Marlon Blackwell Architect

Marlon Blackwell Architect is a design centered critical practice that has been producing award winning and environmentally responsive architectural projects since its inception in 1990. We pride ourselves in providing our clients with good buildings that not only satisfy their spatial and budgetary needs but also elevate their community’s interests and the unique qualities of each site and program.

The work of Marlon Blackwell Architect is born out of a goal to enrich the experience of the everyday world by simply ‘building well’. We seek to provide for our clients an architecture that can be felt as much as it is understood, an architecture that is as immediate and tactile as it is legible, an architecture that contributes to the fundamental civic dignity in any community.

We advocate a participatory, even collaborative, design process between the client, contractors, and the architect, where all voices are heard, from conceptualization to the realization of each project design. We believe architecture is situational, so every project is considered unique. Careful observation and analysis of the building program and site allows us to develop appropriate questions that lead to appropriate responses for the specific needs of the client and the environment.

As a full service architecture firm we are able to provide an integrated design team that includes Civil, Structural, Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Lighting Design and Landscape Architecture. Because of our diverse professional experience as designers and architects we are capable of accepting all challenges in a wide range of project types — including libraries, museums, office buildings, city infrastructure, community buildings, single-family residential and multi-family housing, and educational facilities. Our commitment to craft and detail, aesthetics with function, personal service in the office and in the field allows the construction of our client’s projects to exceed their expectations within the constraints of limited budgets, complex sites, and technological limitations. Our creed is simple and direct — we provide our clients what they need… and more.

The firm of Marlon Blackwell Architect has earned an international design reputation through the recognition of its work in many publications including architectural design journals and books, and receiving more than 70 national and international design awards. We were recognized by the Architectural League of New York in 1998 as an ‘Emerging Voice” in architecture.

Also published is a monograph by Princeton Architectural Press entitled, “An Architecture of the Ozarks” The Works of Marlon Blackwell. This book showcases the silent beauty of the Ozarks instilled in the architectural works of Marlon Blackwell Architect.