Anabeth and John Weil Hall | Washington University in St. Louis | St. Louis, Missouri | 2019

Architects: KieranTimberlake
Client: Washington University in St. Louis
Contractor: McCarthy Building Companies
Photographers: James Ewing / JBSA Peter Aaron/OTTO

Weil Hall is a new art and architecture building for The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, one of the top programs for art, design, and architecture in the United States.

It houses state-of-the-art graduate studios, classrooms, and digital fabrication spaces within a loft-like, collaborative environment.

The project is part of a $280 million transformation of the university's East End.

Together with earlier Beaux Arts and modernist buildings of the Sam Fox School, the new building locates the school's graduate art, architecture, and design programs together at the front door to campus.

Weil Hall's glass exterior creates a rich dialogue with the earlier buildings' color, form, and proportions.

An elegant facade of opaque and translucent glass with vertical aluminum fins affords generous natural light throughout the interior and access to striking campus views while minimizing solar gain and glare inside the building.

Studio, critique, and learning spaces along the ground floor provide visual connections to the five other Sam Fox buildings and the School of Engineering across the campus landscape.

The upper floors surround a luminous, two-story court with a living green wall, skylights, and glass walls that allow for visual connectivity between studios, providing students with a feeling of simultaneity and participation in a larger community.

As the conceptual heart of the building, the Digital Fabrication Studio allows students and faculty across programs to execute complex projects using state-of-the-art tools.

Weil Hall's design inspires multidisciplinary scholarship, creative activity, and innovative research in centering its studio spaces around the fabrication shop and courtyard.

With its graceful forms, research-driven design, and thoughtful approach to site and environmental responsibility, Weil Hall provides students with a powerful example of how architects can address today's most critical questions.