St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Enlisted by the Washington University in St. Louis, KieranTimberlake and Tao + Lee Associates’ Anabeth and John Weil Hall new art and architecture building for The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University, one of the top programs for art, design, and architecture in the United States.
With its graceful forms, research-driven design, and thoughtful approach to site and environmental responsibility, Anabeth and John Weil Hall provides students with a powerful example of how architects can address today’s most critical questions.
The Anabeth and John Weil Hall has recently been awarded a 2022 International Architecture Awards Honorable Mention by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
The building houses state-of-the-art graduate studios, classrooms, and digital fabrication spaces within a loft-like, collaborative environment.
The new building locates the school’s graduate art, architecture, and design programs together at the front door of campus.
Weil Hall’s glass exterior creates a rich dialogue with the color, form, and proportions of surrounding 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 A-class tools.
In centering its studio spaces around the fabrication shop and courtyard, Weil Hall’s design inspires multidisciplinary scholarship, creative activity, and innovative research.
Weil Hall achieved a LEED Platinum sustainability rating, with its energy-efficient curtain wall, abundant natural lighting, energy recovery system, and district hot and chilled water loops for a 40% reduction in energy use.
Project: Anabeth and John Weil Hall
Architects: KieranTimberlake LLP.
Associate Architects: Tao + Lee Associates, Inc.
General Contractor: McCarthy Building Companies, Inc.
Client: Washington University in St. Louis
Photographers: James Ewing / JBSA and Peter Aaron / OTTO
