Blackwell Church Chosen for Shortlist of Most 'Outstanding Projects' in the Americas

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The St. Nicholas Eastern Orthodox Church in Springdale, designed by Marlon Blackwell Architect(Photo by Timothy Hursley)

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – A small church building in Springdale has been chosen for the shortlist for the newly created Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize. The St. Nicholas Eastern Orthodox Church was designed by Marlon Blackwell Architect.

Wiel Arets, dean of the College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and Dirk Denison, director of the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize, recently revealed the inaugural shortlist – 36 “Outstanding Projects” selected from the 225 nominees. The winner of the prize will be announced July 9 at a live-streamed public event in Santiago, Chile.

Earlier this year, Arets and the College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology announced the creation of the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize and the prize for Emerging Architecture. With an objective to “reward the daring contemplation of the intersection of the new metropolis and human ecology,” these two biennial prizes will “recognize the most distinguished built constructs of the North and South American continents” while fostering research toward rethinking the metropolis.

A list of projects was nominated by a network of 70 professionally diverse, international ambassadors from throughout the Americas. From those projects, five finalists with built works of architecture completed between January 2000 and December 2013 will be considered for the inaugural Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize.

The 36 designs on the shortlist for the prize include projects in locales such as Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Toronto, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Kansas City and Arizona. “The rich diversity of these built works is a testament to the creative energy at work in the Americas today,” Arets said.

Blackwell, whose firm is based in Fayetteville, is a Distinguished Professor and head of the architecture department in the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas, as well as a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects.

The St. Nicholas project, completed in 2010, entailed the transformation of an existing metal shop building into a sanctuary and fellowship hall. A sky-lit tower pours red light down into the transition between the narthex and the sanctuary, giving worshippers a moment of pause before entering. A narrow cross is suspended on the western side of the tower, backlit by the morning sun, itself a beacon for arriving parishioners. The exterior of the building, which is easily visible from Interstate 49 in Springdale, uses box rib metal panels, common in local industrial buildings, while the interior finishes are kept simple.

The church has received several previous honors, including being named the World’s Best Civic and Community Building by the World Architecture Festival in 2011. It garnered a 2011 American Architecture Award, a 2012 AIA Small Project Award and a 2013 AIA Honor Award for Architecture. It also received an Honor Award from the 2013 Religious Art & Architecture Awards program, which is co-sponsored by Faith & Form magazine and the Interfaith Forum on Religion, Art and Architecture.

The 36 Outstanding Projects were chosen from among the nominees by the inaugural prize jury, which includes Kenneth Frampton, jury president and Ware Professor of Architecture at GSAPP, Columbia University, New York; Wiel Arets, dean of the College of Architecture and Rowe Family College of Architecture Dean Endowed Chair at IIT, Chicago; Jorge Francisco Liernur, architect, professor at Torcuato Di Tella University, and researcher of Argentina’s National Council for Scientific and Technical Investigation, Buenos Aires; Dominique Perrault, founding principal, Dominique Perrault Architecture, Paris; and Sarah Whiting, dean and William Ward Watkin Professor, Rice School of Architecture, Houston.

The authors of the MCHAP recipient and shortlist will be celebrated at a conference held at Crown Hall in October, where the jury will engage in a direct dialogue about the works as part of a continuing exploration of how architecture can improve the lives of the people who inhabit these innovative built works. Crown Hall, designed by Mies van der Rohe, is the home of the College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.