Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

On Friday, Nov. 11, a new Smart Home for Occupational Therapy Healing — aka SMOOTH House — will break ground in St. Louis’ Delmar Maker District. Designed by WashU students, this energy efficient, net-zero building will feature research, training and clinical spaces for the School of Medicine’s Occupational Therapy program.

Over the last year, a team of architects, medical professionals and engineers from Washington University in St. Louis and Chicago-based architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill have explored questions about building design and people’s health through interdisciplinary design studios and seminars. Now that research is bearing fruit. On Nov. 11, a new Smart Home for Occupational Therapy Healing — aka SMOOTH House — will break ground in St. Louis’ Delmar Maker District.

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will host a preview of “Lest We Forget,” a large-scale public art installation featuring monumental portraits of Holocaust survivors, beginning at 3:15pm Thursday, Oct. 20. The exhibition will include 12 portraits of survivors now living in the St. Louis area.

“Lest We Forget,” a public art installation by noted Italian-German photographer Luigi Toscano, will open Oct. 20 in WashU’s Ann and Andrew Tisch Park. The exhibition will feature nearly 100 contemporary, large-scale portraits of Holocaust survivors — including 12 survivors now living in St. Louis.

Fashion icon Diane von Furstenberg will discuss her life and work in a free talk at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 12, in Graham Chapel. The event is hosted by the Saint Louis Fashion Fund, in partnership with Caleres and WashU’s Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.

As a young sculptor, Chakaia Booker collected scraps of ruined tires from the streets of lower Manhattan. The material was ubiquitous, malleable and symbolically resonant. Now “Shaved Portions,” one of Booker’s largest and most ambitious projects to date, has been installed on WashU’s Danforth Campus.

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will host a press preview of the exhibition “Katharina Grosse Studio Paintings, 1988-2022: Returns, Revisions, Inventions” at 2 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 22. The exhibition opens to the public the following evening.

In “FIELD-STATION,” a new mural for the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, Houston-based architectural practice HOME-OFFICE explores the confluence of forestry, activism and place-based research.

Dallas-based artist Tamara Johnson will serve as the Sam Fox School’s next Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Teaching Fellow. Designed to promote the creation and exhibition of contemporary art, the appointment is sponsored in collaboration with the Saint Louis Art Museum, which will present a solo exhibition of Johnson’s work in fall 2023.

Architects Hilary Sample and Thomas Phifer; artists Katharina Grosse, Derrick Adams and Meleko Mokgosi; and fashion icon Diane von Furstenberg are among the internationally known visual thinkers who will discuss their work as part of the fall Public Lecture Series sponsored by the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.