Featuring Marlon Blackwell, FAIA
When
Out of Place: Architecture Betwixt and Between
This lecture examines the public and civic projects featured in Radical Practice: The Work of Marlon Blackwell Architects (Princeton Architectural Press), revealing how the studio’s work across scales, budgets, and typologies merges architecture’s universal language with the distinct character of place. Positioned within the context of the U.S. Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, Porch: An Architecture of Generosity, the talk explores the porch as a layered architectural lens—simultaneously threshold, environmental device, and social interface. Framing architecture as a civic act, it argues for a practice grounded not only in place, but of place, for place, and, at times, productively out of place.
Following the lecture, a reception will be held in the CAPLA Underwood Garden beginning at 5:30 p.m.
About the Speaker
Marlon Blackwell, FAIA
Marlon Blackwell Architects, Fayetteville and Bentonville, Arkansas
Louis I. Kahn Visiting Professor of Architectural Design, School of Architecture, Yale University (2025-26)
Curator, US Pavilion, Venice Architectural Biennale, 2025
Marlon Blackwell, FAIA together with his partner in life and work, Ati Blackwell, FAIA, ASID lead the internationally recognized practice Marlon Blackwell Architects. Their work has received recognition with significant publication and more than 200 design awards including the 2016 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture and the 2025 Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize. Working between the universal language of architecture and the particulars of place, they have cultivated a studio recognized for its formal clarity, contextual depth, and architectural integrity. In 2020, Marlon was honored with the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects for his enduring impact on the theory and practice of architecture. He’s a lifetime member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and an inductee of the American Academy of
Arts and Science. Equally respected as an educator, he served as the E. Fay Jones Distinguished Professor at the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas where he taught for over 30 years.
Most recently, he was the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Professor at Yale University for the Fall of 2025. A monograph of their recent work, titled “Radical Practice”, was published in 2022 by Princeton Architectural Press.