Marlon Blackwell is a practicing architect in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and serves as the E. Fay Jones Distinguished Professor at the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas. Work produced in his professional office, Marlon Blackwell Architects (MBA), has received national and international recognition with significant publication in books, architectural journals and magazines and more than 160 design awards. Blackwell is the recipient of the 2020 AIA Gold Medal, the Institute’s highest honor, which recognizes those whose work has had an enduring impact on the theory and practice of architecture. He is a lifetime member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a 2019 William A. Bernoudy Architect in Residence at the American Academy in Rome. Blackwell was inducted into the National Academy of Design in 2018 and selected as a United States Artists Ford Fellow in 2014. He received the 2017 E. Fay Jones Gold Medal from the Arkansas AIA and the 2012 Architecture Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. MBA received the 2016 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture and ranked #1 in Design as part of the 2016 Architect 50. A monograph of MBA’s work titled Radical Practice was released in Fall 2022 by Princeton Architectural Press, who also published a monograph of Blackwell’s early work, An Architecture of the Ozarks: The Works of Marlon Blackwell, in 2005.
The Berlage Keynotes is an ongoing lecture series featuring internationally prominent architects, designers, and thinkers who are at the forefront of design discourse and innovation. A selection of speakers working from different disciplinary perspectives and in different geographic, cultural, and political contexts present how their work engages with contemporary issues and debates. This fall semester, speakers include Jan de Vylder/AJDVIV, Dan Stubbergaard/Cobe, Fabrizio Ballabio, Angelo Candalepas, Marlon Blackwell, Cecilia Puga, and Carmody Groarke.