The Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP) has just announced the winners of the fifth MCHAP Americas Prize award: Thaden School, designed by Marlon Blackwell Architects, EskewDumezRipple, and Andropogon Associates. Located in Bentonville, Arkansas, on a 30-acre site, the campus explores the relationship between architecture, landscape, and community within the educational context. The announcement was made after a daylong celebration at S.R. Crown Hall on the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) campus. The event featured Masterclass presentations by students from IIT and regional universities, along with a roundtable discussion with the finalists and jury during the MCHAP Symposium.
The winning project, Thaden School, completed in 2019, is designed to support the school’s “Wheels, Meals, and Reels” curriculum, which integrates hands-on learning with the surrounding landscape. The campus operates as a living laboratory, allowing students to engage with systems related to energy, ecology, and food production. The design draws from the Ozark landscape and local agricultural traditions, blending contemporary architectural elements with vernacular forms to create an “urban pastoral” campus that connects rural heritage with the revitalization of downtown Bentonville. The planning process involved input from school leadership, local nonprofits, and community stakeholders to ensure the campus addresses the needs of both the educational community and the public.
With features such as geothermal wells, stormwater management, native planting, and reclaimed materials, the design highlights sustainability. The campus achieves a level of energy efficiency 70% higher than similar schools, resulting in a reduction of over 1,400 metric tons of CO2 annually. The school serves as a community hub, hosting events and encouraging connections, reflecting an approach to how architecture can support educational, environmental, and community goals. Incorporating natural light, outdoor access, and ventilation, the design also contributed to student health and well-being during the pandemic.
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MCHAP Director Dirk Denison said, “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,” about this year’s jury and projects.
In selecting the Thaden School as the winner of the 2025 MCHAP Americas Prize, the jury stated: “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. – 2025 MCHAP Americas Prize jury
“No singular space dominates the campus composition; instead, a series of distinctly public landscapes and gardens of varying scales and character invites pedestrians, cyclists, and even wildlife and weather to move through. The collaborative effort of the design teams is legible throughout this composition. Space is both contained and open-ended, inviting the public into the center of student life. The threshold between indoor and outdoor is articulated through outward-facing porches, covered passageways, and outdoor rooms. This flexible arrangement encourages learning, recreation, farming, and civic gathering. The way one moves through space—punctuated by porches, framed views, and covered walkways linked across gardens—plays an essential role in the civic development of students.”
The jury for the 2025 MCHAP Americas Prize is chaired by Maurice Cox, former Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Planning and Development. Members include Giovanna Borasi, Director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal; 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-winning renovation of the Museo Anahuacalli; and Sofia von Ellrichshausen, Founding Partner of Pezo von Ellrichshausen in Concepción, Chile, architect of Poli House, which received the 2014 Prize for Emerging Practice.
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