WashU Sam Fox School

🥂 It was a joy to see so many friends and colleagues from past and present come out to celebrate Carmon Colangelo and his two decades of service as the Sam Fox School dean.

📸: Suzy Gorman/WashU

🎉 You did it! Many congrats to . We are so proud of you.

📸: Devon Hill/WashU

🎓✨ Caps off to the crew! From late nights in the studio to final reviews, you've poured your heart into your work! We are incredibly proud of everything you’ve created and can’t wait to see how you shape the world. 🌎

📸: WashU

"Past, present, and future are not trivialities that can be consumed on a whim, but the making of an interconnected compass to guide our collective survival ... Progress is only measured when mind and spirit coalesce as selfless endeavors that benefit humanity."

Celebrated designer, architect, and scholar Carlos Jiménez encouraged to take courage in their academic accomplishments and comfort in their friendships and experiences, which together will strengthen their resolve as they move into the next chapter of life.

📸: Devon Hill/WashU

🎓 Tassels flipped! Next up: the rest of your lives. ❤️ Congratulations, !
👏👏👏

📸: WashU

“Your fields are not peripheral — they are central to our humanity. They help us engage the most urgent questions of our time, about equity and justice, the environment and technology, health and community, and how we imagine better futures.”

~ Carmon Colangelo, the Ralph J. Nagel Dean of the Sam Fox School, in his final Recognition Ceremony address to the Class of 2026



📸: Devon Hill/WashU

Architectural designer Catherine Chen has been named winner of the 2026 James Harrison Steedman Memorial Fellowship.

Selected for her proposal, "Solar Communities: Architectures of the Energy Transition," Chen will receive $100,000 to support her research. Her work explores how the shift to renewable energy can reshape collective ownership and public space.

Established in 1926, the biennial Steedman Fellowship is organized by the College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design at WashU’s Sam Fox School, in partnership with the American Institute of Architects St. Louis.

This year’s theme, “Collective Form/Forums” honors the legacy of celebrated architect and former WashU professor Fumihiko Maki (1928-2024) by taking inspiration from his text, “Investigations in Collective Form.” Neeraj Bhatia, the fellowship’s jury chair and 2026-27 Rome Prize winner, shared that the theme “asks us to reconsider the nature of the collective — how it is constituted, how it is spatialized, and architecture’s role in both convening publics and giving form to shared arrangements.”

https://samfoxschool.washu.edu/the-school/news/1432-catherine-chen-wins-2026-steedman-fellowship-in-architecture