Events & Workshops

Public Lecture Series

The Sam Fox School’s annual Public Lecture Series brings nationally and internationally recognized architects, artists, designers, landscape architects, urban designers, historians, and critics to campus, promoting new ideas in practice, theory, and technology. Speakers often engage with students through studio visits and informal exchanges, in addition to their talks.

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Fox Fridays

Fox Fridays is a weekly, low-stress workshop series introducing the WashU community to overlooked or under-known tools, resources, processes, and ideas. It provides a platform for students to develop hybridized practices of creative output that transcend discipline, medium, and experience.

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Laskey Charrette

The Laskey Charrette honors the late professor emeritus Leslie J. Laskey and his singular approach to design education during his 35-year tenure at Washington University. For this intensive, weekend-long workshop, second-year architecture students work in teams to brainstorm ideas for a given design challenge. Their final designs are exhibited and reviewed, with a jury of faculty awarding prizes. The charrette is presented annually by Studio L in collaboration with the College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design.

For more information about Studio L and the Laskey Charrette, email studiolaskey@gmail.com.

2022 Charrette

Laskey Charrette

Laskey Charrette 2022

Laskey Charrette

Laskey Charrette 2022

Laskey Charrette

Laskey Charrette 2022

Laskey Charrette

Laskey Charrette 2020

Laskey Charrette

Laskey Charrette 2020

Laskey Charrette

Laskey Charrette 2020

Laskey Charrette

Laskey Charrette 2019

Laskey Charrette

Laskey Charrette 2019

Laskey Charrette

Laskey Charrette 2019

Two people work with a long strip of pale blue chiffon in a brightly-lit studio space.

Two students sit on a work table behind a magenta fabric construction on a mannequin. An instructor comments on the project.

Two people climb a ladder to reach the ceiling of a gallery space. Colorful fabric constructions are hung around the room.

Several students pile modular pieces of concrete into an arrangement on a white table, giggling.

Two smiling students present a construction of modular, polygonal concrete pieces.

Three judges sit behind a table with modular concrete blocks piled on it.

Person gestures at a hanging white asymmetrical lamp and speaks.

Person in foreground supports a paper chandelier while another person in the background on a ladder hangs a conical lamp from the ceiling of a gallery space.

Two students work on assembling a lighted lamp with a frilled top.

Yasmin Vobis (RA, NCARB), co-principal of Ultramoderne and an assistant professor of architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design, served as the moderator of the 2022 Laskey Charrette, which took place February 4-6.

The team of Dear Liu, Jack Zhang, and Kaiwen Wang took first place in this year’s charrette. Check out this news announcement for the full list of winning teams, as well as photos from this year’s charrette. You can also view a recording of Vobis’ public lecture, introducing this year’s design brief, A HAT IS A HOUSE, which called upon the students to work in teams to “expand the definition of a hat to blur the line that differentiates the personal from the collective,” culminating in the creation of a hat that could be worn by one or multiple people.

2020
Moderator: Aki Ishida

1st Place ($1,500): Model T—Lisa Chen, Spencer Derthick, Andy Entis, and Risako Nozaki
Honorable Mention: Folds & Gaps—Connor Merritt, Annika Pan, and Yuwei Yang
Honorable Mention: Divergence—Malik Gaye, Christa Hua, Allen Liang, and Caleb Ullendorff
Honorable Mention: Circuit—Caroline Denk, Xiaowen Ma, and Emily Rupright
Read the news announcement | View photos

2019
Moderator: Jerry Kugler

1st Place ($1,500): Lotus—Claude Luo, Francois Savignac, Juno Zhu, Xiaofan Hu
Honorable Mention: Stalaglite—Tony Chen, Malika Johnson, Brittany Heller, Zach Adams
Honorable Mention: The Light Box—Brooke Bulmash, Yihan Huang, Sam Rho, Basil Frost
Read the news announcement | View photos

2018
Moderator: Ian Monroe (BFA95)

1st place award ($1,500): Team No. 5—John Adrian Anak Christopher, Sebastian Bernal, Wentao Guo
Honorable Mention: Team No. 2—Dylan Chan, Qian Huang, Philipp Kentner, Thomas Spalter
Honorable Mention: Team No. 8—Yutong Ma, Graham McAllister, Taili Zhuang

2017
Moderator: Elizabeth O'Donnell, AIA

Team A—Caroline Amstutz, Martine Kushner, KJ Jiaheng Kuang, and Rodrigo Poma
Team B—Jenna Schnitzler, Marcellus Johnson, Katie Engelmeyer, and Tiffany Zheng
Team C—Maddie Farrer, Corrina Thompson, Eleanor Knowles, and Mesha Bisarya

2016
Moderator: Erik M. Hemingway

First Prize: Team of Gus Anderson, Eve Bobrow, and Qin Ye Chen
Honorable Mention: Team of Kristen Patino, Yulin Peng, and Rebecca Resnic
Honorable Mention: Team of Jenny Li, Mingxi Li, and Yin Li

