Degree Project Spring 2020
Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design Washington University in St. Louis Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Art
Contents
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Welcome Introductions Studio Work
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Chandler Ahrens
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Julie Bauer
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Valerie Greer
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Adrian Luchini
Degree Project | Spring 2020 7
Welcome!
DP: Daring, Profound
Faculty
As the differences between architectural practice and architectural education diminish, it is important to recognize this situation not just as a challenge but an opportunity. We must understand the discipline of architecture as an arena where speculation and compromise with the real world are compatible, necessary parameters, rather than antagonistic forces prohibiting interaction.
Chandler Ahrens Associate Professor
For the Degree Project, each student spends one semester conceiving of a design proposal and their final semester implementing it. They work closely with select faculty experts to enhance their knowledge and embolden their future practices. First and foremost, we want our students to be licensed to dare, to test, to inquire, and to propose.
Julie Bauer
Though these are individual initiatives, a common thread unites their intellectual efforts. Collectively, they represent a persistent operation to scrutinize, evaluate, and tackle pressing issues of the contemporary city. Our own location in Saint Louis has proved an exciting territory for this compendium of projects, fostering exploration at various scales and with multiple programs and users. It offers a clear opportunity for thoughtful analysis of place and condition.
Valerie Greer
As the culminating architectural studio, the Degree Project is a vivid, powerful statement of our deepest belief that architecture can, optimistically, make important contributions for a better world.
Visiting Associate Professor
Professor of Practice
Adrian Luchini Raymond E. Maritz Professor of Architecture
Adrian Luchini
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Frank Barkow
Margaret Cavanagh
Founder, Barkow Leibinger
Principal, Interior Architecture, Studio Gang
Barkow Leibinger’s work is realized over a wide range of scales and building types including building for workplace (industry, office, and master planning), cultural, housing, event spaces, as well as exhibitions and installations in the public realm internationally. Recently completed buildings include the Trumpf Smart Factory in Chicago, the Fellows Pavilion for the American Academy in Berlin, the HAWE Factory Kaufbeuren and the Tour Total office high-rise in Berlin.
Margaret’s recent work includes the Arkansas Arts Center, MIRA, Writers Theatre, Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, and Maisonette. Her projects have obtained some of the highest sustainability ratings, including LEED Platinum and Living Building Challenge certifications. Actively engaged in the field, she has served as a juror for the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Design Awards in Wisconsin and Missouri and lectured at the University of Pennsylvania Women in Design Symposium.
Their discursive research-based approach to architecture and design allows the work to respond to advancing knowledge and technology locating the practice as an international leader in digital and analogue fabrication techniques. This knowhow expands to include new materials and their applications in driving the practice forward as a continuously evolving activity. This focus revolves around a commitment to academic teaching, research and the practice itself - each are autonomous work-areas, which simultaneously inform each other beneficially.
Margaret holds a Master of Architecture from Washington University in St. Louis and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Virginia (UVA). She was recently appointed to the Dean’s Advisory Board at UVA’s School of Architecture and is currently a Lecturer on Professional Practice for the School’s graduate program.
Katrin Brünjes
Professor in Practice of Architecture, Harvard University Partner, Johnston Marklee & Associates
Interior Design, Berlin International University of Applied Sciences Founding Partner, BrünjesTyrra Katrin Brünjes studied architecture at the Bauhaus University in Weimar and the ETSA Valladolid in Spain. From 2000 she worked for Prof. Hans Kollhoff Architekten in Berlin and moved in 2002 to the Netherlands to lead the project ‘Brainpark III’ in Rotterdam. For David Chipperfield Architects she moved in 2006 to London to work on various projects. From design to construction documents she was in charge of the museum extension of the Penn State University Museum in Pennsylvania, USA, the master plan ‘Ban de Gasperich’ in Luxembourg and the housing project ‘Cottage Place’ in London Kensington. In 2009 she founded her Studio in Berlin and has worked since 2014 in partnership with Christoph Tyrra as BrünjesTyrra Architekten. Alongside her practice she has been teaching initially at the Technische Universität Berlin and then at the Brandenburgisch Technischen Universität Cottbus-Senftenberg in the Bachelor and Masters program. Since 2018 she has been teaching Interior Design at the Berlin International University of Applied Science.
Sharon Johnston
Since its establishment in 1998, Johnston Marklee has been recognized nationally and internationally with over 30 major awards. A book on the work of the firm, entitled HOUSE IS A HOUSE IS A HOUSE IS A HOUSE IS A HOUSE, was published by Birkhauser in 2016. This followed a monograph on the firm’s work, published in 2014 by 2G. Projects undertaken by Johnston Marklee are diverse in scale and type, spanning seven countries throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Recent projects include the Menil Drawing Institute, on the campus of the Menil Collection, scheduled to open in 2018; a renovation of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, completed in September 2017; and the new UCLA Graduate Art Studios campus in Culver City, California. Sharon has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Princeton University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and has held the Cullinan Chair at Rice University and the Frank Gehry International Chair at the University of Toronto.
