St. Louis, Missouri, USA
“We originally thought that these would be poured-in-place frame buildings, but McCarthy Building Cos. worked with us to lighten them and make them steel buildings, sitting up above the concrete foundation,” Timberlake says.
Washington University appointed KieranTimberlake architects to create the new art and architecture building for The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts,Weil Hall that stages one of the top programs for art, design, and architecture in the United States.
Its design has been awarded a 2021 American Architecture Award from The Chicago Athenaeum and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
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 color, form, and proportions of the earlier buildings.
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, as well as to 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.
In centering its studio spaces around the fabrication shop and courtyard, Weil Hall’s design inspires multi-disciplinary scholarship, creative activity, and innovative research.
Weil Hall achieved a LEED Platinum sustainability rating, with its energy-efficient curtain wall,
abundant natural lighting, an energy recovery system, and district hot and chilled water loops for a 40% reduction in energy use.
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.
Project: Anabeth and John Weil Hall Washington University in St. Louis
Architects: KieranTimberlake Associates LLP.
Client: Washington University in St. Louis
Construction Manager: McCarthy Building Companies, Inc.
Structural Engineer: KPFF Consulting Engineers, Inc.
MEP Engineer: BuroHappold Engineering, with KAI Engineering
Central Utilities MEP Engineer: McClure Engineering
Civil Engineer: Cole
Geotechnical Engineer: Geotechnology Inc.
Construction Manager: McCarthy Building Companies, Inc.
Landscape Architect: Michael Vergason Landscape Architects with Arbolope Studio
Lighting Designer: Fisher Marantz Stone
AV Consultant: The Sextant Group
Code Consultant: Code Consultants, Inc.
Façade Consultant: Eckersley O’Callaghan + Partners
Acoustics: Metropolitan Acoustics
Soils and Irrigation: Jeffery Bruce & Company
Campus Mobility: Schulze + Grassoz
Cost Estimator: The Capital Projects Group
Food Service: Webb Foodservice Design
Waterproofing: Wiss Janney Elstner Associates
Graphics: Kuhlmann Leavitt, Inc.
Specifications: Heller & Metzger
LEED Administration: Sustainable Design Consulting
Photographers: James Ewing / JBSA Peter Aaron/OTTO
