Marlon Blackwell, of Marlon Blackwell Architect in Fayetteville.
Three projects with ties to the University of Arkansas’ Fay Jones School of Architecture have received 2014 American Architecture Awards.
The awards are presented by the Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture & Design and the European Centre for Architecture Art Design & Urban Studies.
The 63 award winners were chosen from submissions by architecture firms across the United States and include buildings, commercial and institutional developments, and urban planning projects designed or built since 2012.
The UA projects recognized were:
• The renovation of Vol Walker Hall and addition of the Steven L. Anderson Design Center, which houses the Fay Jones School. Marlon Blackwell Architects of Fayetteville was the project’s lead architect, with Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects as associate architects. Blackwell is a distinguished professor and head of the Fay Jones School’s Department of Architecture.
• Fayetteville 2030: Food City Scenario, an urban agricultural project that speculates on what Fayetteville might look like if the city integrated local food production enough to create self-sufficiency. The plan involved the Fay Jones School, the UA’s Department of Biological & Agricultural Engineering, the Center for Agricultural & Rural Sustainability, the School of Law and its master of laws program in agricultural and food law, the Department of Food Science and the city of Fayetteville. The team also worked with local nonprofits fighting hunger and poverty.
• The Fayetteville Montessori Elementary School, also by Blackwell’s firm.
These three projects will be premiered in “The City and the World” juried exhibition at the Istanbul Design Biennial Nov. 10-25 in Istanbul and at the Chicago Architecture Biennial in fall 2015.
The Vol Walker Hall and Design Center project has previously been recognized with a number of awards, including a Gulf States Region AIA Honor Award, AZ Award for Best Commercial/Institutional Architecture, Architect’s Newspaper Building of the Year, Lumen Award for Excellence and LEED Gold certification — all in 2014. It also won a 2014 Honor Award from the Arkansas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and was selected by convention attendees for the Members’ Choice Award. In 2012, it received a Building Information Modeling Award from the American Institute of Architects for Exemplary Use of BIM in a Small Firm.
The Food City Scenario project was honored earlier this year with an honorable mention in the 61st Progressive Architecture Awards program, as well an Award of Merit in the category for Planning Tool or Process for the Charter Awards from the Congress for the New Urbanism.
This Montessori school project was featured in the January issue of Architectural Record, in a “Schools of the 21st Century” section that looked at the planning and design of K-12 school buildings.
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