The American Institute of Architects has named Marlon Blackwell, FAIA, Marlon Blackwell Architects, as the recipient of its 2020 Gold Medal Award. The Gold Medal is the AIA's highest annual honor, recognizing individuals whose work has had a lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture.

 
Though he was born in Germany, Blackwell is a product of the American South. As a traveling bible salesman, he experienced the South's simple dignity and rich culture, which helped shape his worldview. Now, from a career spanning three decades, Blackwell has amassed an important body of transcendent work in the hills of northwest Arkansas. In a time of ceaseless superficial messages, Blackwell's work remains purely authentic, according to AIA.

His work emerges from a deep understanding of site, landscape, art, and craft. His "glocal" approach to architecture is reflected in his education, with studies at Auburn University and Syracuse University in Florence. Despite operating in a region where architecture can be overlooked, his firm is eager to tackle any project type that serves the common good, regardless of scale and budget,and has been widely recognized with more than 120 national and 14 international design awards, AIA's press release states.

"Marlon Blackwell is a student of his 'Place' in the world. This ethic provides a philosophical coherence to his work," wrote Brian MacKay-Lyons in a letter supporting Blackwell's nomination for the Gold Medal. "His is a uniquely American architecture; he builds confidently upon the American cultural landscape. His 'cultural realist' approach is democratic, looking to the ordinary and the everyday for inspiration. It is connected to society, rather than being aloof. This is not a nostalgic architecture, but an architecture of its time and place."

Every Marlon Blackwell design is a new lesson in the transformative ability of architecture to reveal the uniqueness of every site and give meaning to any program, to achieve an expressive clarity in strong and simple forms," wrote Julie V. Snow, AIA, in a letter supporting Blackwell's nomination. "In every way, across all measures, the work raises our expectations for our own architecture and teaches us that it is possible to exceed what appears to limit us."