MIES CROWN HALL AMERICAS PRIZEANNOUNCES CYCLE 5 AMERICAS PRIZE AWARD

THADEN SCHOOL BY MARLON BLACKWELL ARCHITECTS, ESKEWDUMEZRIPPLE, AND ANDROPOGON ASSOCIATES

RECEIVES FIFTH MCHAP AMERICAS PRIZE

CHICAGO, IL (5 May 2025) – The Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP) proudly announces Thaden School, designed by Marlon Blackwell Architects, EskewDumezRipple, and Andropogon Associates as the winners of the fifth MCHAP Americas Prize award.

The announcement was made at the close of a daylong celebration held at S.R. Crown Hall on the historical Mies-designed IIT campus. The morning began with Masterclass presentations by students from IIT and universities throughout the region, showcasing campus design proposals inspired by the five finalists. In the afternoon, the finalists presented their work and joined the jury for a public roundtable discussion during the MCHAP Symposium. The evening culminated in a reception, dinner, and the official announcement of Thaden School as the winner of the MCHAP Cycle 5 Americas Prize, followed by a champagne toast honoring the project’s remarkable achievement.

“Traveling together, I witnessed firsthand the incredible insights each jury member brought to these five standard-setting works. All the finalists emerged organically from needs and demands of their immediate contexts, with ingenuity and a synergy of creativity between the client and designer—a synergy that is the hallmark of so many MCHAP finalists,” MCHAP Director Dirk Denison said. “From Winnipeg to Buenos Aires, we saw living evidence of architecture activating and enriching the lives of those who learn, work, and play in the settings of these designs. I thank our committed jury, who worked together so graciously while sharing diverse perspectives on questions related to type, use of resources, and scale, as they took on the formidable task of evaluating more than 250 remarkable nominees and determining the five finalists and the project they honor tonight with the 2025 Americas Prize.”

Thaden School is a 30-acre independent middle and high school campus in Bentonville, Arkansas, that reimagines the relationship between learning, landscape, and community. Designed by Marlon Blackwell Architects, EskewDumezRipple, and Andropogon Associates, the campus integrates architecture and ecology to support hands-on, interdisciplinary learning while honoring the region’s agricultural heritage.

Thaden School

EskewDumezRipple and Marlon Blackwell Architects + Andropogon Associates

Bentonville, Arkansas, United States

PRIMARY AUTHOR/ARCHITECT

Marlon Blackwell (Founder at Marlon Blackwell Architects), Steve Dumez (Design Director at EskewDumezRipple), Andropogon Associates (Landscape Architect)

CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR/ARCHITECT

Engineering Consultants, Inc. (ECI) (Structural Engineer), Ecological Design Group (Civil Engineer), CMTA Consulting Engineers (MEP Engineer), Milestone Construction (Construction/ Contractor)

CLIENT

Thaden School

PHOTOGRAPHER

Timothy Hursley, EskewDumezRipple

The Thaden School in Bentonville, Arkansas, designed by Marlon Blackwell Architects, EskewDumezRipple, and Andropogon Associates, redefines the educational campus as a sustainable, community-centered environment. Completed in 2019, the project supports Thaden’s “Wheels, Meals, and Reels” curriculum, which emphasizes hands-on learning through integration with the surrounding landscape. The campus functions as a living laboratory, where students engage directly with systems of energy, ecology, and food production.

Rooted in the Ozark landscape and local agricultural traditions, the design blends contemporary architecture with vernacular forms to create an “urban pastoral” campus—merging rural heritage with downtown Bentonville’s revitalization. The planning process included input from school leadership, local nonprofits, and community stakeholders to ensure the campus would serve both students and the public.

Sustainability is central to the project, with features like geothermal wells, stormwater management, native planting, and reclaimed materials. The campus operates with 70% greater energy efficiency than similar schools, reducing over 1,400 metric tons of CO₂ annually.

Beyond performance, the school has become a vibrant community hub, hosting events and fostering connection. Its design, which emphasizes daylight, outdoor access, and ventilation, proved especially beneficial during the pandemic by supporting student health and well-being. Thaden School exemplifies how architecture can advance educational goals, environmental stewardship, and civic engagement in one cohesive vision.

MCHAP Jury Member Quote

In selecting the Thaden School as the winner of the 2025 MCHAP Americas Prize, the jury collectively reflected:

“The rural context of Arkansas has inspired the design team to create a uniquely American spatial form that is simultaneously centered on the Thaden School academic community while remaining completely open to the surrounding community.

