Marlon Blackwell Among DesignIntelligence's '30 Most Admired Educators' for 2015

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Marlon Blackwell was named by DesignIntelligence as one of "30 Most Admired Educators" for 2015.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – DesignIntelligence has named Marlon Blackwell of the Fay Jones School of Architecture as one of “30 Most Admired Educators” for 2015.

Each year, DesignIntelligence honors excellence in education and educa­tion administration by naming 30 exemplary professionals in these fields. The 2015 class of education role models was selected by DesignIntelligence staff with extensive input from thousands of design professionals, academic depart­ment heads, and students. Educators and administrators from the disciplines of architecture, industrial design, interior design and landscape architecture were considered for inclusion. The results were reported in the November/December 2014 issue of DesignIntelligence, a publication that reports on the architecture and design industries.

In the issue, Blackwell, who is a Distinguished Professor and head of the Department of Architecture, was described as an “exemplar as a practicing architect and academic leader.”

“He balances a career as an accomplished architect who creates memorable work with the role of a dedicated educator. He brings a strong design orientation and always provides good criticism; it is evident that he is truly interested in advancing design through both teaching and practice.”

Having taught in the Fay Jones School more than 20 years, Blackwell joins the ranks of fellow faculty members to be recognized by DesignIntelligence. Architecture professor David Buege was selected as one of 30 “Most Admired Educators” for 2013, and Jeff Shannon, architecture professor and former dean, was named one of the 25 “Most Admired Educators” for 2011.

Blackwell also was recently selected as a USA Ford Fellow, receiving a $50,000 fellowship grant from United States Artists, a national grant-making and advocacy organization. Blackwell, honored in the Architecture and Design category, was one of 34 artists to receive a 2014 United States Artists fellowship. The Fellows were selected from 116 nominated artists living in the United States and Puerto Rico and were chosen by a panel of expert peers in each artistic discipline.

Blackwell is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and also received the Arts and Letters Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2012.

Projects by his Fayetteville-based firm, Marlon Blackwell Architects, have won numerous awards. The St. Nicholas Eastern Orthodox Church in Springdale won a 2013 national American Institute of Architects Honor Award and was named the top Civic and Community Building in the 2011 World Architecture Festival. In 2012, the Ruth Lilly Visitors Pavilion at the Indianapolis Museum of Art won an American Architecture Award from the Chicago Athenaeum, an AIA Honor Award, an Indiana AIA High Honor Award and a Gulf States Regional AIA Honor Award.

His firm was lead architect on the renovation of Vol Walker Hall and the addition of the Steven L. Anderson Design Center – home to the Fay Jones School – with Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects serving as associate architects. Accolades for that project in 2014 include a Gulf States Region AIA Honor Award, American Architecture Award, AZ Award for Best Commercial/Institutional Architecture (over 1,000 square meters), Architect’s Newspaper Building of the Year, Lumen Award for Excellence, LEED Gold certification and finalist in the World Architecture Festival Awards.