Residential Architect Magazine Names Blackwell Top Firm in Country

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Marlon Blackwell, in collaboration with his partner and wife, Ati Blackwell, designed the L-Stack House, their Fayetteville residence. It won a Grand Award in the 2010 Residential Architect Design Awards.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Residential Architect magazine has chosen the Fayetteville firm Marlon Blackwell Architect as its Top Firm for 2011.

Blackwell is a Distinguished Professor and head of the architecture department in the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas. Meghan Drueding, senior editor for Residential Architect, wrote the feature that appears in the September/October issue, which hit mailboxes last week.

Drueding said Blackwell’s firm is “ripe for being recognized, and one we feel people would want to know more about.” In addition to the magazine profile story, Blackwell and his firm will be recognized at the eighth annual Residential Architect Reinvention Symposium, co-sponsored by the Phoenix chapter of the American Institute of Architects, in December in Phoenix. He will also participate in a session there regarding “The Future of Residential Practice.”

Blackwell’s firm stood out to the magazine editors for many reasons.

“They do really fantastic work; it’s always really original and dynamic. It’s so site specific and it’s so sensitive,” Drueding said. “Marlon and his staff are interesting people. They have such a great reputation among other architects. They’ve really built a well-respected practice.”

In addition, Blackwell has been able to build a well-rounded practice, with projects of all scales. “It’s a challenge to do all of that and be head of the architecture department,” she said. “Everything they do, they do well.”

Another aspect that makes his firm intriguing, Drueding said, is the large-scale projects they do, including the renovation of Vol Walker Hall and the simultaneous addition of the Steven L. Anderson Design Center, which just broke ground earlier this month on the University of Arkansas campus. His firm is the project’s lead architect, in conjunction with Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects of Little Rock and Fayetteville. Blackwell’s firm is also part of the design team for the addition to Fayetteville High School. He worked with DLR Group of Kansas City and Hight-Jackson Associates of Rogers for this project, which is under construction. His firm also designed the recently completed museum store at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, which opens Nov. 11, in Bentonville.

Drueding noted the fact that Blackwell’s firm had teamed up with other firms to work on some of those major projects. “Marlon’s such a smart guy, and all of the people who work there are really talented,” she said. “They’re such a great example of how to do things.”

Marlon Blackwell, a Distinguished Professor, is head of the architecture department in the Fay Jones School of Architecture.

Blackwell’s firm started as a residential firm and has gradually diversified its work, he said. “It’s an honor to be recognized as a firm that’s contributing in a significant way to the residential architecture discourse,” he said. “It demonstrates that good design can happen just about anywhere.”

Residential design can be tricky because homes are so personal, he said, plus they are typically the largest investment a person makes in a lifetime. “Trying to design something for people to inhabit and live with on a daily basis presents a greater challenge than a public or commercial building. They have to live with it 24/7,” he said. “Its scale is deceptive in terms of the challenge.”

Previous winners of the Top Firm award include Centerbrook Architects and Planners in Centerbrook, Conn.; Mithun in Seattle and San Francisco; Frank Harmon Architect, in Raleigh, N.C.; Muse Architects in Bethesda, Md.; Pyatok Architects in Oakland, Calif.; Ehrlich Architects in Culver City, Calif.; and Koning Eizenberg Architecture in Santa Monica, Calif.

Drueding estimated that there are between 20,000 and 30,000 architects in the United States who specialize in residential work. There aren’t many venues for recognizing firms that do residential work, she added.

“Every year, we like to pick out some firms to award that we just think are doing great work, and that can kind of serve as the leading lights of the residential architecture profession,” she said.

Their process isn’t a very scientific one. “It’s more that we have people on our radar, or we’ve had people on our radar for years,” Drueding said. “There are people we’ve gotten to know, and that we’re hearing more about. It ends up being a simpler process than you might think.”

Blackwell is a fellow of the American Institute of Architects. He also served on the jury for the 2011 Residential Architect Design Awards.

Residential Architect has a circulation of 20,000 and is the official residential architecture magazine of the American Institute of Architects. In addition to Top Firm, the magazine selects Hall of Fame and Rising Star recipients for its leadership awards, which it has handed out for 11 years.