ABSTRACT
Marlon Blackwell, FAIA, is a practicing architect in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and serves as Distinguished Professor and Department Head in the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas. For him, drawing is a means of measuring and tracking ideas and tactics. The design drawings were done back and forth between soft pencils and yellow trace and BIM modeling. Each of Marlon Blackwell's projects starts with yellow trace paper and a big, chunky pencil loaded with super-soft graphite. Working outside the architectural mainstream, his architecture is based in design strategies that draw upon vernaculars and the contradictions of place; strategies that seek to transgress conventional boundaries for architecture. Work produced in his professional office, Marlon Blackwell Architect, has received recognition with numerous national and international design awards and significant publication in books, architectural journals and magazines. The office of Marlon Blackwell Architect was recognized as the Firm of the Year by Residential Architect magazine in 2011.
