Associate Professor Chandler Ahrens has been named chair of graduate architecture in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. The new role took effect July 1.
Since joining the Sam Fox School as an assistant professor in 2012, Ahrens has taught a variety of courses; chaired and served on several committees, including the Steedman Fellowship committee; and worked closely with the school’s Office for Socially Engaged Practice.
Prior to his arrival at WashU, Ahrens held roles as an architect at several firms, including nine years at Morphosis Architects, where he was responsible for significant projects such as the New Academic Building at Cooper Union in New York, the U.S. Embassy in London, and the Phare Tower in Paris. In 2004, he co-founded Open Source Architecture, an award-winning design research practice with offices in St. Louis, Los Angeles and Tel Aviv. In 2024, he co-founded another firm, AVV A, with Sam Fox School colleagues Constance Vale and Kelley Van Dyck Murphy.
Ahrens earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the Savannah College of Art and Design and a master’s in architecture from the University of California, Los Angeles. He succeeds Mónica Rivera, who held the role from 2018-2025, when she joined the faculty at Rice University.
Read more on the Sam Fox School website.
