AIA Virginia is pleased to announce that Marlon Blackwell FAIA, will be a keynote speaker at Architecture Exchange East (ArchEx). Blackwell is the 2020 AIA Gold Medal winner — the AIA’s highest annual honor given to an individual. His talk will be presented live at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts on Friday, Nov. 5, 2021. Audience members will have the option to join the program in person or online. Registration is now open through Nov. 5. See the complete agenda.
About Architecture Exchange East
ArchEx is AIA Virginia’s annual conference. This year, it takes place (mostly) virtually from Nov. 1–5, 2021. The program is curated to bring together the brightest minds and most engaging speakers to explore a broad theme.
In 2021, we’ll consider consequences — both intentional and unintentional. Design sometimes follows unexpected paths. Like cracks in the sidewalk, the built environment blooms in surprising ways with unexpected actors, leading us to new horizons. This year’s program features designs and designers responding with innovation, synthesis, and perhaps even a lesson or two from the undesigned constraints around us.
Registration is now open.
About Marlon Blackwell
Marlon Blackwell, FAIA,is a practicing architect in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and serves as the E. Fay Jones Distinguished Professor at the Fay Jones School of Architecture + Design at the University of Arkansas.
He’s principal of the, Marlon Blackwell Architects, which received the 2016 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture and ranked #1 in Design as part of the Architect 50, a national survey of architecture firms. In 2011, Marlon Blackwell Architects was recognized as the Firm of the Year by Residential Architect Magazine. The firm has earned an international design reputation through recognition of its work in many publications, including architectural design journals and books, and receiving more than 120 design awards including state, regional, national, and international awards.
In addition to being the recipient of the 2020 AIA Gold Medal, he was a 2019 Resident Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, inducted into the 2018 National Academy of Design and received the E. Fay Jones Gold Medal from the Arkansas AIA in 2017. A monograph of his early work entitled “An Architecture of the Ozarks: The Works of Marlon Blackwell” was published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2005. Marlon was selected by The International Design Magazine, in 2006, as one of the ID Forty: Undersung Heroes and as an “Emerging Voice” in 1998 by the Architectural League of New York.
Marlon was named the 2020 SEC Professor of The Year and as one of DesignIntelligence magazine’s “30 Most Admired Educators” for 2015. He has co-taught design studios with Peter Eisenman (1997 & 1998), Christopher Risher (2000), and Julie Snow (2003). Other visiting academic appointments include the McDermott Visiting Professor at the University of Texas at Austin (Spring 2016), the George Baird Professor at Cornell University (Fall 2012), the Thomas Jefferson Professor at the University of Virginia (Spring 2011), the Elliel Saarinen Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan (Fall 2009), the Ivan Smith Distinguished Professor at the University of Florida (Spring 2009), the Paul Rudolph Visiting Professor at Auburn University (Spring 2008), the Cameron Visiting Professor at Middlebury College (Fall 2007), the Ruth and Norman Moore Visiting Professor at Washington University in St. Louis (Spring 2003) and visiting graduate professor at MIT in Spring 2001 and 2002.