Marlon Blackwell Retires from Teaching After 33-Year Career in Fay Jones School

Marlon Blackwell has announced his retirement from teaching at the University of Arkansas, where he was Distinguished Professor of Architecture and the E. Fay Jones Chair in Architecture in the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and the 2020 recipient of the AIA Gold Medal. His retirement was effective June 30, 2025.

Since joining the faculty in 1992, he has taught hundreds of students and served in leadership roles in the Fay Jones School, while developing and expanding his Fayetteville-based professional practice, Marlon Blackwell Architects.

“As Marlon departs from the school to devote himself more fully to the continued success of his professional practice, we have occasion to mark and admire his equally accomplished 33-year tenure as a faculty member and school administrator,” said Peter MacKeith, dean of the school. “As an architectural educator alone, Marlon has been deeply influential for a generation of Fay Jones School architecture students, and just as transformative for the school’s advancement into the ranks of nationally recognized programs in architecture and design. He has been a worthy holder of the E. Fay Jones Chair in Architecture, amplifying the legacy of the school’s namesake through his own example of the consummate educator-practitioner. Marlon’s departmental leadership richly enhanced the curriculum and set the standard for the school’s growth. As well, his advocacy of the school across the nation and the world laid the groundwork for the advancement of the school into its current position today. He is very much missed as a colleague, but forever respected and, it is fair to say, beloved.”

MacKeith led the Fay Jones School, in partnership with Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and DesignConnects, to commission PORCH: An Architecture of Generosity, the U.S. Pavilion’s exhibition at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in 2025. Marlon Blackwell Architects was selected to lead the design team of D.I.R.T. Studio, TEN x TEN and Stephen Burks Man Made to work with the co-commissioners to transform the U.S. Pavilion into a contemporary porch.

The Fay Jones School will present an exhibition of Blackwell’s design work this semester with “Marlon Blackwell Architects: The Unknown, The Unbuilt, and The Possible,” on display March 30 through May 15 in Vol Walker Hall.

Long Tenure of Service to School, University

When Dan Bennett served as dean of the Fay Jones School from 1991-2000, he hired Blackwell to this Arkansas post after Blackwell spent four years practicing in Louisiana, five years practicing in Boston and then a year in graduate school with Syracuse University in Florence, Italy, before teaching a year at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York. Bennett, now dean and professor emeritus of Auburn University’s College of Architecture, Design and Construction, also served as interim provost of the U of A from 1998-2000 and is an architect and a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects.

“The characteristic that sets Marlon Blackwell apart from his peers, both as a teacher and as an architect, is his dogged determination. A student will not leave his studio or a project completed in his office without both being the best that they can possibly become,” Bennett said. “He ensures that accomplishment by his work ethic, skill and unwillingness to accept anything less than perfection. While it is true that I told Marlon when I brought him to the U of A that I would help him establish an active practice, it was Marlon’s design talent and determination that has led to his success. His work spoke for itself, and that has resulted in the extraordinary reputation that he now enjoys.”

At the university, Blackwell was Distinguished Professor of Architecture and served from 2016-2025 as the E. Fay Jones Chair in Architecture. He is an influential educator, administrator and critic, and was honored as the 2020 Southeastern Conference (SEC) Professor of the Year for his outstanding teaching and leadership. He has served as a visiting professor and critic at numerous universities and has lectured widely on the work of his practice, Marlon Blackwell Architects, both nationally and internationally.

“One of the best decisions I made in my life was to come here,” Blackwell said, “and to be able to teach, be able to have a career with practice, be able to raise a family, be able to do all the things you’d hoped and dream to do, and then have an institution that fundamentally supported that.”

Blackwell co-founded the U of A's Mexico Summer Urban Studio in 1994 and taught in the program for many years. From 2009 to 2015, he served as head of the Department of Architecture, which provided a platform for directing how the school could evolve and work through different kinds of pedagogical strategies.

In the Fay Jones School, Blackwell also coordinated the lecture series for many years and had the opportunity to teach alongside Peter Eisenman, the noted theorist and architect, when he was a visiting professor. In his teaching, Blackwell specialized in architectural design, design detailing, building technology and the American private house.

In 2019, Andrew Freear introduced Blackwell to the AIA Gold Medal committee. The remarks by Freear, who is the Wiatt Professor and director of the Rural Studio at Auburn University’s College of Architecture, Design and Construction, included the following:

“I see his impact firsthand because he regularly comes to support the mission of Rural Studio as a guest critic, a lecturer, an inspiration and, of course, comic relief. He takes architecture seriously but doesn't take himself too seriously. And the work is very serious,” Freear said. “This is what great architects do: They inspire us; they motivate us; they elevate us; they educate us. They show us what is possible and represent our values, our ideals.”

“If he does have a specialty, it would be in harnessing the power of design to transform the truly ordinary into the extraordinary,” Freear said. “Simply put, the work of Marlon Blackwell is an inspiration to all of us who believe in the power of architecture. This is Marlon's gift to our profession and to our discipline, and his impact reminds us that architecture is a cultural endeavor — not reserved for the elite but, rather, deserved by all.”

