Blackwell Wins Regional Honors for Two Renovation Projects

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Blackwell transformed Fayetteville’s Fulbright building from an outdated library facility into sleek office spaces. Photo by Timothy Hursley.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Marlon Blackwell, a professor at the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas, has won two honor awards from the Gulf States Regional division of the American Institute of Architects. He won top honors for reinventing the Fulbright Building, a beloved mid-century modern landmark in Fayetteville, and for transforming a historic hardware store into the Gentry Public Library.

A cayenne-colored stair lends drama to the Fulbright building. (Photo by Timothy Hursley)

This acoustical shroud buffers sound and creates a focal point in the Fulbright Building’s conference room. (Photo by Timothy Hursley)

“These sort of projects make you focus on the details because the form is already established,” Marlon Blackwell said. “You develop elements like doors, windows and stairs, and they really pay off.”

Case in point: the cayenne-colored stair that punctuates the façade of the Fulbright building, an outdated library facility that Blackwell retooled into a suite of offices organized around interior courtyards. He replaced a brick curtain wall system that was peeling away from the structure with a variegated shell of transparent and translucent glass, and cut light wells into the building to illuminate the once gloomy first floor. His favorite feature is an acoustical shroud designed to absorb sound in the building’s long, narrow conference room. Analyzed and refined acoustically by School of Architecture professor Tahar Messadi and built in situ by artists Bill Ward and Eugene Sargent, the black-zinc-clad figure hovers above the conference table, suggestive of a boat hull or perhaps a primordial sea creature. The Fulbright Building will be featured in the June issue of Architectural Record.

It took seven years, a millage and rebidding the project four times to realize Blackwell’s vision for the Gentry Public Library on a tight budget of $108 per square foot. The former hardware store has morphed into a sleek hybrid of old and new that has helped revitalize downtown Gentry, with almost 80 percent of the town’s population enrolled as members of the library. Designers have responded to Blackwell’s artful use of glazing to open the library to the street and showcase historic artifacts and his painstaking preservation of the building’s brick shell, pressed tin ceiling and heartwood pine floors. The project was featured in Architectural Record and is included in the current “Design 100” issue of Metropolitan Home. The Gentry Library previously won a 2008 honor award from the Arkansas chapter of the AIA and a 2009 National Library Design Award from the AIA and the American Library Association/Library Administration and Management Association. The Gentry library is the first community library in Arkansas to win state, regional and national design honors.

Marlon Blackwell has won 38 state, regional, national and international design awards since 1998.

“I’m very proud of this most recent recognition for Marlon Blackwell,” said Jeff Shannon, dean of the Fay Jones School of Architecture. “It’s a tremendous benefit for our students to study under him and learn from his work. These awards help spread the word of the quality of our school.”