Marlon Blackwell

Marlon Blackwell, FAIA is a practicing architect in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He is the recipient of the 2020 AIA Gold Medal, the Institute’s highest honor, which recognizes those whose work has had an enduring impact of the theory and practice of architecture. He is the former E. Fay Jones Distinguished Professor at the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas where he taught for over 30 years. Work produced in his professional office, Marlon Blackwell Architects, has received national and international recognition with signification publication and more than 200 design awards including the 2016 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture and the 2025 Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize.

Marlon is both a lifetime member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was a 2019 Resident Fellow at the American Academy in Rome, inducted into the 2018 National Academy of Design and selected as a 2014 United States Artists Ford Fellow. A monograph of the firm’s recent work titled, “Radical Practice,” was published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2022.