Blackwell was selected as the William A. Bernoudy Architect in Residence at the American Academy in Rome in 2018 and was named by DesignIntelligence as one of “30 Most Admired Educators” for 2015. He was inducted into the National Academy of Design in 2018 and received the E. Fay Jones Gold Medal from AIA Arkansas in 2017. In 2021, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and, in 2023, he was elected as a member to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

With Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects, Blackwell’s firm designed the renovation of Vol Walker Hall and the Steven L. Anderson Design Center addition, which was dedicated in September 2013. That campus project — and home to the Fay Jones School — received a 2018 AIA Honor Award, 2016 American Architecture Prize [Educational Buildings, Platinum], a 2016 AIA/CAE Educational Facility Design Award of Excellence, a 2014 Chicago Athenaeum American Architecture Award and was a 2014 World Architecture Festival Awards Finalist (Higher Education and Research).

Designing a meaningful, successful practice

As an architect, Blackwell’s distinct and original voice has produced iconic, award-winning designs. He leads his professional practice with his partner and wife, Meryati “Ati” Blackwell, also FAIA. He has received numerous accolades over the years, including 23 national American Institute of Architects awards and hundreds of other honors and recognitions for their firm’s design work. Blackwell was named a recipient of an Arts & Letters Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts & Letters in 2012 — the first Arkansan so honored — and a Ford Fellow by United States Artists in 2014.

The firm’s body of work was recognized with the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in 2016 and with The Architect’s Newspaper Interiors Top 50 Architects and Designers Honors in 2020-2025.

The firm’s national AIA award-winning projects span two decades and include the L-Stack House (2008), Gentry Public Library (2009), Ruth Lilly Visitors Pavilion (2012), St. Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Church (2012, 2013), Little Rock Creative Corridor with the U of A Community Design Center (2014), Crystal Bridges Museum Store (2015), Harvey Pediatric Clinic (2017), Graphic House (2017), Lamplighter School (2020, 2021), COOP Ramen (2021) and Marygrove Early Education Center (2023). The Steven L. Anderson Design Center and Vol Walker Hall, designed with Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects, received three AIA awards (2012, 2016, 2018), as did Thaden School, which earned four awards from 2022 to 2024 for its Reels Building, Bike Barn, campus master plan (with EskewDumezRipple and Andropogon Associates) and Performance Building — including two in 2023.

Among other significant honors, St. Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Church in Springdale was named the World’s Best Civic and Community Building by the World Architecture Festival in 2011. Thaden School — planned and designed with EskewDumezRipple and Andropogon Associates — received the 2022 James D. MacConnell Award, the 2025 Dedalo Minosse Premio Andrea Palladio Prize and the 2024-25 Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize. Marygrove Early Education Center in Detroit, Michigan, received the 2022 Architect’s Newspaper Best of Design Award and the 2022 Dedalo Minosse International Prize – Regione del Veneto Special Prize. The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art Campus Parking ‘Art Park’ was named a 2025 World Architecture Festival Finalist in three categories: Completed Building: Transportation, Best Use of Color and American Beauty Prize. The firm’s Heartland Whole Health Institute in Bentonville received the 2025 Architectural Record Healthcare Award, a 2025 Architect’s Newspaper Best of Design Award in Healthcare and Architectural Lighting, and was a 2025 World Architecture Festival Finalist in Completed Building: Office and Best Use of Stone.

A firm monograph, Radical Practice: The Work of Marlon Blackwell Architects, edited by Jonathan Boelkins and Peter MacKeith, was published in 2022 by Princeton Architectural Press.  

As he steps away from the energy of the school design studio, Blackwell remains committed to exploring the work: building carefully and staying close to the questions that architecture can hold. He plans to continue to expand his practice in Fayetteville and to stay connected to students and colleagues through periodic teaching, lectures and mentorship. The long view, he suggests, is less about endings than continuity: a life of attention to place, material and the people an architecture ultimately serves.

About the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design: The Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas houses undergraduate professional design programs of architecture, landscape architecture and interior architecture and design together with a liberal studies program. The school also offers a Master of Design Studies, with concentrations in health and wellness design, resiliency design, integrated wood design, and retail and hospitality design. The DesignIntelligence 2019 School Rankings Survey listed the school among the most hired from architecture, landscape architecture and interior design schools, ranking 10th, 14th and eighth, respectively, as well as 28th among most admired architecture schools.

About the University of Arkansas: As Arkansas’ flagship institution, the U of A provides an internationally competitive education in more than 200 academic programs. Founded in 1871, the U of A contributes more than $3 billion to Arkansas’ economy through the teaching of new knowledge and skills, entrepreneurship and job development, discovery through research and creative activity while also providing training for professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the U of A among the few U.S. colleges and universities with the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the U of A among the top public universities in the nation. See how the U of A works to build a better world at Arkansas Research and Economic Development News.