Architect Marlon Blackwell Wins Museum Commission

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Architect Marlon Blackwell will discuss his Keenan TowerHouse on the Travel Channel program "Amazing Vacation Homes" at 8:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 18 and 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 24

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - UA architecture professor Marlon Blackwell will work with Mississippi landscape architect Edward Blake to design an urban oasis for art and nature for the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Blackwell and Blake won the commission for the Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park and its Fehnel Visitor Center after a two-year national search.

The museum began with a list of more than 60 architects and narrowed it to a list of three. Other finalists were Michael Rotondi with RoTo Architects, Los Angeles, Calif., and Charles Rose with Charles Rose Architects, Cambridge, Mass. Located west of the Indianapolis Museum of Art's main campus, the 100-acre site includes woodlands, wetlands, a lake and meadows.

"We challenged teams of architects and landscape architects to talk about the ways they would work collaboratively with one another and with visual artists to develop this property. We hope to develop the park in a way that will present the relationship of art and nature in ways that are innovative and original," said Anthony Hirschel, director and CEO of the museum. "There was no question that the closest and most effective partnership was that of Marlon Blackwell and Ed Blake. I'm confident that we have a great team who will read the landscape closely, and listen to and respond to the passion people in our community feel for this property."

A tenured professor at the UA School of Architecture, Blackwell has won national and international acclaim for his design work, including numerous awards and publication in Architecture, Arquine, A + U, Detail, Dwell, Southern Living and Architectural Review. His residential projects have been featured in design books including "Private Towers," "House: American Houses for a New Century," "The New American House 3," "The New American Cottage" and "40 Under 40." In 1998 the Architectural League of New York recognized him as an "Emerging Voice" in architecture.

Blackwell is best known for small, idiosyncratic projects such as the Keenan TowerHouse, a retreat visible above the tree tops on Old Wire Road in Fayetteville that made the cover of the February 2001 issue of Architectural Review. More recently his Moore HoneyHouse, a carport and honey-processing facility located in North Carolina, was one of five projects from around the world selected for the 2002 ar+d prize. Both projects were included in the new "Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary World Architecture," an 812-page architectural world tour of the best projects built since 1998.

The IMA art and nature park will afford Blackwell an opportunity to work on a large, public project in a new way. Edward Blake, a founding principal of the Landscape Studio in Hattiesburg, Miss., with more than 30 years of professional design experience, has taught with Blackwell in the past and is currently working with him on the Blessings Golf Club in Johnson and on a master plan and visitors' pavilion at the Strawberry Plains Audubon Center in Holly Springs, Miss. For the IMA project, the two worked to develop a sustainable approach for the site, which is subject to flooding. They plan to involve an environmental artist in an ongoing collaboration.

"Once the program and mission for the site have been established, we will look to the artist to make the first formal move," Blackwell said. "We'll respond in kind, and begin a working dialog between the artist, architect, and landscape architect. The building will be part of the plan, but not the main point - the whole landscape will be the destination."

Blackwell and Blake will work with the museum to select an artist in early 2005. They hope to break ground on the Fairbanks Art & Nature Park a year from now.

In addition to the projects noted above, Blackwell is working on the Bob Srygley office building in Johnson, the renovation of the Fulbright building (formerly the public library) in Fayetteville, and several residential projects. Princeton Architectural Press will publish a comprehensive monograph on his work in March 2005.

Blackwell and his clients James and Stacy Keenan will discuss their collaboration on the TowerHouse in a Travel Channel program, "Amazing Vacation Homes: Above Ground Getaways," that will air at8:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 18 and 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 24.