The building’s character shapes a campus steeped in the rural culture of its place—the barn, the porch, and the long and low farm buildings are artfully assembled into a new academical village that powerfully interprets the pedagogical mission of ‘youth learning by doing.’

No singular space dominates the campus composition, but instead a series of distinctly public landscapes and gardens of different scales and character invites pedestrians, cyclists and even wildlife and weather to meander through. The collaborative effort of the design teams read through this powerful composition.

Space is both contained and open-ended, inviting the public to enter into the center of student life. The threshold between outdoor and indoor is made of outward-facing porches, covered passageways, and outdoor rooms. This flexible composition of the campus encourages learning, recreation, farming, and civic gathering.

The way one moves through space — punctuated by outward-facing porches, framed views, and covered passageways connected across gardens of different characters — are essential to the civic development of students.”

The 2025 MCHAP Americas Prize jury includes: Maurice Cox (chair), former Commissioner of the City of Chicago Department of Planning and Development; Giovanna Borasi, director, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal; Gregg Pasquarelli, founding principal, SHoP Architects, New York; Mauricio Rocha, founder, Taller | Mauricio Rocha, Mexico City, and author of the 2023 Americas Prize winner, the renovation of the Museo Anahuacalli; and Sofia von Ellrichshausen, founding partner, Pezo von Ellrichshausen, Concepción, Chile, and author of Poli House, the 2014 winner of the Prize for Emerging Practice.

MCHAP Americas Prize Cycle 5 Winner Bio

Marlon Blackwell Architects

Marlon Blackwell, FAIA is a practicing architect in Fayetteville, Arkansas, whose distinct and original voice has produced iconic and award-winning designs across typologies, scales and budgets. His criticallyresolute merging of the universal language of architecture and the particulars of place have resulted in a distinguished body of work found outside the centers of fashion.

Despite working where architecture is unexpected and often unappreciated, his firm, Marlon Blackwell Architects has created beloved buildings deliberately focused to foster the public good, most notable in education, healthcare, and parks. Since its inception in 1992, the firm has earned over 180 domestic, national, and international design awards including the 2016 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture.

EskewDumezRipple

Established in 1989, EskewDumezRipple has transformed from a local firm doing nationally recognized work to a national firm that has retained its local roots. Recipients of the prestigious 2014 Architecture Firm Award, we have continued to find meaningful ways to shape community and the profession at large. The resulting body of work—ranging from intimate interiors to large scale urban planning projects—reflects the firm’s focus on civic life regardless of scale, budget, scope, or complexity. Building upon the legacy of our founder Allen Eskew, we strive to engage the world as he did—with humility, charm, and a deeply personal commitment to design as craft.

Andropogon Associates

Andropogon Associates is an award-winning, MBE-certified landscape architecture and ecological planning firm with a staff of 13 across offices in Philadelphia, PA and Raleigh, NC. For almost 50 years, Andropogon has committed itself to the principle of designing with nature to create beautiful and evocative landscapes that are inspired by natural processes, informed by the most recent science, and crafted to meet the needs of their unique communities. We have applied this approach to a range of projects, nationally and internationally, and produced sites that serve as both foundation and inspiration for academic, healthcare, cultural, corporate, and government clients.

MCHAP Americas Prize Cycle 5 Finalists

Centro de Investigación Mar de Cortés, Tatiana Bilbao ESTUDIO

Clínica Veterinaria Guayaquil, adamo-faiden

Ecoparque Bacalar, Colectivo C733

Pumphouse, 5468796 Architecture

Thaden School, Eskew Dumez Ripple, Marlon Blackwell Architects, and Andropogon Associates

Past MCHAP Americas Prize Laureates

2014     Herzog & de Meuron

            Álvaro Siza

2016     SANAA

2018     Barclay & Crousse Architecture

2022     Taller Mauricio Rocha

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ABOUT MCHAP

The Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP) is a biennial prize that acknowledges the best built works of architecture in the Americas. MCHAP was conceived by Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture in 2013. Visit http://www.mchap.co/aboutfor more information.

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COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTUREThe College of Architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology builds on a legacy of disciplined experimentation in materials and technologies to educate and inspire the next generation of architects and landscape architects. From its landmark campus and home at S. R. Crown Hall, IIT Architecture champions an interdisciplinary approach to education and research that is simultaneously local and global in its impact. IIT Architecture students are educated to address complex, contemporary challenges of designing and constructing across all scales. Both faculty and students enjoy a longstanding relationship with professional practice in Chicago, a city with a vibrant history of innovation in architecture, design, landscape architecture, and urbanism. Visit arch.iit.edu.