Marion Leigh Forbes

Adjunct Lecturer in Design

Marion Forbes is a designer, producer, writer, and director living and working in New Orleans, Louisiana. After receiving her Bachelor of Architecture in 2014, Marion worked for over eight years as an architectural designer in Tennessee, Finland, Connecticut, and Louisiana before returning to school to study film production in New Orleans.

Marion takes an interdisciplinary approach to filmmaking and design - drawing from experience as a musician, printmaker, weaver, and longtime film lover, she believes that design thinking occurs at all scales. Her ongoing design practice centers on sensory perception and the built environment - how individuals engage with space, form, and objects over time. In film, Marion's stories center around the lives of complicated people struggling with change - the interstitial spaces between major chapters in one's life.

Marion's design work can be seen at the New Orleans Museum of Art Auditorium and Cafe with Eskew Dumez Ripple, The American Eagle Outfitters Flagship Store in San Francisco, and Firehouse 12 Residence in New Haven, Connecticut both with Gray Organschi Architecture.

Marion's first short film, Timbre, was a Student Academy Award Semi-Finalist in 2021, and two of her previous short films are now streaming on the independent streaming platform, iNDIEFLIX.