Marlon Blackwell Architects' Exhibition 'The Unknown, the Unbuilt, and the Possible' on Display

Throughout his time at the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, Marlon Blackwell's teaching and practice have been deeply intertwined. Ideas moved fluidly between practice and studio, helping shape generations of students and reflecting the evolution of the Fay Jones School over the past 30 years. The exhibition "The Unknown, the Unbuilt, and the Possible" grows out of that shared history, tracing how ideas have been carried forward over time through his Fayetteville-based practice, Marlon Blackwell Architects.

The exhibit will be on display through May 15 on the first floor of Vol Walker Hall, on the U of A campus. This is part of the public exhibition series in the Fay Jones School. A reception will be held at 4:30 p.m. Friday, April 17.

Marlon Blackwell Architects was founded by Blackwell, who retired from teaching at the U of A on June 30, 2025. He taught 33 years in the Fay Jones School and was Distinguished Professor of Architecture and the E. Fay Jones Chair in Architecture. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and the 2020 recipient of the AIA Gold Medal.

This exhibition gathers 13 unbuilt projects by Marlon Blackwell Architects (MBA) across more than three decades of work, from the early Bullfrog House to recent proposals including Dickson Street Theater and Independence ISA. As the exhibition statement describes, seen together, these projects insist on a larger truth: architecture does not begin with construction, nor does it end where realization stops. It begins in the unknown, in acts of projection that test what architecture can do before the world grants it permanence. In that sense, unbuilt work does not occupy the margins of practice. It drives the discipline forward by expanding the field of the possible.

Each project here entered that field fully. The MBA office did not approach these commissions as speculative leftovers or secondary exercises. It pursued them as architecture in full, with ambition, formal precision and intellectual seriousness. Some emerged through competitions. Some advanced through extensive documentation. Some moved toward construction before outside forces interrupted their realization. Yet interruption does not diminish their value. Each project sharpened an argument, clarified a question and extended the work's reach. Each searched for true things: a clear figure, an exacting logic and a form capable of transforming the pressures of program, budget, landscape and use into spatial consequence.

Seen together, these works reveal more than a collection of unrealized commissions. They disclose a cumulative endeavor, a long process of inquiry and a persistent metaproject carried across years, scales and situations. Unbuilt work stores intelligence. It deposits formal insight, material knowledge and tectonic invention into a spiritual savings bank that continuously gives back to the practice. Ideas do not vanish when projects go unbuilt. They return. They reappear in altered form, with greater precision, under new conditions. What one project cannot realize, another can recast. What remains unresolved in one moment can open unexpected possibilities in the next.

The models and drawings assembled here do more than record what might have been. They make visible architecture's capacity to search, test, edit and invent. They show that design does not merely solve problems; it constructs new cultural, spatial and material horizons. For emerging architects especially, these projects offer a charged lesson: treat every commission as consequential, pursue every idea with full rigor and recognize that architecture changes the world not only through completed buildings, but through the questions, methods and possibilities it sets into motion.

Blackwell at the U of A

For decades, Blackwell shaped the U of A as a site of serious architectural thought and action. He did not treat design as style, preference or professional routine. He pressed it into service as a rigorous mode of inquiry — one that tests ideas against matter, place, use, structure and culture. In his teaching, architecture demanded judgment, precision and risk. Students learned to see more acutely, think more critically and work with greater discipline. They also learned that architecture does not merely respond to the world as it is; it projects new orders, new relationships and new forms of public and material life. That pedagogical legacy extends far beyond the school. It lives in the work of former students, colleagues and collaborators who continue to advance architecture as a force of invention, consequence and civic imagination.

Marlon Blackwell Architects

Since 1992, Marlon Blackwell Architects has built a practice that argues — through the work itself — for architecture's power to transform ordinary circumstances into extraordinary form. The office does not seek novelty for its own sake. It searches for exacting forms, material intelligence and spatial propositions that intensify experience and clarify relations among program, site, climate and construction. Across houses, cultural projects, educational work and civic commissions, the practice insists that architecture can produce dignity, delight and new public possibility at any scale. That argument takes shape in projects including the Keenan TowerHouse, Steven L. Anderson Design Center and Vol Walker Hall, Marygrove Early Education Center, Thaden School, Gentry Public Library, Saint Nicholas Eastern Orthodox Church, Lamplighter School Innovation Lab, Crystal Bridges Museum Store, Blessings Golf Clubhouse and Northwest Arkansas Free Health Clinic. Together, these works position architecture not as background, but as an active cultural instrument — one capable of reshaping how people gather, learn, dwell and imagine.

Staff and Ongoing Work

The office has always drawn strength from a sustained and generative connection to the U of A. A continual stream of alumni has entered the practice as interns, designers, architects and long-term contributors, carrying ideas between school and studio and turning that exchange into built work. Current and recent staff — including Steve Reyenga, Scott Kervin, Zach Grewe, Carla Chang Mata, Katherine Lashley, Seth Spradlin, Brenden Wohltjen, Sally Richmond, Lauren Dillon and Dougan Phillips — embody that continuity. Their work does not simply support the practice; it drives it. Through research, drawing, modeling, technical development and construction, they extend the office's intellectual reach and creative ambition. What emerges is not only a legacy, but a living culture of work — confident, exacting and committed to architecture's capacity to change the world.

Admission to the exhibition is free. The exhibition is located on the first floor of Vol Walker Hall, and it is open to the public from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays.