Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

Courtesy photo*America’s Best Architecture and Design Schools 2006*Washington University’s Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design, part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, has tied for 10th in the nation, according to Design Intelligence, a monthly newsletter published by the Design Futures Council.

An exhibit titled Offcourse, featuring works from more than 65 WUSTL graduate students, will be at Baseline Gallery from Jan. 28-Feb. 4.

You don’t have to be an art major to create and exhibit artwork, and Washington University’s 2nd Annual Graduate Student Visual Arts Exhibit is a testament to that. Washington University graduate students from all disciplines were invited to submit visually compelling creations for an exhibit at Baseline Gallery, 1110 Washington Ave., in the downtown loft district. When the exhibit opens with a reception from 6-10 p.m. Jan. 28, more than 65 graduate students representing disciplines ranging from chemistry, medical sciences, engineering and law to anthropology, architecture, art and English, will have their creative sides on display. The exhibit, titled “Offcourse,” runs through Feb. 4.

Courtesy photoWashington University’s team: Shlomo Goltz, Nathan Heigert and Hubert CheungIn the world of advertising, the hardest thing to do is get people’s attention — a job that becomes exponentially harder as audiences diversify and traditional broadcasters compete with YouTube.com, MySpace.com and other online communities. So, rather than compete, companies are beginning to enlist those communities through what’s becoming known as “consumer-generated advertising.” This fall, a group of students from Washington University in St. Louis was one of five teams to make the finals of the “Chevy Super Bowl College Ad Challenge.” The winning team will be unveiled when its ad runs Feb. 4, during Super Bowl XLI. More…

The current director of the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia is “an accomplished artist and an experienced academic leader.”

Courtesy photoCarmon ColangeloCarmon Colangelo, director of the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia, Athens, has been named the first dean of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton announced today. Formation of the Sam Fox School comes amidst a nearly $60 million campaign to improve campus arts facilities. Colangelo’s appointment takes effect July 1, 2006.

Courtesy photo*Delta Primer*Is California vulnerable to a New Orleans-style levee break? The land in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, where California’s two great rivers drain into San Francisco Bay, lies as much as 20 feet below sea level, warns Jane Wolff, author of Delta Primer: A Field Guide to the California Delta (2003). A breach on the scale of that in New Orleans would prove catastrophic for California — the world’s sixth-largest economy, home to approximately 10 percent of the U.S. population. In addition to property destruction, salt water from San Francisco Bay would migrate upstream, contaminating the water supply for much of Southern California, including major cities such as Los Angeles and San Diego.

Matthew Coolidge, founder and director of the Center for Land Use Interpretation in Los Angeles, will be participating.

The report is by Peter MacKeith, associate director of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and associate dean of Architecture.

Forget purple mountains and fruited plains. The contemporary American landscape is more typically composed of parking lots and shopping malls, factory towns and industrial developments, argues Matthew Coolidge, founder and director of the Center for Land Use Interpretation in Los Angeles. From Oct. 26-29, Coolidge will host a number of events exploring St. Louis’ urban landscape as part of the yearlong series “Unsettled Ground: Nature, Landscape, and Ecology Now!” co-sponsored by the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts.