Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

Alumna Louise Smythe’s magical career journey started at WashU.

WashU connections abound at a restorative retreat in Playa El Coco, Nicaragua.

In Rebuilding the American Town, the Sam Fox School’s Patty Heyda helps redefine our understanding of the smaller cities that make up the urban landscape.

This fall, the Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis will present “Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection.” Spanning nearly eight decades and featuring nearly 70 artists, the survey places leading contemporary practitioners in dialogue with an earlier generation of artists whose work anticipated current discussions of figuration and abstraction as well as identity and power.

Six projects created by Sam Fox School faculty, students and alumni are featured in the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale and associated exhibitions.

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. 

St. Louis is known nationally for its excellent (and free) art. Here, staff, faculty, students and alumni of WashU share their favorite places to view visual art around St. Louis during the summer.

Discover some of the many environmental projects currently underway among WashU’s graduate student community, the ‘research engine of the university.’

Kahan Chavda, BSBME ’16, co-founder of Inversa, a company pioneering the field of ethically harvested leathers, workshops with Sam Fox School students on how engineering and fashion design can support endangered ecosystems.

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts has announced the theme for its 2026 James Harrison Steedman Fellowship in Architecture. The competition, which will mark the Steedman’s 100th anniversary, invites early-career architects from around the world to investigate and reimagine the fundamental systems, facilities and services that underlie contemporary life.