May 09, 2025
Thaden School Project Receives Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize
The Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP) recently announced that a one-of-a-kind school campus designed by Marlon Blackwell Architects, EskewDumezRipple, and Andropogon Associates to embrace rural America has been named the winner of the fifth Americas Prize.
The announcement was made at the close of a daylong celebration of student showcases and guest lectures at S. R. Crown Hall, the home of Illinois Institute of Technology’s College of Architecture, on May 5.
The winning project, Thaden School, is a 30-acre independent middle and high school campus in Bentonville, Arkansas that was completed in 2019. It reimagines the relationship between learning, landscape, and community. The campus integrates architecture and ecology to support hands-on, interdisciplinary learning while honoring the region’s agricultural heritage.
Sustainability is central to the project, with features such as geothermal wells, stormwater management, native planting, and reclaimed materials. The campus operates with 70 percent greater energy efficiency than similar schools, which has led to reducing more than 1,400 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually.
The MCHAP jury remarked that “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 2025 MCHAP Americas Prize jury included Maurice Cox (chair), former commissioner of the City of Chicago Department of Planning and Development; Giovanna Borasi, director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture; Gregg Pasquarelli, founding principal of SHoP Architects in New York; Mauricio Rocha, founder of Taller | Mauricio Rocha in Mexico City and author of the 2023 Americas Prize winner, the renovation of the Museo Anahuacalli; and Sofia von Ellrichshausen, founding partner of Pezo von Ellrichshausen in Chile and author of Poli House, the 2014 winner of MCHAP’s Prize for Emerging Practice.
The other finalists for the fifth MCHAP Americas Prize cycle include Centro de Investigación Mar de Cortés, Tatiana Bilbao ESTUDIO; Clínica Veterinaria Guayaquil, adamo-faiden; Ecoparque Bacalar, Colectivo C733; and Pumphouse, 5468796 Architecture.
“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,” said MCHAP Director Dirk Denison, who also serves as a professor at the College of Architecture.