Sam Fox School faculty granted tenure, promotions

Jamie Adams joined WashU in 2003 and was granted tenure in 2012. Since then, he has served as drawing area coordinator, painting area coordinator, and taught in both the undergraduate studio art and MFA in Visual Art programs. Last fall, he was recognized with an Emerson Excellence in Teaching Award. His teaching career has demonstrated a sustained commitment to pedagogical innovation, curriculum development, mentorship, and academic leadership. Colangelo shared that Adams “is rigorous in the best of ways, with a holistic approach that supports students’ growth technically and theoretically and with a focus on wide-ranging aspects of painting from anatomy to feminism and color theory to AI.” Adams has infused his teaching with empathy, authenticity, social democracy, and agency. His students have gone on to exhibit their work at nationally recognized venues.

A prolific painter, Adams has held 10 solo shows since 2012 and participated in 29 group exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad. His work demonstrates mastery of styles including 16th-century Italian Mannerist, 18th-century systems of color hierarchy, and 20th-century Surrealism. His paintings are intimately biographical, delving into personal and family histories and exploring themes of memory loss, trauma, grief, and speculation on the future, and have been documented in several scholarly and industry publications.

Wyly Brown works at the intersection of high-performance sustainable practice, regenerative material research, and technical pedagogy. A founding partner of Leupold Brown Goldbach Architekten, his work equally considers economic prosperity, environmental stewardship, and social equity with built projects like the LEED Platinum housing infill template 36-38 Colonial Avenue in Boston and the Timber Kindergarten in Senden, Germany, both of which earned notable industry awards.

Brown’s recent research into bamboo as a building material seeks not only to reduce harm, but also to rehabilitate the environment. He has designed and built bamboo structures in Costa Rica and Bali, achieving significant visibility with presentations internationally, including at the Venice Biennale. He was a lead partner in the 2023 reconstruction of Buckminster Fuller’s 1950s geodesic dome at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Closer to home, he worked with students to create and install the Gateway Pavilion at Peace Park in St. Louis’s College Hill neighborhood, a bamboo project that utilized parametric modeling and drone scanning and which won the AIA St. Louis Distinguished Award for Community Impact.

As an educator, Brown “provides an important bridge between design studio instruction and the rigor of building technology…leveraging hands-on exercises and digital simulations in novel ways that encourage new types of learning,” Colangelo said. In addition to working on the first NCARB Futures Symposium nationally, Brown has supported the school’s efforts in recruitment, advising, learning culture, strategic planning, and student professional development toward licensure.

Petra Kempf’s research centers on shared experiences. Her longstanding work on the communal party wall and its ability to drive housing designs that emphasize a collective “we” has been presented at several international conferences, including the Venice Biennale in 2021 and 2025. Her forthcoming book, “Party Wall Common,” is slated for publication next fall. Kempf’s practice also extends to interactive design projects like large-scale drawings, board games, workshops, and performances, all of which are positioned to build greater understanding of the collective challenges humans face and strategies towards building alliances with each other. She has regularly led a design studio that tasks undergraduate architecture students with designing games for local schoolchildren. The course invites the children to test the games on campus, giving WashU students valuable experience in how their designs play out in reality.

Kempf has taken part in numerous committees since joining the Sam Fox School in 2019, including serving as the Urban Design minor advisor, and is a regular guest critic at highly respected architecture schools nationwide. She was also recognized with an Emerson Excellence in Teaching Award in 2022. Kempf’s work “addresses critical themes that offer an expanded vision for collective living in contemporary society…and is also committed to an approach that engages directly with communities to build a stronger understanding of the possibilities and benefits of common space,” Colangelo said.

Kempf’s early career includes roles with New York’s Department of City Planning and the firm of Pritzker Prize-winning architect Richard Meier. During this time, she won the Architectural League of New York Young Architects Design Competition and was awarded a prestigious Graham Foundation grant. Prior to WashU, she taught at Columbia University, Cornell University, and the Rhode Island School of Design.