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Gerardo Caballero
Phil Holden
Founder, Caballero Fernández Arquitectos Founding Member, Group R in Rosario
Principal, Holden Architects Professor of Practice, Washington University in St. Louis
Gerardo Caballero studied at the Architecture School of the National University of Rosario from 1976 to 1982. As a student, between 1978 and 1981, Gerardo worked in Shiira-Albano office, in Rosario. From 1983 to 1985 he worked as a collaborator in CoreaGallardo Mannino office, based in Barcelona. In 1986 Gerardo moves to the USA and obtains his Master in Architecture, Washington University, Saint Louis. In 1988 Gerardo moves back to Argentina and starts his professional career in Rosario, being partner with Architect Ariel Giménez up to 1992. In 1993 he founds Caballero Fernández Arquitectos together with Maite Fernández, which continues until 2013. Since 2013 he has worked on his own. He has been invited by the University of Arkansas, Kansas University, Graduate School of Design Harvard University, Pontificia Universidad Católica in Chile, University Andrés Bello, University Diego Portales and University of Talca in Chile, Mas Fisher Chair University of Michigan, University Torcuato Di Tella and University of Palermo in Buenos Aires, and by the Lebanese American University in Beirut. Since 1993 he is Professor for International Programs for Graduates, offered by the Washington University in Barcelona and Buenos Aires. Gerardo’s works have been recognized, exhibited and published in America and Europe, and he has received many prizes and awards, as well as honorable mentions in national and international architectural design competitions.
Robert Cole, RIBA Principal, ColePrévost Senior Lecturer, University of Maryland
Holden’s work was published by Progressive Architecture in 1987, introducing him as one of the outstanding young architects in the United States. He received AIA Medals in both 1976 and 1979, along with the Ewart Traveling Fellowship in 1974. Beyond practice, he teaches architectural design at Washington University.
Georgina Huljich Principle ad Managing Director P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S Associate Professor, University of California, Los Angeles Architect and Educator, Huljich holds a Professional Degree from the National University of Rosario, Argentina and a Master of Architecture from UCLA where she graduated with Distinction and was the recipient of several design awards. She has previously worked at the Guggenheim Museum and the architectural firm Dean/Wolf Architects in New York, and at Morphosis Architects in Los Angeles. Huljich is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Department of Architecture at UCLA where she teaches since 2006. She has been a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Yale, Pennsylvania, Syracuse, Berkeley, USC and TIT in Tokyo. Her work has been published and exhibited widely and her current research looks at strange peripheries in Europe and Asia and the way they affect notions of type, form and aesthetics.
Degree Project | Spring 2020
Robert Cole is a Principal of ColePrévost, a design firm he co-founded with Sophie Prévost, ASID. Melding background experience and education in Architecture, Interior Design, Corporate Identity (Branding), painting restoration and furniture design, together with those of their employee skillsets, notably landscape architecture and interior architecture, they work closely with a variety of interesting clients and an array of consultant engineers, builders and specialty fabricators, addressing a range of projects types, at diverse scales and preoccupations. Recent projects include small designs: A bathroom, converting a floating dock into a boathouse for a deaf couple, and a pro bono design for Martha’s Closet- Martha’s Table thrift shop. And large: The common spaces of a 692 unit apartment building, the master plan and partial implementation of a 9,000 sf home that formerly was a Pre-Civil War Mortuary and a 400 m2 apartment in a Grade Two Historic Listed property spanning two 19th C townhomes in London.
Philip Holden is a practicing architect and principal of Holden Architects, having established his office in 1982 after apprenticeships with Harry Weese and Stanley Tigerman in Chicago. Many of his projects are recipients of AIA awards, notably St. Alban Roe Parish Center, Mary Mother of the Church Activity Center, the renovation of St. Francis of Assisi Church, the office of Virtual Realty Enterprises, and the design of his own offices. His St. Gerard Majella project received the Masonry Institute’s Triennial Excellence in Architecture Award and was featured in the Forum for Contemporary Art exhibit New Architecture in St. Louis.
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Don Koster Design Practice Leader, Arcturis Senior Lecturer, Washington University in St. Louis Don Koster has received numerous honors for both academic and professional work, including the AIA School Medal and multiple AIA Awards in Architecture. He has been awarded public service and collaborative community health grants in support of his community-based teaching and research. Koster was one of two inaugural Weese Fellows in the Sam Fox School and served as visiting assistant professor from 2006-2008, after joining the faculty as a lecturer in 2003. Dedicated to the education of designers committed to work in both the public and private realms, Koster’s practice-based teaching and research has included leading the student design of a sustainable community marketplace and urban agriculture project in The Ville neighborhood of St. Louis in collaboration with the St. Louis chapter of the American Institute of Architects, adaptive reuse proposals on the St. Louis Riverfront, and environmentally responsible, affordable housing projects in north St. Louis and The City of University City.
Ung-Joo Scott Lee Partner, Morphosis Ung-Joo Scott Lee is a Partner at Morphosis with over 19 years of experience in the field. He is a licensed architect, registered in the states of New York, New Jersey and Texas. Raised in São Paulo, Brazil, Scott began his tenure at Morphosis in 1996 and has contributed to many of the firms most significant projects. In addition to running the daily operations of Morphosis’ New York office, Scott is serving as Project Principal for Casablanca Finance City Tower (2017), and the Bloomberg Center (2017) – the net-zero, LEED Platinum main academic building for the new Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island in New York.
Robert McCarter Ruth & Norman Moore Profesor of Architecture, Sam Fox of Design & Visual Arts, Washington University Robert McCarter is a practicing architect, professor of architecture, and author. From 1991-2007, he was professor of architecture, and for ten years he was director of the School of Architecture, both at the University of Florida. From 1986-1991, he was associate professor and assistant dean at the Graduate School of Architecture, Columbia University, New York. He was visiting critic at the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam; he was appointed as the Frederic Lindley Morgan Distinguished Professor of Architectural Design at the University of Louisville; he has taught as visiting studio critic at North Carolina State University; and he has been appointed as a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy in Rome on three occasions. During his 33 years in academia, including 17 years in leadership roles at three institutions, McCarter has taught at least one design studio every semester, and he has taught more than 1,800 students. He coordinated the architecture lecture series at Columbia University (1986-1991), University of Florida (1991-2005), and Washington University in St. Louis (2007-2012). He invited Wang Shu to lecture in February 2012, the lecture taking place only two days after Wang was announced as the 2012 Pritzker Prize winner; “Someone at Washington University in St. Louis just hit the lecture jackpot,” is the way Blair Kamin of the Chicago Tribune described this event.
