Marlon Blackwell

Marlon Blackwell, FAIA,  is a practicing architect in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and serves as Distinguished Professor and Department Head in the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas. Working outside the architectural mainstream, his architecture is based in design strategies that draw upon vernaculars and the contradictions of place; strategies that seek to transgress conventional boundaries for architecture. Work produced in his professional office, Marlon Blackwell Architect, has received national and international recognition with numerous design awards and significant publication in books, architectural journals and magazines. Blackwell received the 2012 Architecture Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. A monograph of his early work, “An Architecture of the Ozarks: The Works of Marlon Blackwell”, was published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2005. He was selected by The International Design Magazine, in 2006, as one of the ID Forty: Undersung Heroes and as an “Emerging Voice” in 1998 by the Architectural League of New York. He received his undergraduate degree from Auburn University (1980) and a M. Arch II degree from Syracuse University in Florence, Italy (1991).

Ten Things I Can’t Do Without

1. A big fat graphite pencil
2. Blue jeans
3. The color ‘Black’
4. The Rolling Stones
5. A little bourbon and a cigar
6. Travel adventure
7. My books
8. Teaching and practicing architecture
9. Fried chicken
10. And my crazy lovely family (of course!)