Then and Now: Architect Christie King rises to the challenge

As an architect, Christie King has embraced every new challenge. She’s worked on the historic preservation of the Alamo, the Texas State Capitol, University of Arkansas buildings and the new Walmart campus. She’s designed it all, she said, “from mid-century modern, to modern, to Spanish colonial, to collegiate gothic.”

“I’ve never just wanted to design one type of building,” King said. “I built my career on trying new opportunities, learning about new segments of the industry, learning all the different types of buildings. I’ve gotten to learn a little bit about a lot of different things. I enjoy learning something new each time.”

King attributes her longevity in architecture and design to finding new challenges along the way that “keep me fresh.” Flexibility and adaptability are keys to King’s success, and she’s motivated by solving a problem or coming up with a solution that matters, she said.

“As a designer, you’re impacting people,” she said. “You’re impacting their daily lives, hopefully in good ways and sometimes in subtle ways. You’re trying to make their lives better, and that really hooks me. Whether it’s a community center or a baseball field, all the types of projects I’ve worked on over the years have aspects of that human element to them.”

From Pine Bluff, King “was the kid who always drew,” and was “always interested in how things went together.” After graduating from the University of Arkansas with an architecture degree in 1998, she got her master’s in architecture with an emphasis in historic preservation from The University of Texas at Austin in 1999. She worked for a San Antonio firm, but in 2003, came back to Arkansas and joined WD&D Architects in Fayetteville. In 2010, King was named to the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 class.

Her husband’s job as a Walmart vendor piqued her interest in retail design, so she moved to the retail side, working for H-E-B Grocery Co. as a design architect when the couple moved back to San Antonio in 2012. There King focused on new stores and remodels, all tied to customer demographics, and “the culture of the cities we were dropping stores in.”

The couple came back to Arkansas in 2015, and King took what she learned at H-E-B and became senior manager/architect at Walmart’s U.S. real estate division working on new stores and remodels for supercenters, Sam’s Club and Neighborhood Market store formats.

In 2019 King began working for the Walton Family Foundation, with projects including the Best Friends Pet Care Resource Center in Bentonville and the old schoolhouse renovation on Price Coffee Road. In 2023 she joined Walmart corporate real estate as senior manager/architect with the new home office campus as her major project.

“We had a great architect of record, Gensler,” King said. “They gave us this great backdrop with the buildings, and we had consultants that give us a wonderful landscape, and we were filling in the pieces.”

Her group partnered with the Walmart Museum to gather stories from the company’s past that shaped what Walmart is today. They focused on placemaking and brand storytelling — bringing Walmart’s history and values to life through creative installations across the campus, including murals and sculptures such as the huge Sparky and the giant name badge sign, where employees can see their own name displayed. The goal was for the campus to “feel like Walmart,” King said.

Going back under Walmart’s merchandise umbrella in 2025, King is now senior manager/architect for new supercenter development, doing store space design for new supercenters, focusing mainly on merchandising floor layouts.

As a creative outlet she designs artwork for Bentonville’s Half Marathon each year. King has been on the Bentonville’s Library Foundation board and the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce. She’s on the building committee for her church and is involved in Girls Bike Bentonville and the Women of Oz. Professionally, she’s on the Chain Store Age SPECS Advisory Board and is a member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA).

A half-marathon runner, she enjoys Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, reading, biking with her husband, and traveling, most recently to Paris.