Dennis McGrath Senior Lecturer, Washington University in St. Louis Principle and Owner, Dennis McGrath Design, LLC Dennis McGrath is principal/owner of Dennis McGrath Design, LLC., a design and architectural consulting practice focused on integrated service design for a variety of project types since 2015. He has a passion for design, creative problem solving, and experience with overseeing client interactive planning and programming as well as integrated phasing for complex assignments.
Degree Project | Spring 2020
McGrath is currently collaborating on a private residence with Peter Rose and Partners, Boston, MA. He has worked for Lawrence Group, Target Corporation, Ellerbe Becket (AECOM), and MSR Design. His work has received AIA Minnesota honors and preservation awards from the state of Minnesota and Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission. He has published illustrations for ABC of Architecture and University of Pennsylvania Press, and has received a Charles E. Peterson Prize for measured drawings archived at the Library of Congress.
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Allison Mendez Architect, Cannon Design As a project designer with an unwavering dedication to social equity and beauty in every corner of the built environment, Allison brings a fresh perspective to designing environments of all types. Her work is marked by rich texture and thoughtful utility, and she is outspoken in her belief that everyone — especially populations typically under served by high-end design — is entitled to quality architecture. In 2019, Allison was recognized nationally by the American Institute of Architects with the Young Architects Award for her significant contributions to the design profession. Her projects, which range from contemporary healthcare buildings to community-based recreation facilities and grand performing arts centers, have been recognized with numerous honors, awards, publications and exhibitions. A graduate of Washington University in St. Louis’s Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’s Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design, Allison is a regular lecturer and gave the school’s 2019 keynote commencement speech.
Antonio Sanmartin Founder and Principle aSZ arquitectes aSZ arquitectes was founded in 1996 by Antonio Sanmartin and Elena Canovas after several years of joint professional and academic experiences. From the perspective of more than 15 years of partnership and collaboration with other teams, we could define your path from several aspects. The work of aSZ results from translations. A fiction - what goes from a translation to another- measures the time of a project design. The chronicle of the proceeding from the present and backwards reaches possible foundations. Geometry chews and/or masticates the descriptions and transfers are held by sequences of projections. We build the traces of the transfers (trasiegos). A set of binomials that frame aSZ arquitectes work are: geometry and extension, fiction and precision, non-referential and latent, canonical and heretic, process and incognito (thing in Greek), anticipation and error, mutation and oblivion.
Julie Snow David Polzin Executive Director, Design, Cannon Design Whether working with clients or mentoring young architects, David is an educator at heart, helping people see the world in new ways and expand their creative vision. Drawing upon the realms of art, architecture, history, and culture, he exposes clients to exciting new spatial ideas that express their deep needs and communal identity in the built environment. David’s designs have received AIA awards in every major market sector in which CannonDesign practices and is published globally in leading architecture publications including Architectural Record, Architect and Azure In addition to actively designing projects across the globe, David is the firm’s executive director of design—championing our firm’s design voice by seeking new paths to spark curiosity and imagination.
Founder, Design Principle, and CEO, Snow Kreilich Architects Julie has taught architecture at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard, the University of Southern California, and the University of Minnesota College of Design, where she received the Ralph Rapson Award for Distinguished Teaching. Julie’s design leadership is also evidenced by her participation on juries and delivery of lectures in both academic and professional settings. She has lectured at the Walker Art Center, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the National Building Museum, as well as making keynote addresses at several AIA conferences across the country. Julie has been recognized with numerous awards including AIA Honor Awards, the Holcim North American Bronze Award, Progressive Architecture Design Award, the Chicago Athenaeum’s American, Architect Magazine Annual Design Review, and several US General Services Administration’s Design Excellence Awards. She recently received one of two Architecture Awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
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Jonathan Stitleman
Heather Woofter
Visiting Associate Professor, Washington University in St. Louis
Director, College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design. Sam and Marilyn Fox Professor, Director, Axiome
Jonathan Stitelman currently teaches in the undergraduate and graduate programs of architecture and urban design in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. His research interests involve transportation planning, forced migration and refugee resettlement, urbanism as understood through the lens of cultural anthropology, and visual culture. He holds Master of Architecture and Master of Urban Design degrees from Washington University in St. Louis, where he was a Danforth Scholar, and a Bachelor of Arts in Art History and Psychology from the University of Vermont.
Doris Sung Associate Professor, University of Southern California Founder and Architect, dO|Su Studio Architecture In 1999, Doris Sung opened her office, dO|Su Studio Architecture, and soon received many AIA and ASID awards for her work, including the prestigious accolades of AIA Young-Designer-of-the-Year, ACSA Faculty Design Award, R+D Honorable Mention from Architect Magazine and [next idea] award from ARS Electronica. Currently, she is working on developing smart thermobimetals and other shape-memory alloys, unfamiliar materials to architecture, as new materials for the “third” skin (the first is human flesh, the second clothing and the third architecture). Its ability to curl when heated allows the building skin to respond for purposes of sun-shading, self-ventilating, shape-changing and structure-prestressing. Her work has been funded by the national AIA Upjohn Initiative, Arnold W. Brunner Grant, Graham Foundation Grant, Architectural Guild Award and USC ASHSS and URAP Awards. Her TEDxUSC talk will be available online at the end of 2012.
Thomas Wensing Senior Designer, Morris Adjmi Architects
Thomas has an MS in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University, which he attended on a Fulbright Scholarship, and a Master of Architecture degree from Delft University. He is a licensed architect in the UK and The Netherlands.
