began in 2019 with completion in 2025.

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