2015
Moderators: Laura and Rick Brown (MFA75)

First prize: Team of Aria Griffin, Nina Lang, and Alicia Morris
Honorable Mention (book award): Team of Ciara Hackman, James McClanahan, and Lucas Rasmussen
Honorable Mention (book award): Team of Jack Lynch and Joshua Stevens

2014
Moderator: Ted Krueger

First prize: Team of Benjamin Aiken, Olivia Bolton, and Guangdi Yao
Honorable Mention: Team of Elizabeth Brown, Carley Ream, and Min Suk Yang Honorable Mention: Team of Ailing Zhang and Jie Fu

2013
Moderator: Mehrdad Hadighi

First prize: Team of Casey Federbusch (art), Taylor Halamka (architecture), Edenton Lewis (art), and Caitlin Watanasiri (art)
Book Award: Two teams, featuring Alexandra Chiu (art), Rebecca Curtis (architecture), Grace Davis (architecture), Shira Grosman (architecture), Isaac Howell (art), Patricia Kilbride (art), Wonjin Son (art), and Maya Theus (art)

2012
Moderator: Kyna Leski

First prize: Team of Eric Zuckerman (Architecture), Ben Zunkeler (Architecture), Anna Darling (Architecture), and Cherise Matthew (Art) for “Felt Detergent”
Book award: Team of Grant McCracken (Architecture), Nicole Yen (Art), Weiqian Liu (Architecture), and Martin Lockman (Architecture) for “Principa Mathematica”
Honorable Mention: Team of Elaine Stokes (Architecture), Adam Strobel (Architecture), and Elizabeth Korb (Art) for “Tangerine Peel”
Honorable Mention: Team of Allison Balogh (Architecture), Quamesha Brown (Art/Architecture), Jordan Rapp (Architecture), Elliot Petterson (Architecture), and Esther Hamburger (Art) for “Log”
Honorable Mention: Team of Stephanie Silva (Architecture), Sam Stapleton (Architecture), Claudia Frolova (Art), and Madeleine Docherty (Art) for “Rainbow Reproduction”

2011

Graduate architecture students Lavender Tessmer and Andrea Fisk for “Hang-Out”

2010

Graduate architecture students Akshita Sivakumar and Stephen Kim for “100+”

Fitzgibbon Charrette

The annual Fitzgibbon Charrette is a one-day sketch problem for all juniors and seniors in architecture.

2022 Charrette

Fitzgibbon Charrette

Fitzgibbon Charrette 2022

Guest reviewers Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu of Oyler Wu Collective.

Fitzgibbon Charrette

Fitzgibbon Charrette 2022

Guest reviewers Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu of Oyler Wu Collective.

Fitzgibbon Charrette

Fitzgibbon Charrette 2022

Guest reviewers Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu of Oyler Wu Collective.

Fitzgibbon Charrette

Fitzgibbon Charrette 2022

Guest reviewers Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu of Oyler Wu Collective.

Fitzgibbon Charrette

Fitzgibbon Charrette 2022

Guest reviewers Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu of Oyler Wu Collective.

Fitzgibbon Charrette

Fitzgibbon Charrette 2022

Guest reviewers Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu of Oyler Wu Collective.

Fitzgibbon Charrette

Fitzgibbon Charrette 2022

Guest reviewers Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu of Oyler Wu Collective.

Fitzgibbon Charrette

Fitzgibbon Charrette 2022

Guest reviewers Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu of Oyler Wu Collective.

Fitzgibbon Charrette

Fitzgibbon Charrette 2022

Guest reviewers Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu of Oyler Wu Collective.

Fitzgibbon Charrette

Fitzgibbon Charrette 2022

Guest reviewers Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu of Oyler Wu Collective.

A group of people gather around worktables to look at several laptop screens displaying digital renderings of strange machines.

Person in a ballcap looks up from an architectural sketch they are making of a boxy machine in front of a laptop displaying a reference image.

Two smiling people sit together at a desk with their laptops, comparing their screens.

A standing instructor talks to three seated students in an alcove of a studio with colorful relief prints on the wall and a 3D printer sitting on the desk behind them.

View over the shoulder of a person at a laptop displaying a digital rendering of a strange machine.

Group of people huddle around three laptops side by side on a desk, displaying digital renderings of machinery.

Large group of people in a well-lit gallery space.

Three people stand in a white-walled gallery space in front of a 3ft-tall wheeled industrial-looking machine. Behind them on the wall are poster prints of digital renderings of machinery.

Person stands in a gallery space in front of a large crowd and points to a poster print of a digital architectural rendering pinned to the wall.

Two smiling people stand side by side in a gallery space in front of a a wall of architectural rendering prints.

Guest reviewers Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu of Oyler Wu Collective.

Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu, founders of the experimental architecture and design firm Oyler Wu Collaborative, served as the moderators for the 2022 Fitzgibbon Charrette, delivering an online kickoff lecture on February 25.

This year’s prompt focused on creating methods of assembly that require an intense investigation of architectural parts, and that allow for a transference between types and scales. Each team of students created “a puzzling architectural assembly” using a combination of architectural and industrial parts. The “parts” were derived from two to three previous architectural studio projects, as well as an assigned tool model.