Michael Willis Founder, MWA Visiting Professor Washington University in St. Louis In infrastructure, Willis has served as principal on large public projects for transportation, water treatment, and municipal-level electrical distribution, including the current Oakland International Airport Terminal 1, the New International Terminal and Terminal 2 at the San Francisco Airport, and several others. Additionally, Willis served as president of the San Francisco Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIASF) in 1995. He was elevated to Fellowship in 1996. He chaired the AIA Professional Interest Area national council, served on the AIA Regional and Urban Design Committee, was a juror for the 2005 AIA Austin and AIA New England Design Awards; and served as the chair for the 2005 AIA Urban Design Awards, and as a member of the 2020 AIA and HUD AIA Housing Design Awards. Willis also served as a juror for “Designing Recovery,” an ideas competition for rebuilding sustainable and resilient post-disaster communities.
José Zabala Ruth and Norman Moore Visiting Professor, Washington University in St. Louis Founding Partner, Addenda Architects Zabala has collaborated with public institutions such as the Barcelona City Council and the Catalonian Housing Institute (INCASOL); has taught at the ESARQ School of Architecture; and from 2011-2015 was co-editor of Quaderns d’arquitectura i urbanisme magazine, the official journal of the Catalan Architects Association, which was awarded the 2015 FAD national prize for architectural criticism. As partner of Addenda, Zabala has lectured and been jury member for several schools of architecture such as the KULeuven in Ghent and the London Metropolitan University, as well as institutions like the Historisches Museum Frankfurt and the 2nd Chicago Architecture Biennial, among others.
Degree Project | Spring 2020
Thomas Wensing is an architectural designer whose experience includes studio space for an internationally renowned sculptor, high-end residential projects, and large-scale urban planning work. In addition to his work at MA on projects like Mulberry Street, Driggs, and various competition proposals, Thomas is the firm’s resident authority on architecture history and theory and works to ensure that all employees understand the foundational principles that drive MA’s work. He has also taught architecture at Eindhoven University in his native The Netherlands and the University of Kent, Canterbury. He is a regular contributor to Blueprint magazine and other publications.
Heather Woofter was a project architect for Bohlin Cywinski Jackson in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; Marks Barfield in London, United Kingdom; and Robert Luchetti Associates in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is a registered architect in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and Missouri, and passed RIBA Parts I and II in the UK. Woofter has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design Career Discovery program, Boston Architectural College, and Roger Williams University. She was an assistant professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and a visiting professor at both Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and Konkuk University in Seoul, South Korea. Currently, she is a tenured professor and director of the College of Architecture and Gradaute School of Architecture & Urban Design at Washington University in St. Louis, with more than 15 years of teaching experience.
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Chandler Ahrens
Valerie Greer
Associate Professor, Washington University in St. Louis Co-founder, Open Source Architecture
Professor of Practice, Coordinator of Strategic Initiatives Washington University in St. Louis
Chandler Ahrens is an associate professor at Washington University in St. Louis as well as a co-founder of Open Source Architecture (OSA), an international transdisciplinary collaboration developing research and commissioned projects. His focus is on the intersection of material investigations, environmental phenomena, and computational design processes.
Valerie Chang Greer is an architect and former vice president at HOK, where she practiced for 12 years, working on a variety of building types. Greer was a senior designer on the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), an international research university located on the Red Sea. The 5.5 million-square-foot campus was designed and built in three years. It has been honored with numerous awards that Greer was instrumental in submitting for, including the AIA COTE Top Ten Green Projects Award.
Ahrens’ teaching has been recognized with an Emerging Faculty Award from the Building Technology Educators Society. His work with OSA has received several AIA design awards and a Chicago Athenaeum New American Architecture Award, and is part of the permanent collection at the Fonds Regional d’Art Contemporain (FRAC) in Orleans, France. He is the editor of Instabilities and Potentialities, Notes on the Nature of Knowledge in Digital Architecture (2019), co-curator and editor of the Gen(h)ome Project (2006), and co-chair and editor for the exhibition Evolutive Means, ACADIA2010. He was on the board of directors for ACADIA.
Greer has taught several design studios at Washington University.. She has beenhonored with the St. Louis Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 Award, the Sam Fox School’s Alumni Award, and Engineering News Record Midwest’s 20 Under 40 Award. Greer earned her MArch from Washington University in 2002, graduating with the Frederick Widmann Prize and the AIA Student Medal. She currently serves as a Principal Investigator for the Center for Health Reserach and Design where her reserach and work focuses on health environments and design.
Julie Bauer
Adrian Luchini
Visiting Associate Professor, Washington University in St. Louis
Raymond E. Maritz Professor of Architecture, Washington University Principal, LUCHINIAD
Julie E. Bauer is a designer and architect with more than 15 years of professional experience designing and leading international projects for world-renowned architectural firms. Bauer holds a degree in architecture from the Technical University of Berlin and studied at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Her career in Europe started at Barkow Leibinger Architects in Berlin and later continued at David Chipperfield Architects in London, where she spent more than a decade reaching the role of associate director.
Luchini was named to the “Young Architects” list by Progressive Architecture in 1990, and received the “Emerging Voices” citation by the Architecture League of New York in 1992. He has received numerous AIA awards, and has lectured extensively; his projects have been shown throughout the United States, and in Europe and South America. He is also a painter, and his works have been shown in the United States and Latin America. A monograph of his work from Rockport Publishing, part of the Contemporary World Architects series, was published in 2000.
Degree Project | Spring 2020
While at David Chipperfield, one of Bauer’s primary projects was the expansion of the Saint Louis Art Museum in St. Louis, Missouri. Involved since the project’s inception to win the competition 2005, Bauer led the project through all phases, from master planning to construction administration; managed and coordinated the design process; and acted as a client liaison and point of contact for the consultant team. She oversaw the detail and design development in the office of the architect of record in St. Louis and spent the final two years of the project on site, ensuring quality and facilitating cooperation with the contracting team until completion in summer 2012. The project has won the AIA UK Excellence in Design award.
