AIA Central PA Spring Lecture 2026

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AIA CENTRAL PA SPRING LECTURE

Featuring | Marlon Blackwell, FAIA

Wednesday, May 20, 2026
7pm | Followed by a Social Hour
West Shore Theater | 317 Bridge St, New Cumberland, PA  17070

Marlon Blackwell is an American architect and university professor in Arkansas. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. He is founder and principal at Marlon Blackwell Architects, a design firm established in 1992 in Fayetteville. Blackwell is the E. Fay Jones Chair in Architecture and a Distinguished Professor in the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.

Blackwell is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the 2020 AIA Gold Medal, the 2020 Southeastern Conference Professor of the Year, and the 2016 National Design Award for Architecture Design from Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. In 2014, he was named a United States Artists Ford Fellow (in Architecture and Design). In 2012, he received the Architecture Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2023 Blackwell was elected as a member to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Blackwell was inducted into the National Academy of Design in 2018. He was the William A. Bernoudy Architect in Residence at the American Academy in Rome in 2018–2019. He was elected to the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows in 2009. In 1998, the Architectural League of New York selected him as an “Emerging Voice” in architecture.

Sixteen projects by Blackwell’s firm have been recognized with national awards by The American Institute of Architects (AIA), including the AIA Honor Awards for Thaden School (with EskewDumezRipple and Andropogon Associates) (2023), The Lamplighter School Innovation Lab (2021), Shelby Farms Park (with James Corner Field Operations) (2019), Vol Walker Hall-Steven L. Anderson Design Center at the University of Arkansas (2018), the Crystal Bridges Museum Store at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (2015), the Little Rock Creative Corridor (2014), St. Nicholas Eastern Orthodox Church (2013), and the Ruth Lilly Visitors Pavilion at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (2012). He has won AIA Housing Awards for Graphic House (2017) and L-Stack House (2008).

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