Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

Wang Shu, the first Chinese citizen to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize, discusses his work with WUSTL architectural historians Robert McCarter, the Sam Fox School’s Ruth and Norman Moore Professor of Architecture, and Seng Kuan, assistant professor of architecture.

Kathryn A. Dean, director of the Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design and professor of architecture in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, was installed as the JoAnne Stolaroff Cotsen Professor of Architecture. The ceremony was held Dec. 2, 2011, in Steinberg Auditorium.

Distinguished architectural historian and critic Robert Bruegmann, author of The Architecture of Harry Weese (2010), Sprawl: A Compact History (2005) and The Architects and the City: Holabird and Roche of Chicago 1880-1918 (1997), will deliver the annual AIA St. Louis Scholarship Trust Lecture for the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 7.

“Someone at Washington University in St. Louis just hit the lecture jackpot.” So quipped Blair Kamin, the Chicago Tribune’s influential architecture critic. On Monday, Feb. 27, just two days before his scheduled talk for the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, architect Wang Shu became the first Chinese citizen to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize, generally considered the profession’s highest honor.

Art may be subjective, but it is not entirely so. Aesthetic interest also can be understood in terms of a work’s power to engage cognitive and perceptual systems common to all human brains. This is the central premise of neuroaesthetics, an emerging field that draws on neuroscience, psychology and philosophy to explore questions relating to beauty, artistic expression and art history. It is also the premise behind Art and the Mind-Brain, now on view in the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum’s Teaching Gallery.

Chinese architect Wang Shu, who on Monday, Feb. 27, became the first Chinese citizen to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize — widely considered the fields’ highest honor, equivalent to the Nobel — will visit the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts Wednesday and Thursday.

Wang Shu has won the 2012 Pritzker Architecture Prize, making him the first Chinese citizen to receive what is generally considered architecture’s highest honor. Thomas J. Pritzker, chairman of The Hyatt Foundation, which sponsors the $100,000 prize, made the announcement Monday, Feb. 27. Two days later, students and faculty in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts will be among the first to congratulate Shu when the architect discusses his work for the school’s Public Lecture Series.

“No Boundaries: Women Leaders of Washington University,” an intergenerational discussion group, will be held from 3-4 p.m. on Tuesday, March 6, in Brown Hall Lounge. An RSVP is required by Tuesday, Feb. 28.

The Gephardt Institute for Public Service invites student groups, centers, departments and schools, as well as individual members of the University community, to join an open discussion about plans for the 2012 election year.  The meeting will be held from 4-5:30 p.m. Monday, March 5, in the Multipurpose Room, lower level of Mallinckrodt Center on the Danforth Campus. ​

The Gephardt Institute for Public Service at Washington University in St. Louis has announced faculty scholars receiving Innovation Grants for Community-Based Teaching and Learning. The grants provide faculty members with financial support for curriculum development and implementation.