Adrian Luchini teaches graduate-level design and theory courses, which make explicit the relationships between architectural theory and practice. He is an internationally recognized architect who has practiced in Argentina and the United States, and whose projects have been published in A&U, Casabella, Domus, Quaderns, Progressive Architecture, and other journals. Luchini has collaborated with Rafael Moneo and worked in private practice with the firm Schwetye Luchini Architects; he was a Senior Architect at Hellmuth, Obata, and Kassabaum, Inc., and from 1996 until 2002 was design director of architecture at Jacobs Facilities, Inc. He founded LuchiniAD in 2001, a firm with projects in the United States and China.
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Chandler Ahrens
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Carmon Chee
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Taylor Clune
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Haley Evans
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Ruizhi Han
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Van Hoang
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Katherine Karl
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Derek Luth
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Rachel Madryga
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Molly Meyer
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Ethan Moniz
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Sam Watts Degree Project | Spring 2020 23
Waste[d] Potential
Local Agri-Tech Research Facility
Carmon Chee
Taylor Clune
Only 7% of St. Louis’s electricity comes from renewable resources. Waste[d] Potential proposes a Waste to Energy Facility and Upcycling Center
exploring the themes of industrial architecture, energy generation, waste management, and fostering a consciousness of consumerism.
One of the biggest and newest industries emerging in the St. Louis region is agricultural technology, or “Agri-tech� for short. New advances in plant biology, pesticides, and data-driven equipment are allowing for increased production in food, energy and pharmaceuticals. However, these advancements are being controlled by large agri-tech corporations like Monsanto, which is headquartered in St. Louis and is one of 4 corporations that control 60% of seed sales in the world. Large, corporate farms are able to keep up with this monopolized system, but it is driving small farmers out of business.
By integrating the built world with the natural world, we can not only utilize our resources better, but help give back identity to the sameness currently being built, and result in a contemporary type of genius loci. This local Agri-tech research and development campus has the potential to become a hub for farmers, students, and community members to learn more about the current trends in the industry. By thinking of the activities learned and performed in these spaces by their climatic properties in addition to their users, the architecture no longer becomes defined in a top-down approach, but rather integrates the users in a field of nature/technology, permanent/ temporary, and old/new vernaculars.
Degree Project | Spring 2020
Looking at the current top-down business structure of the agri-tech business, I am proposing an architecture that serves an integrated system where all parties collaborate on one campus. This facility is not only for small farmers, but can be utilized by researchers, students, and members of the surrounding community to socialize and learn about the latest trends in the agricultural industry.
Can architecture be completely integrated with its surroundings so as to respond to nature and aid in the development of an identity as a sense of place, rather than fight against these natural elements? What are the benefits of a structure that is integrated with its atmosphere, vernacular and environment?
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The Brentwood Community Center Ruizhi Han
The Earth is Not Disposable Haley Evans
We have a deadline coming up. We must reach zero carbon emissions by 2050 or we will face serious consequences. The fight against Climate Change is urgent and will dramatically transform our current lifestyles. As it now stands, the government, the architecture community, and all of Earth’s inhabitants are not doing enough to fight against this change. In order to adapt to an environment that is transforming before our eyes and to combat any further damage we, as individuals, need to change. In order to begin this change to a more climate-conscious lifestyle, it is extremely important to educate
The project responds to the secluded suburban lifestyle in Brentwood: people drive point to point from their homes to workplaces. There’s minimal time for communal activities and social interactions. The new Brentwood
public center integrates library, garden, gymnasium, cafe, and city plaza. It aims to provide opportunities of communal engagement, social interactions, and to reestablish the center for the Brentwood neighborhood.
the population on more sustainable habits. That is why I propose a new type of community that not only performs sustainability but is designed to foster the formation of new habits and to educate people on the ways of this new climateconscious lifestyle. This community would be the spark that ignites a fight against climate change, starting in St. Louis and radiating out to the rest of the globe. We are all contributing to the problem, so it is up to us to adjust our lifestyle and work together to save our planet from Climate change.
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The Hybrid Van Hoang The project responds to the extreme flooding condition of St Louis area. Hydroponic and aquaponic systems are used in order to provide a stable production year round. Taking the advantage of the location right at Mississipi River, production can be transported and provide a new way to
cope with flooding. A center of farming and fish farming, where people can live, work, sell, and provide education about farming. The idea of solid and void to create a flexible and a fixed part of the program. This program will help enhancing the life of the Carondelet and Patch neighborhood.
Urban Mining Kathryn Karl
methodologies need to evolve. In order to accomplish this, salvaging is not enough, we need to experiment with new, ecologically compatible building materials in order to remove the idea of waste from our lifestyle. Having a location that specializes in all the aspects of the construction/deconstruction cycle and with building material experimentation all in one location, St. Louis will become a sustainable city: sustainable in material use, sustainable in job creation, and sustainable in material creation.
Degree Project | Spring 2020
If we are to have a future world, we need to become more sustainable: in our daily lives and our professions. However, when the American Dream was to own your own house with a yard, construction needed to get quicker and the market became an assembly line for houses. We continue to extract new raw materials and build new structures instead of using what is already available. This has led to vacancy in the City of St Louis as the suburbs continue to grow. If we are to survive with the changing climate during our lifetime and for future generations, construction materials and
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Ghosts and Futures Re-Envisioning a Relic for the Future Derek Luth Ghosts and Futures is an exploration into the historical context of the evolving industrial city of St. Louis. As it slowly returns into one of the great test labs of the United States, how will the forgotten fabric of the city be utilized? This Project examines one of many forgotten relics of the past and aims to propose an architectural intervention that does not destroy or deface the history that currently stands but aims to re-envision it in a new light. This new light will embody the same symbolism and energy that these relics once held,
but will also answer to the new needs of the twenty-first century and everevolving humanity. Ghost and Futures aims to reimagine a forgotten William Ittner Schoolhouse and transforms it into an innovation and incubator space for the city, its citizens, and the future to come. The design will continue the legacy of learning that once existed but will also introduce a new center for fabrication, creation, and collaboration within one historical and culturally rich site.
