The Marlon Blackwell Montessori Elementary (Photo from marlonblackwell.com)
“Having already secured a prestigious Cooper Hewitt National Design Award this spring, Marlon Blackwell Architects has now landed the top spot in the design category of this year’s Architect 50. Indeed, it’s been a banner year for the Fayetteville, Ark.–based practice, and a look through its portfolio shows why,” reports Architect magazine, the journal of the American Institute of Architects.
“Recent small projects like a Montessori school in Fayetteville and a practice facility for a golf club in the Ozarks demonstrate a rigorous and sometimes daring vernacular Modernism, fashioned on very lean budgets. But the firm’s talents don’t stop at the jewel-box scale. It has also designed a 356,000-square-foot high school expansion in Fayetteville, and collaborated with James Corner Field Operations to remake Shelby Farms Park in Memphis, one of the largest urban parks in the country.”
