The AIA has announced its top one-per-year awards, its Gold Medal and Firm Award, to be presented at its national conference in Los Angeles in May.
2020 AIA Gold Medal – Marlon Blackwell
Established in 1907, the selection of Gold Medalists has necessarily shown considerable variation in the kind of architects so honored, especially in recent years. Last year, for instance the winner was Richard Rogers of London, one of five international medalist over the past 20 years. (Although he is English, Rogers did earn his master’s degree at Yale.)
In recent years, the Institute has been playing diversity catch-up with its honors, awarding posthumous Golds to the first woman, Julia Morgan of San Francisco (1972-1957) in 2014 and first African-American, Paul Williams of Los Angeles (1894-1980) in 2017). Both had extensive, highly distinguished practices worthy of such an honor in their lifetimes. And in 2016 Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown won this recognition under revised rules that permit two partners to share the medal. Since then, there have been only single male recipients, but other husband-wife teams appear to be in line for this honor: Tod Williams and Billie Tsien as well as Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio – both couples leading stellar, globe-straddling practices from New York offices.
The pinnacle of U.S. architectural honors, the AIA’s Gold Medal, is going this year to Marlon Blackwell of Fayetteville, Arkansas. In a departure from recent choices, this year’s Gold is going not to an internationally recognized design star, but to the head of a small firm with a relatively modest practice in what Blackwell himself calls “flyover country.”
This is not the first time, however, that an architect from Fayetteville has won this honor. In 1990 it was bestowed on E. Fay Jones, an architect who worked largely in the same territory and, like Blackwell, was also a leading member of the University of Arkansas design faculty.
Jones also designed relatively modest buildings that drew national attention, but his best-known works embodied poetic variations of age-old building techniques. Blackwell, by contrast, achieves a kind of restrained elegance using everyday building systems. Where more elegant materials are called for, he applies them in a similarly straightforward, almost minimalist, way.
Blackwell was born in Germany and lived in various parts of the U.S. before settling in Fayetteville in 1992. He earned his bachelor’s degree in architecture at Auburn University in Alabama (where the earlier design star Paul Rudolph also earned his first architecture degree), then a master’s from Syracuse University. He now heads the architecture department at the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas.
A photo of Blackwell’s firm shows just 11 people, among them the firm’s co-principal, his wife Mervati Johari-Blackwell. While the firm undoubtedly applies advanced computer methods to design, the photo of Blackwell himself in the AIA press release shows him drawing with pencil on a roll of “yellow trace.”
Brief text on the firm’s website emphasizes a point too often glossed over – that good architecture results from a collaboration between architect, client, and contractor. And it says that its designers apply “an economy of means to deliver a maximum of meaning.” The firm’s work demonstrates the value of both principles.
REPRESENTATIVE BLACKWELL PROJECTS
>St. Nicholas Eastern Orthodox Church, Springdale, AR, 2010
A generic commercial structure was transformed here into a distinctive worship place. It was re-clad with box rib metal panels, widely used in industrial buildings. The limited interior space was configured so that congregants would face east, with carefully baffled sunlight illuminating morning services. A minimal tower displays a distinctive back-lighted cross that identifies the church’s function clearly from the nearby interstate.
>Shelby Farms Park Visitor Center, Memphis, TN, 2016
One of an ensemble of structures designed for the largest urban park in the U.S., the building is clad in aluminum bar grate that filters daylight. Under the longest of the upper story’s two long cantilevers, supersized ceiling fans “thresh” the region’s humid air.
>Indianapolis Museum of Art Visitors Pavilion, 2010
Located in a wooded portion of the 100-acre Art + Nature Park that is part of the museum’s campus, the pavilion is designed for individual contemplation of nature and for educational groups of up to 50. Hovering above the forest floor on steel framing, the structure is subtly shaded by a wood-slat canopy.
>Stephen L. Anderson Design Center, Fayetteville, AR, 2013
A 37,000 square foot addition to the University of Arkansas design school echoes the volume of the 1930s wing at the opposite end of the structure. Maintaining a kinship with the existing building, which was scrupulously restored at the same time, the new construction is clad partly in matching limestone, partly in glass with multistory exterior louvers where needed.
Many other projects, including public libraries, schools, health care facilities, office buildings, and houses – most of them in Northwest Arkansas – are enough to make Blackwell’s presence there apparent.
2020 AIA Firm Award – ARO
AIA’s national Firm Award aims to be equivalent in prestige to the Gold Medal, stressing the group rather than individuals. Bestowed since 1962 – versus 1907 for the Gold – it has never carried quite as much glory. This year’s Firm Award is going to Architecture Research Office of New York. This firm doesn’t just compete for the customary commissions, but carries out a broad range of unconventional projects.
Founded in 1993, the firm has a staff of 30, led by principals Stephen Cassell, Kim Yao, and Adam Yarinsky. Its commissions cover a remarkably broad range of scales, from urban design to interiors products. The firm’s materials research led to development of a collection of modular acoustic felt components for Knoll subsidiaries Filzfelt and Spinneybeck.
The AIA citation stresses the way ARO’s operation departs from convention and offers potential lessons for other design firms. It is said to “leverage research and an inquisitive methodology” to address the question: “What’s next?”
Letters of support for ARO’s nomination cited as well the firm’s work environment within its office – its empowerment of young staff to play key roles and its encouragement for those who move on to form their own firms. A support letter from no less that Marlon Blackwell, who was to earn this year’s Gold Medal, expressed his admiration for “their willingness to admit that they know enough to know what they don’t know.”
REPRESENTATIVE ARO PROJECTS
>Rising Currents: A New Urban Ground
This visionary plan for Lower Manhattan deals with rising sea levels and other issues. It was funded by an AIA Latrobe Grant and carried out with the DLANDstudio landscape firm. Environmental measures proposed include reconfigured shorelines, new drainage systems, repurposed streets, and expanded public spaces.
>Brooklyn Bridge Park Boathouse, Brooklyn, NY
Sited in an extensive recently developed park, the boathouse overlooks the Lower Manhattan skyline. Back-lighted aluminum grilles give the building a glowing presence after dark.
>Tate Library at Ethical Culture Fieldston School, Bronx, NY
The building represents the latest thinking in library spatial design and includes an installation of ARO Block felt acoustic wall panels design by the firm for Knoll and produced by its subsidiary FilzFelt.
>Upper Learning Building, Riverdale Country School, Bronx, NY
Designed for the school’s elementary grades, the project provides valuable outdoor spaces and takes advantage of the site’s Hudson River views.
Other ARO projects include: a synagogue for Congregation Beit Simchat in New York, the world’s largest LGBTQ congregation; a campus plan, with auxiliary facilities, for the Rothko Chapel in Houston; the Nippert Stadium at the University of Cincinnati; a house in the Colorado Rockies; and finally, but by no means incidentally, Knoll showrooms in several U.S. cities.