American Agora How do we evolve? Rachel Madryga
use of space, allows St Louis to lessen he dived, grow as a city and no longer be in a state of limbo. We can react, respond and allow for tensions to coexist.
Degree Project | Spring 2020
“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such method is love� -MLK. By addressing the tension through the
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Looking Inward An Opioid Rehabilitation Center Molly Meyer Prescription painkillers, heroin, and synthetic opioids claim the lives of more than 130 people per day in the US. There is a pervasive attitude of “we can’t help you until you can help yourself” that prevents people from receiving care
throughout the process of addiction. This project aims to provide a facility that holistically addresses the issues of users at all stages of opioid addiction.
Coalescence: Social Adhesion Through Fishing Ethan Moniz The primary purpose of this project is to serve as a catalyst for social cohesion through mutual activity. It is a catalyst in that it provides the space and necessary infrastructure for the activity to occur. The activity is fishing and all its related
enterprises. And this brings about social cohesion by means of engaging people from differing socio-economic backgrounds. The design encourages the users to transition from the urbanscape of St. Louis into a more rural setting
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Co Locate Addressing density through housing and early childhood education Sam Watts As one of many American cities who have been victim to a population shift to the suburbs, St. Louis is a city built for more than double its current population. A city without people is
one that suffers. Co Locate aims to be a catalyst to re-densify downtown St.louis through combining family housing and early childhood education.
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Julie Bauer
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Tyler Bassett
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Cristina Batroni
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Paul Clark
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Juan Gonzalez
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Sai Hu
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Chang Jiang
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Tian Li
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Danning Liang
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Dooho Won
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Yazhe Wu Degree Project | Spring 2020 37
STL Fusion Reactor Tyler Bassett The St. Louis Fusion Reactor facility brings the city into the future with multi-functional infrastructure. Combining a power plant, tropical palm garden, small aquatics center and a restaurant, this place becomes a hub
for redevelopment and growth. The Idea of interweaving different programs derived from the power production method itself where atoms are fused to create something new and powerful.
URBAN RE[as]SEMBLE Restoring humanity in Kinloch, a town on the brink of complete urban erasure
Christina Batroni This project seeks to reintroduce the town of Kinloch, a municipality within the greater St. Louis region that has lost 90% of its population since 2008. The design combines multiple scales of public housing, leisure spaces, and community amenities to encourage social nearness and stimulate the re-
surgence of a thriving community here. The use of modulated components form a grid, structuring the project while also setting it apart as a new layer of Kinloch’s urban fabric that both adds to and reveals the old configuration of the city.
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Re-Entry Community
STL Cultural Incubator
Paul Clark
Juan Gonzalez
The United States is suffering from crisis of recidivism, too many people are returning to prison leading to prison overcrowding and mass incarceration. Is there a way to provide a community to smooth reintegration after
incarceration. A community the provides housing, support and employment encourages the formally incarcerated to participate in the community.
Most of the 130 ethnic groups in St. Louis are underrepresented in the St. Louis urban fabric. The proposal is a cultural incubator in Grand Center that allows minority user groups to rent spaces for longer periods, therefore 1) creating a hub for residents of St. Louis to experience various cultures year-round, 2) allow the influx of people to create a demand for the representation of minorities, and 3) find permanent locations for the cultures
following their time in the incubator. The key design intention is to develop flexibility for the cultural businesses that will come into the incubator by designating specific walls that can be moved to change the dimensions of a tenant space. Additionally, the design creates a translucent structure that foreshadows the activity and culture happening inside the space.
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Intersected Binary: Grand Center Hub for Art and Living Sai Hu Grand Center Art District, with the role of “the intersection of art and life” bestowed upon itself, does not successfully overlap the activities of art and artists with the daily lives of its own residents. Without adding or modifying the programs that already exist in the district, Grand Center Hub for Art and Living simply
propose to align the two seemingly disjointed binary – art and life. It’s only when artists and the neighborhood are given the platform to merge in the same space, around the same time, Grand Center can truly become the Art District.
The new velodrome for St.louis Chang Jiang ...the sufficiency and necessity of curved form building can be justified when it serves for the core essence of the supposed actions. Ideally, program, atmosphere, structure, building systems, environmental systems, and the urban
should become one continuous thing, the proposal of the new velodrome for St.Louis is such a design...
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Wellness & Learning Center in Fairground Tian Li Can a Health care center be Open and Intellectual? The aim is to create a wellness care and learning complex with a homey ambience where patients and their families will have a caring environment with surrounding contexts and playful frameworks.
This wellness and learning center connects to the old infrastructure on site enclosing courtyards in-between the new and the existing. It is open and inclusive to the whole community.
Community Porous Boundary Forest School with Gymnastics + Historical museum
This project is to redefine the term of “boundary� to become a useful instrument to establish a symbiotic system. By serving the needs of growing neighborhoods, it will provide financial support to Westland Acres,
which is a historical African American community, to prevent it from declining. The new boundary will be a new statement to claim the territory while reactivating the relationship between Westland Acres and its neighborhoods.
