School in Arkansas Wins 5th MCHAP Americas Prize
The Thaden School in Bentonville, Arkansas, designed by Marlon Blackwell Architects, EskewDumezRipple, and Andropogon Associates, has won the fifth cycle of the MCHAP Americas Prize.
The Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP) “identifies, celebrates and shares new examples of built architecture, landscape architecture and urbanism from throughout the Americas that are making outstanding contributions to their communities and setting the highest standards for the profession.” Established by the College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago in 2014, MCHAP gives out two biennial awards: the MCHAP.emerge Award, given to an outstanding built work in the Americas by a practice within their first ten years, and the MCHAP Americas Prize, awarded to the best built work in the Americas in the preceding two years.
The fifth MCHAP.emerge Award, announced in October, was given to the Community Production Center Las Tejedoras in Chongón, Ecuador, by architects José Fernando Gómez and Juan Carlos Bamba. Last week, the Thaden School in Bentonville, Arkansas, designed by Marlon Blackwell Architects, EskewDumezRipple, and Andropogon Associates, was named the winner of the fifth MCHAP Americas Prize. The school bested projects designed by Tatiana Bilbao ESTUDIO, adamo-faiden, Colectivo C733, and 5468796 Architecture.
The collaborative Thaden School joins the previous winners of the MCHAP Americas Prize: the Iberê Camargo Foundation in Porto Alegre, Brazil, by Álvaro Siza and 1111 Lincoln Road in Miami Beach, Florida, USA, by Herzog & de Meuron in the first cycle; Grace Farms in New Canaan, Connecticut, USA, by SANAA in the second cycle; Edificio E at the University of Piura in Piura, Peru, by Barclay & Crousse Architecture in the third cycle; and the remodeling and expansion of the Anahuacalli Museum in Mexico City, Mexico, by Taller|Mauricio Rocha in the fourth cycle.
“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. 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.”
The Thaden School is a middle and high school campus on 30 acres in downtown Bentonville, Arkansas. Funded by the Walton Family Foundation, the school's origins date back to 2015, when EskewDumezRipple, with Marlon Blackwell Architects and Andropogon Associates, developed a master plan for the private school. Incorporating feedback from school leaders and community stakeholders, the team devised an “urban pastoral” campus, rooting it in the Ozark landscape and local agricultural traditions and then designing buildings that merge vernacular forms with contemporary architecture.
As we learned when we featured one of the school buildings as a US Building of the Week in 2022, three years after its completion, the campus plan and Thaden School's philosophy of “learning by doing” resulted in individual buildings corresponding with the three major components of the school's curriculum: Reels (where narrative and visual communication come alive through the production of film and video), Wheels (where physics and mechanics come alive through the construction and use of bicycles), and Meals (where biology, chemistry, and community come alive through the growing and preparation of food). The three main buildings were completed in 2019, followed by the Bike Barn in 2020 and the Performance Building in 2022; the last piece made the ensemble eligible for this cycle of MCHAP.
The various buildings are leisurely spread across the campus, shaping the outdoor spaces as much as the buildings themselves. The buildings feature generous porches and other covered spaces that serve to connect and activate various landscape spaces within the campus, while the landscapes themselves are productive, as part of the school's agricultural program or through ecological processes. The campus also incorporates the relocated and repurposed childhood home of Louise Thaden, an early aviation pioneer and the namesake for the Thaden School.
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.
- 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
- Sofia von Ellrichshausen, founding partner, Pezo von Ellrichshausen, Concepción, Chile, and author of Poli House, the 2014 winner of the Prize for Emerging
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