Marlon Blackwell Architects

Marlon Blackwell,
FAIA

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Marlon Blackwell

Marlon Blackwell has practiced architecture in Fayetteville, Arkansas, for over thirty years and is the founding principal of Marlon Blackwell Architects. Until the conclusion of the 2024–2025 academic year, he served as the E. Fay Jones Distinguished Professor at the Fay Jones School of Architecture + Design at the University of Arkansas, where he taught for more than three decades and helped shape generations of architects through a rigorous, place-centered approach to design.

Name
Marlon Blackwell
Position
Founding Partner + Design Director
Education
Syracuse University [Florence, Italy]: Master of Architecture [1991] Auburn University: Bachelor of Architecture and Science in Environmental Design [1980]
Email
marlon@marlonblackwell.com


Marlon’s work is recognized for its clarity, material intelligence, and civic presence, producing iconic and award-winning buildings across typologies, scales, and budgets. In 2020, he was awarded the AIA Gold Medal, the Institute’s highest honor, recognizing an individual whose body of work has had a lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture. He was a 2019 Resident Fellow of the American Academy in Rome and was inducted into the National Academy of Design in 2018.

His contributions to design have also been acknowledged through numerous honors, including the United States Artists Ford Fellowship in 2014, the Architecture Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2012, and the E. Fay Jones Gold Medal from AIA Arkansas in 2017. Earlier in his career, Marlon was named one of International Design magazine’s ID Forty: Undersung Heroes in 2006 and was recognized as an “Emerging Voice” by the Architectural League of New York in 1998.

Today, Marlon continues to lead the practice with the same commitment to craft, collaboration, and the transformative potential of architecture grounded in place.

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