Degree Project | Spring 2020
Danning Liang
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The Delta Yazhe Wu
Space Fermata Dooho Won A a
campus for different needs, for the blind and sighted, presents design proposal that explores the use of sound and water.
The definition of Delta can be broadened. Because of the lack of area identity, some of the unavoidable urban planning consequence remain unoccupied or abandoned. However, a potential of development is brought from its
nature. By reorienting its identity to a combination of library, gym and restaurant, there might be a chance to make it not a left-over space, but a point to reacting on urban development..
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Valerie Greer
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Jing Chen
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Jenna Jauch
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Wei Jin
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Kyle Kapaun
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Amanda Louise
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Rachel Reinhard
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Nathan Severiano
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Elise Skulte
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Erin Socha
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Alex Wickes Degree Project | Spring 2020 49
Possibilities in vacancy: Co-working and mixed-used community Jing Chen n the past 100 years, Saint Louis once had its own prosperous. Since the crest of population period around 1950, the City has came through a severe population decline for over 60 percent. The plots left behind has changed into vacant buildings. “Of the 129,000 total properties in the City of St. Louis, approximately 25,000 are considered vacant and abandoned. The majority of vacant properties in the City — 13,200 — are privately owned. The LRA
owns nearly 11,500 properties — 3,400 vacant buildings, and 8,100 vacant lots.” The growing vacancy in Saint Louis blight the surrounding neighborhoods, does harm to the values of adjacent properties, and pose dangerous to existing on site people. However, we see this situation as a common phenomenon. This time for us to take action to make some change.
[RE] E D U C A T E Jenna Jauch project based, smaller scale school that creates a village style environment embedded within the Delmar Loop neighborhood. This area encompasses a demographic of rich culture and existing infrastructure which in turn creates a healthy exchange between the school, the community it lies within and the businesses that surround it.
Degree Project | Spring 2020
Education is one of the most important tools in our society and it has been throughout time. In response to dated traditional school teaching techniques and spatial qualities within St. Louis, this University City Alternative High School aims to critique traditional school architecture and the large, singular institutions that cater to one learning style. In response, ReEducate focuses on a strategy of a hands on,
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Brentwood Promenade Renovation Redefine Public Space Wei Jin Nowadays, the massive private car population invades the public spaces in the city. Social activities, such as shopping often deals with intense parking wars. The fancy name “Brentwood Promenade” doesn’t save this conventional shopping plaza from the constant car jamming and unpleasant shopping environment.
It begs the question of how to recreate healthy, lively public spaces in this most “public” shopping center? The renovation promotes a modern, ecofriendly and joyful shopping habits with the integration of architecture, urban planning and landscapes.
WholeBody Collaborative healthcare and wellness clinic Kyle Kapaun care clinicians and physical wellness into a single point of access. The primary design modality was the connection to light an nature for each space, while allowing for maximum efficiency and comfort for patients and providers.
Degree Project | Spring 2020
Primary preventative healthcare increases health outcomes in communities and lowers the burden on healthcare systems. This project creates a collaborative interactive healthcare center combining primary
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Fair Food Amanda Louise North St. Louis is a food desert and the neighborhood around Fairground Park is no exception. What was once a thriving civic destination is now a largely unused park surrounded by neighborhoods with high vacancy and low access to food and amenities. My project seeks to ďŹ ll in the
nutrition gaps, bring residents closer to their understanding of food and where it comes from, and to bring some much needed program to the historical park. Link to Design Thinking: https://issuu. com/amandalouise1/docs/fair food
The Intergenerational Collaborative Rachel Reinhard The Intergenerational Collaborative explores how spatial dynamics of the everyday could foster a future of well-being and resiliency through the intersection of intergenerational design, housing, and scales of shared resources.
Degree Project | Spring 2020
There is an urgency to rethink the potentials of our everyday environments. With the increasing fragility of our existing environmental, physical, social, and economic well-being our inherited modes of life are no longer suitable for the current human condition.
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Cultural Identity Through the Collective Memory Engaging Diaspora Across Cultural Foodscapes Nathan Severiano The word “diaspora” captures this process of social transformation and self-representation of one’s collective memory of home while reconciling their cultural identity with the already established social, political, and economic cultures of their new adopted cities. Upon arriving and settling into their new host city, food is oftentimes a way in which immigrants can easily recreate their collective memory of their former home in their new adopted city.
By introducing a market food hall and incubator kitchen that caters towards St. Louis immigrants, the proposed market food hall and kitchen incubator creates a physical dialogue of past memories that assists in providing a place where immigrants can begin to establish their new cultural identities and support networks within the existing cultural and social landscapes of St. Louis.
Main Street Connection Elise Skulte My project tackled the ideologization of the American Dream and the challenges that the dream has faced over the years. Today suburban space is marketed as a spatial product off
sameness. My project challenges sprawl, the traditional idea of the American Dream, and how to rebuild the dream to fit into today’s society and overcome the many challenges to the dream.
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Shifting Habitation A River Field Station for the Public Erin Socha Shifting Habitation intends to challenge the relationship between St. Louis and the Mississippi River. The field station encourages a relationship that fosters fascination rather than fear by embracing
the fragments of history, industry, and habitation that surround the Cotton Belt Freight Depot to create a collaborative and creative learning environment.
Morii Alex Wickes This physical manifestation serves as a future research center to not only develop but influence and inspire the next generation of architecture and its role in the human-technological age.
Degree Project | Spring 2020
As the names definition stands: the desire to capture a fleeting moment, this architectures purpose is that of an experiment to see and test the undeveloped and in-the-moment capabilities of 3d-Printing through customization and optimization.
