Arts & Culture

Artist Anne Schaefer, a 2001 alumna of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, discusses “it comes and it goes,” a new 12-panel mural she recently installed in the school’s Anabeth and John Weil Hall.

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts will launch its fall Public Lecture Series Sept. 19 with Swiss architect Patrick Gmür. Other events will include a Q&A with Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei and the symposium “Decoys & Depictions: Images of the Digital.”

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts will dedicate its new William A. Bernoudy Architecture Studio, thanks to a $1.5 million gift from the Gertrude & William A. Bernoudy Foundation. Located within Anabeth and John Weil Hall, the 6,580-square-foot space will provide state-of-the-art facilities for the school’s nationally ranked Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design.

Images of children locked in prison-like conditions have sparked heated debates about U.S. immigration policy, the role of the built environment, and the line between legitimate security and intentional cruelty. But underlying such debates is a simple question: “Is it possible to design a border architecture that is welcoming rather than foreboding?”

With speeds of nearly 700 miles per hour, hyperloop technology has the potential to revolutionize land-based transportation. But with that revolution comes new challenges for both urban destinations and rural environments. This spring, students and faculty from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts worked with Virgin Hyperloop One to investigate the impacts and potentials of the proposed Missouri route from St. Louis to Kansas City.

As a kid biking the streets of Kinloch and Ferguson, Mo., Ryan A. Wilson was drawn to construction sites. Now the Sam Fox School master’s candidate is working on ambitious projects and exploring architecture’s capacity for rebuilding community.

This week’s fire at Notre Dame in Paris, which destroyed the Cathedral’s iconic spire and much of the roof, gripped the world and led to outpourings of support. But the damage could have been far worse, said architectural historian Eric Mumford.

New York-based architect Lily Zhang has won the 2018-19 James Harrison Steedman Memorial Fellowship in Architecture. Granted biennially since 1925, the $50,000 award — among the largest such prizes in the nation — is organized by the College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, and by the American Institute of Architects St. Louis.

Kinga Pabjan, a master’s candidate in architecture and construction management in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, was part of a three-person team that won the 2019 Project Precast design competition.

This fall, one of the top programs for art, architecture and design at a U.S. university — the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis — will unveil two major new capital projects that will transform the campus, reshape the visitor experience and firmly establish the prominence of its art museum on campus. The newly constructed Anabeth and John Weil Hall will house state-of-the-art graduate studios, classrooms and digital fabrication spaces. A major expansion and renovation of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will strengthen visibility, better showcase the renowned permanent collection and accommodate larger and more varied special exhibitions.