WashU Sam Fox School

AIA St. Louis, a regional chapter of the American Institute of Architects, has presented an award to Sam Fox School alum Cody Heller for his design of the Year End Show 13.0 exhibition. Heller, MArch ’24, won in the Interiors category of the AIA Design Awards with his curatorial proposal for last spring’s annual Year End Show. The exhibition, presented in Steinberg Gallery, features culminating work from graduating architecture students. Heller shared last spring that his design had “a lab-like quality, not dissimilar to an incubator; a machine brewing this next generation of architectural ideas and discourse.” The box-in-box design transformed the gallery with twin wall plastic and metal studs. “It sought to be an illuminated, ethereal presence — something other and strange,” Heller shared. ??: Devon Hill/WashU

Researchers at WashU's Sam Fox School are working with the rowing team. The goal? Design a performance data interface that doesn't require glancing away. Since 2022, WashU’s Sensory and Ambient Interfaces Lab (SAIL) has been exploring new, non-visual ways to transmit real-time performance feedback within compromised environments. “We define a compromised environment as any physical situation where a screen either doesn’t exist, is dangerous, or is distracting from the primary task at hand,” said lab founder Jonathan Hanahan, associate professor in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. In this video, Hanahan, who also chairs WashU’s new Master of Design for Human-Computer Interaction and Emerging Technology, discusses SAIL, its pilot collaboration with WashU Rowing, and the broader potentials of haptic technology.

In the undergraduate studio, Architectural Design I, Urban Cabinet: An Archive of Architecture, students explore how architecture can engage with the storage, display, and production of vast collections of artifacts and media. Designing an architectural archive for Columbus, IN, students begin at the scale of furniture and advance to the scale of a building. In this review, students pull from one room in their project and develop it as a diorama model.

Join us for the?MDes for HCI and Emerging Technology?Virtual Open House to learn more about the program and hear from our MDes Chair, Jonathan Hanahan.

It was a joy to welcome industry partners, particularly alumni like Cheree Berry and Jennifer Behr, to speak with WashU students at the Creative Careers Expo earlier this month.

Aggie Toppins, associate professor and chair of undergraduate design, is releasing her first book this January. "Thinking Through Graphic Design History: Challenging the Canon" brings together theory and practice, asking why graphic design looks that way, canonizes these people, and makes those references. "When you encounter an excellent work of historical scholarship or a well-designed piece of visual communication, it feels self-evident, perhaps even natural. In reality, these things are always constructed," Toppins shared. "Part of my goal with the book is to help designers approach historical works with more criticality and situate their design projects more critically as well, through the study of the past." In addition to the book, Toppins has organized a symposium at the Sam Fox School, New Directions in Design History. The day of conversation brings together nationally renowned designers, historians, and visual culture scholars to discuss critical issues at the intersections of design history and practice. The symposium will take place Jan. 31, 2025, and is sponsored by the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and WashU Libraries.

???????????? Derek Hoeferlin, professor and chair of landscape architecture, took his book, "Way Beyond Bigness," on a global tour to Turkey, Vietnam, and Singapore. The book is a design-research project that studies the Mekong, Mississippi, and Rhine river basins.

In the graduate studio, The City at Stake, MArch and MUD students conceptualized an operational mapping analysis, framework, and proposed an urban design in Jeff-VanderLou, the Ville, and areas north of Grand Center in St. Louis. They had to think about how to recenter social life and democracy with critical design of the spatial conditions in this city.

This Veterans Day, we share the perspectives of three Sam Fox School veterans on how their military experience informs their creative practice. José Garza, MFA '13, was enlisted personnel in the United States Navy for eight years, responsible for a fire control system, a ship's anti-air defense. In addition to his active studio practice, he coordinates academic programs at WashU's Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. Garza says, "One of the things I understood early on was how art is a celebration of humanity, and also an interrogation of the human condition. I understood that art wasn’t just making, it was also observing the world and having an idiosyncratic view. That didn’t fit within the military. For me, it reinforced that living as an artist has allowed me a lot of freedoms. In my studio, I get to decide everything. In my research, I get to decide what is of interest to me, what I find compelling, and what I can share with others. Even when I was young, I was seeking that freedom to choose, to make, to explore. A lot of my work interrogates the idea of the American Dream, in the hopes that we can make it mean what it’s supposed to mean. I focus on the life of the working class versus the ruling class to show some of those things. I think one of the things that I really benefit from being an artist and being invested in creative pursuits is that I have a platform to express opinions. Art has allowed me to extend that opportunity to others. And part of being an artist is not having a passive life. It’s about thinking about the human condition from the individual level to family, community, et cetera." Images: 1: José Garza, "Foreign Policy (Burn, Hollywood, Burn remix)," 2021. Cyanotypes, edition of 3, plus 1 AP, 37 x 25 inches framed. Courtesy the artist. 2: José Garza gives a tour of the Kemper Art Museum's exhibition "Adam Pendelton: To Divide By." Photo: Dmitri Jackson. #washu #washusamfoxschool #veteransday https://lnkd.in/gXJxdXf4

This Veterans Day, we share the perspectives of three Sam Fox School veterans on how their military experience informs their creative practice. MFA in Visual Art candidate Roy Uptain served in the Army National Guard for six years as a mass communications specialist in the western U.S. Uptain says, "As a mass communication specialist, I was part of a very small, very mobile team of copywriters, photographers, and videographers. I let everybody know that I was getting out and that I was planning on going to art school, which they were very interested in. I told them about the work I was preparing for my portfolio, which was a series of paintings that deeply investigated the way that photography is used in conflict to manipulate public discourse in unethical ways, turning victims of war into political talking points, stripping them of their humanity. It was a very interesting moment, because they realized that they hadn't thought about this before. When I showed these paintings, I could see wheels start turning and these mass communications specialists — propagandists — who had been doing this for 15 years, all of a sudden started to see how they were manipulating public discourse. They started wondering if they had photographed people unethically. And that’s how I know art is effective, when it shows people a side of things that they weren’t thinking about, starts a discourse, or just asks questions that they can work answering." Images: 1: Roy Uptain, "Smoke/Popasna," 2022. Oil on canvas. 36x48 inches. Courtesy the artist. 2: Roy Uptain (right) at the opening of the spring 2024 MFA in Visual Art first-year exhibition. Photo: Devon Hill / WashU. #washu #washusamfoxschool #veteransday https://lnkd.in/gXJxdXf4