Radical Practice: The Work of Marlon Blackwell Architects was published this summer by Princeton Architectural Press.

Blackwell, a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, is principal architect and founder of Marlon Blackwell Architects, based in Fayetteville. He is also a Distinguished Professor and the E. Fay Jones Chair in Architecture in the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the U of A, where he's taught since 1992.

Peter MacKeith, Fay Jones School dean and professor of architecture, and Jonathan Boelkins, teaching assistant professor in the school, edited the 510-page book over a two-year period. They worked closely with Fayetteville-based DOXA/VANTAGE to design the book.

The new monograph succeeds the firm's first publication, An Architecture of the Ozarks: The Works of Marlon Blackwell, published in 2006. In the 16 years since, much has changed.

Growth, evolution, maturity. At the base, the constant is familiar, yet deeper, roots.

Now 30 years in practice as well, with a string of significant honors both personally and for the firm, and with a growing body of design work focused in the civic and institutional realms, it was simply time for another monograph, Blackwell said.

His academic and practitioner careers have run parallel these past three decades, and they operate in symbiosis. Over that time, the U of A has supported him to work at a high level in both areas.

"Teaching has been such a big part of the practice, in many ways, as much as the practice has been a big part of my teaching. I can't imagine separating the two," he said.

It was natural, then, that MacKeith and Boelkins are the editors for this book. MacKeith is an accomplished writer and editor. Boelkins is a school alumnus, architect, writer and former studio director at Blackwell's firm.

"Peter knows me, and he really gets the work. He understands it in a way that few do," Blackwell said. "I needed someone who could be a tough critic, yet who understood what it is we're doing. And I needed an engaged editor."

"The making of Radical Practice was a comprehensive and collaborative act of design," MacKeith said, "one which improved over time with each iteration in layout, each essay contributed and each image selected. Of course, the design excellence of the practice and of the 13 projects documented underlies the entire book. But that excellence demanded an equivalent response from the editorial and graphic design teams. The process was gratifying, and the final published book is deeply rewarding in heft, tone, vividness and intimacy."

MacKeith and Boelkins each wrote an introductory essay for the book. They worked with 20 leading designers, planners and artists who wrote short essays, from 500 to 1,000 words. Contributing writers include Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, architects of the Obama Presidential Center; Maurice Cox, Chicago's city planning director; Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne; James Corner, landscape architect of the High Line; and environmental artist Mary Miss.

The renovation of Vol Walker Hall and addition of the Steven L. Anderson Design Center —home to the Fay Jones School — is among 13 featured projects. Other projects include Blessings Golf Clubhouse, Crystal Bridges Museum Store, Thaden School, Shelby Farms Park, Ruth Lilly Visitors Pavilion and Harvey Pediatric Clinic. The table of contents provides a silhouette icon of each project.

Ample space is given to the projects themselves, with pages of photography for each, along with new, simple, black and white line drawings — an elemental yet elegant touch.

"It was really about getting the work out there and telling the story of the work," Blackwell said.

Beyond the presentation of design projects, the book tells the story of the firm's work through the contributed essays, an interview with Blackwell, inspiration travel photos, photographer Tim Hursley's images of Arkansas landscapes and towns, and standalone quotes scattered through the nearly 7-pound volume.

"We wanted something that had weight and gravitas, not only in the content and the words — but literally," Blackwell said. "We wanted it to be a slow page turn."

The initial 2,000 copies of its first printing have already sold.

A book signing will be held at 6:30 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 8, at Pearl's Books in Fayetteville, just down the street from Blackwell's firm.

Making a Book

Blackwell founded his professional practice in 1992, and in 30 years, it's grown from a firm of one to two to now 25. He and Ati Blackwell, his wife, MBA principal and business partner, have been leading the firm for the last 20 years.

"This book is not just me," he said. "It's the cumulative effort by some amazing, talented people in the firm. That most certainly includes Ati and all the things she does — from architecture to interior design to finance."

The necessity of this new monograph was clear by 2019. Multiple national and international honors had come to Blackwell personally and to the firm in recent years, such as receiving the National Design Award from Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, being elected to both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Academy of Design, being named a United States Artists Ford Fellow and netting several Honor Awards from the American Institute of Architects and a World Architecture Festival win for the World's Best Civic and Community Building.

The firm's body of work had increased in terms of diversity, scale and complexity. And, in 2019, the American Institute of Architects announced that Blackwell was the choice for the 2020 Gold Medal, its highest honor for an architect.

It was time. The density of accolades triggered MacKeith's proposal to Blackwell that a book project was not only timely, but imperative.

So, they decided on the press they wanted to use and started developing the list of projects to include and the list of potential contributors. Then came the pandemic.

It stalled them. And it gave them time. More time to reflect on this book project. More time to develop the story they wanted to tell and how they could tell it. More time to secure the writers they wanted and to get feedback from those writers.

It gave them more time to expand Tim Hursley's involvement in the book. In addition to his architectural photography of the featured projects, the book is populated with his photo essays on Arkansas cultural landscapes. Blackwell calls them elegiac, at once "melancholy yet hopeful."

The pandemic also delayed the construction of some critical architectural projects they wanted in the book. So, the book was delayed another year in order to include those.

Some contributing writers were connected to certain projects and spoke to those, while others were not and made observations of Blackwell or design aspects.

Guy Nordenson was the structural engineer for the Ruth Lilly Visitors Pavilion, and James Corner collaborated with Blackwell on Shelby Farms Park. Julie Snow commented on the way Blackwell used the color red in three projects.

"We wanted people near and far from the work — but who knew us, either professionally or academically," Blackwell said. "They are people who I thought could provide diverse insight on the work and on the projects to help illuminate the different aspects of what we're doing at the practice as well as the projects."

The varied components of the book show the range of inspiration that plays into the creative work of an architect. Travels, memories, writings — they all fuel the creative mind. Blackwell looks for relationships between nature and culture. And the way a structure meets both earth and sky is significant.

"That's what often provides the expressive character of what you're doing," he said. "Not necessarily the particular form, but the expressive character. That's why the silhouette for me is really important. It has this abstract character without giving you all the details. It's striking and elusive at the same time."

Ethan Kaplan at the firm, in the role of assistant editor, spent much time gathering all the materials. Bryan Murren, a recent architecture graduate, also assisted in the book's production as a student.

And the group worked closely with Tim Walker and Tony Steck at DOXA/VANTAGE to design the book itself. That team gave it a degree of sophistication not typically found in monographs, Blackwell said.  

What's in a Name?

MacKeith suggested the book's title, Radical Practice, as a fundamental organizing concept, emphasizing the lesser-known meaning of radical as deriving from roots or even being rooted.

The work of Blackwell's firm is rooted in a place — in the people, culture and environment of that place. Yet the architecture itself may not be what's expected.

"It also made sense that so much of everything we do is a transformation story. That we are in our own way gently transgressive and are radicalizing because we're providing alternate models for what architecture can be in our place. Especially in places where architecture of the highest aspirations you'd least expect to find," Blackwell said.

Their approach often involves using materials that are quite common and ordinary, and elevating them to something potentially extraordinary. The craft of the making comes from how the materials are connected and put together.

"How materials are joined really begins with understanding the joint as a spatial proposition. So how to make transitions from one material to another is a big part of the grammar of our work, the articulation," he said. "That's something we're constantly working on is developing the language, the architectural syntax in the work. It's not really a style; it's more the way we speak. How we're speaking through the work."

The succession of accolades garnered by Blackwell and his firm, most recently with the AIA Gold Medal, provide a platform from which to tell their story. "And that's the story that architecture can happen anywhere, at any scale, at any budget and for anyone. That's our story. That's what we're after," he said.

Whether they're designing a small-town library in Gentry or an embassy in Africa, "we're doing this with the same intensity and the same passion and the same love for craft and material. Wherever we're working, we want to make what we're doing available and accessible as something that people can feel is a connection to the place."

The recognition and notoriety also offer the chance to share the story of high-caliber architecture and design happening in the middle of the country, and in the South in particular — and to be advocates for other firms across the region.

"I think it's a big win for the middle because there are so few folks who have received this level of recognition," Blackwell said. "What it's allowed me to do is become more and more an advocate for practices and other creatives in the middle, in terms of what they're doing and the validity and significance of the work. So that's empowering."