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Adrian Luchini
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Debora Camargos
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Michael Ge
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Dayong Hu
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Siyu Huang
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Lijiang Li
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Yigang Li
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Tianyu Mao
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Alexis Raiford
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Zifei Shen
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Jiaao Yu Degree Project | Spring 2020 61
A Cultural and Educational Art Space for Celebrating Cultural Diversity and Immigrant Community Debora Camargos The historically entrenched segregation and areas of increased crime rates resulted in innumerable abandoned buildings and neighborhoods that throughout the years have reached an appalling level of degradation. Art is a powerful, universal language. It can be a
tool for social action. It has the potential to inspire, engage, unite. Art can bring life back to what has been forgotten and our cultural diversity has the power to restore the decaying St. Louis.
Title Michael Ge The only native American-made mound survive along the Mississippi River is Sugarloaf Mound, on the top of the Bluff by I-55 highway over looking the river. I suppose this mound is a unique human-made landscape which has been through a thousand year. To
reveal the hidden message in the site, the architecture or landscape methods will be the way to expose the absence. And the memorial layers of the historic mound will not just be the protector of the mound but also be the booster to develop the better landscape of the site.
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Sports Center for Disabilities Dayong Hu This district exists replete with barriers which creates both emotional and physical isolation; it can be improved through making connections that will create and facilitate emotional bonds. This can be achieved, in part, by leveraging the commonalities of purpose that are present within the existing four institutions: SSM, RED
SPORTS CENTER FOR DISABILITIES
CROSS, Family Forward and Life Bridge The Sports Center for Disabilities seeks to create a community within which boundaries are transcended, and wherein people with disabilities can live, work, and play alongside all members of society. The project introduces an athletic facility that complements the existing institutions, that eliminated
This district exists replete with barriers which creates both emotional and physical isolation; it can be improved through making connections that will create and facilitate emotional bonds. This can be achieved, in part, by leveraging the commonalities of purpose that are present within the existing four institutions. We seek to create a community within which boundaries are transcended, and wherein people with disabilities can live, work, and play alongside all members of society. We take into consideration that people with disabilities need varying degrees of support in order to function satisfactorily with a given community. We seek to introduce an athletic facility that complements the existing institutions, that eliminated boundaries and makes life for people with disabilities meaningful and possible without any element of isolation. Forging intersections with the existing institutions and improving accessibility to all services offered within this community is of paramount concern. PROGRAM
Sports hall
25,000Ft²
Science Center Expansion
Swimming pool 11,000Ft² Training Cafe
10,000Ft² 2,500Ft²
Fitness
3,500Ft²
Served space
3,000Ft²
Loobby
1,500Ft²
Outdoor Sports Field 20,000Ft² Outdoor Playground 15,000Ft²
Siyu Huang The Infrastructures in cities are divisive. I plan to break the barrier of Forest Park and restore Forest Park’s original publicity and connectivity by a pedestriansystem where different groups and the landscape they share could link together.My Proposal is an expansion to
Science Center. The new buildingwill be aSPACE to improve and revive the city, to inspire people to collectively rethink and reshape the heart of their community, to strengthen the connection between people and the space they share
LIFE BRIDGE
FAMILY FORWARD
SITE PLAN 1/32”=1’
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POND
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Cultural Block Lijiang Li Sever vacancy, racial segregation and declining economy are what I witnessed in the trip to the Old North St. Louis. However, I also see the huge potential that the NGA could bring to this area in the next few years. Therefore, I decided
to rebuild a neighborhood that celebrate community living. It aims to recharge the vacant area, break the barrier of racial segregation, and bridge both side of people to harmoniously live together.
Program Without Script Yigang Li As its reputation of modern concentration camp, call center is a highly scripted programmatic institution. Within the context of St. Louis, the city authorities are motivated to competing
in the customer service business in the upcoming city plan. The design used nature as the media to construct soundscape and facilitate unscripted professional routine by offering flexible choices of working space.
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Urban Bike-Path With Recreation Center
The Wave A Link Between Destinations
Tianyu Mao
Alexis Raiford
The Union Station area has always been a spectacle. Aquarium, The wheel, ice hockey, memorial plaza all those modern spectacles gather here, even there will be a brand new soccer stadium in 2020. This project aims to use a bike-path system
to allow people roaming around these spectacles. Buildings are more like “plugin� that set along this urban path, which provides people with other activities. Roaming around spectacles would become a new spectacle in this city
A walkable city integrates focus around accessibility, approachability, and link ability to the transit centers. Currently, a disconnection between transit andwalkability between merchant and people stand at a high concern in Saint Louis. Using the Maplewood/
Manchester metro station, I propose a mixed-used market design linking the Transit station to the current stores of SAMS, LOWES, Walmart, and Mernards. Proposing a link between people, merchants, and transit create,a safe, walkable, economically, and environmentally sustainable destination.
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Presence & Absence Jiaao Yu
Huckleberry Finn’s Floating Land Zifei Shen In Mark Twain’s world-famous literature work, “the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, this boy took on his adventure on a raft drifting downstream the Mississippi. Like Huck Finn’s raft, this project is also floating on the Mississippi. A river engagement facility and a writing institute, this floating land is to celebrate the river and the monumental figure in history, Mark Twain. It is going on
a weekly routine trip from Hannibal, MO, Mark Twain’s hometown, to St. Louis, that enables people to engage in writer’s workshops, appreciating the American landscape along the river, and enjoy river gourmets at the same time. Inspired by wood debris and bubbles, the raft is in unity with its infinite site, the Mississippi, and is embracing this great figure, Mark Twain.
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Congratulations to students! Thanks to our guest reviewers!
Special thanks to Larissa Stattler for designing this year’s catalogue, and to the support of our faculty and staff. - Adrian, Chandler, Julie and Valerie April 28, 2020
Degree Project | Spring 2020
Photo: Valerie Greer, Day 1 of studio, a design charette in Steinberg Gallery
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