Marlon Blackwell, FAIA, practices architecture in Fayetteville, AR, and serves as Professor of Architecture at the University of Arkansas. His lecture, sponsored by the St. Louis chapter of the AIA, is titled, "Architecture of Unholy Unions."
Working outside the architectural mainstream, Blackwell's architecture is based in design strategies that celebrate vernaculars and that draw upon them, and that seek to transgress conventional boundaries for architecture. Work produced in his professional office, Marlon Blackwell Architect, has received national and international recognition, numerous design awards, and publication in books, architectural journals, and popular magazines including Architectural Record (with the honor of having the Keenan TowerHouse featured on the cover of the February 2001 issue), Architect, Arquine, A+U, Detail, Dwell, Metropolitan Home, Contract, Residential Architect, Architectural Review (2002 ar + d prize winner for the Moore HoneyHouse), and The Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary Architecture (2004 and 2008). His residential projects are featured in design books including Masters of Light, New Country House, Houses of Wood, Private Towers, House: American Houses for the New Century, The New American House 3, and The New American Cottage.
The significance of Blackwell's contributions to design is evidenced by the recent publication of a monograph of his work entitled An Architecture of the Ozarks: The Works of Marlon Blackwell, published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2005. Blackwell was selected by The International Design Magazine, in 2006, as one of the ID Forty: Undersung Heroes and as an "Emerging Voice" in 1998 by the Architectural League of New York.
At the University of Arkansas he has co-taught design studios with Peter Eisenman (1997 and 1998), Christopher Risher (2000), and Julie Snow (2003). He has been a visiting professor teaching graduate design at MIT in Cambridge, MA, in Spring 2001 and 2002. Most recently, he was the Ivan Smith Distinguished Professor at the University of Florida (Spring 2009), the Paul Rudolph Visiting Professor at Auburn University (Spring 2008), and the Cameron Visiting Professor at Middlebury College (Fall 2007). In the Spring of 2003, he was the Ruth and Norman Moore Visiting Professor at Washington University in St. Louis and has also taught guest studios at Syracuse University (1991-92) and Lawrence Tech University (Fall 2001).
In 1994, he co-founded the University of Arkansas Mexico Summer Urban Studio, and has coordinated and taught in the program at the Casa Luis Barragan in Mexico City since 1996.
Blackwell received his undergraduate degree from Auburn University in 1980 and an MArch II degree from Syracuse University in Florence in 1991.
