Arts & Culture

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.

Xiaohua Fei, MArch ’00, founded X-urban Associates, an architecture firm in China, after earning his master’s in architecture from Washington University.

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts will launch its 2018 Informal Cities Workshop at 12:15 p.m. Friday, Nov. 2, with a free talk by Jorge Mario Jáuregui, a Brazilian architect taking on the challenge of population growth in informal settings.

Paul Pariser, AB ’76, is reshaping Manhattan with his real estate development and investment firm, Taconic Investment Partners.