Marlon Blackwell Architects Project Wins AIA Education Facility Design Award

Timothy Hursley

This view of the Lamplighter School Innovation Lab shows the teaching kitchen looking toward a maker space and robotics lab.

A project designed by Marlon Blackwell Architects recently received an Education Facility Design Award from The American Institute of Architects' Committee on Architecture for Education.

The Lamplighter School Innovation Lab in Dallas, Texas, was one of six projects recognized with an Award of Excellence during the 2020 Education Facility Design Awards, which were announced in October. Five other projects were recognized with Awards of Merit.

The Education Facility Design Awards recognize projects that represent state-of-the-art learning environments that are being developed in today's learning spaces. Winning designs must meet several criteria, including enhancing learning in classrooms, balancing function with aesthetics, establishing a connection with the environment, being respectful of the surrounding community, demonstrating high-level planning in the design process and integrating sustainability in a holistic fashion.

Marlon Blackwell, FAIA, is founder and co-principal of his Fayetteville-based design practice Marlon Blackwell Architects. He is a Distinguished Professor and the E. Fay Jones Chair in Architecture at the University of Arkansas. He received the 2020 Gold Medal from The American Institute of Architects and was named the 2020 Southeastern Conference Professor of the Year.

"The Lamplighter School provides another example of how Professor Blackwell's work establishes its relevance nationally and internationally," said John Folan, professor and head of the Department of Architecture. "As with all of Marlon's work, it stands as a source of inspiration to Department of Architecture students in their own work."

The Lamplighter School's state-of-the-art Innovation Lab is a 10,600-square-foot structure that includes a series of collaborative spaces specifically tailored to woodworking, chemistry and physics that prompt students to explore rather than rely on instruction. The private school serves 450 pre-kindergarten through fourth-grade students in the North Dallas area.

Blackwell also designed the new Lamplighter Barn to house the campus chicken coop. Lamplighter students raise chickens and sell eggs to learn business skills and benefit charities.

The campus was designed in the 1960s by O'Neil Ford, the leading Texas proponent of the mid-century modern approach. The school was interested in a design that both cohered with its history and established a 21st-century identity.

Wrapped in copper and featuring cypress wood planks outside and in, the building's material palette, both warm and refined, is at home among the original buildings. Inside, the typical cellular classroom arrangement is replaced by an open landscape that encourages exploration. Its porous nature allows students to flow between indoor classrooms and outdoor learning opportunities that are rooted in the local ecology, presenting students with ample opportunities to consider new ideas and experiment.

Talley Associates of Dallas did the landscape design for the project. Its founding principal, Coy Talley, is a Fay Jones School alumnus.