Levy is among the 1,700 Washington University in St. Louis students who are set to earn their degrees this month. The university will celebrate their accomplishments at the annual December recognition ceremony at 10 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 10, at the Athletic Complex. Maxine Clark, the founder of Build-A-Bear Workshop and a champion of quality K-12 education, will serve as the speaker. Clark recently launched the Delmar Divine, a home for nonprofits located in the former St. Luke’s Hospital on Delmar Boulevard.
Levy first started building houses — birdhouses, that is — as a child in Prince George’s County, Md., outside of Washington, D.C. At the same time, he noticed housing developments sprouting up on what was once farmland. Architecture and urban design, he realized, could hurt the environment and fuel economic inequality. But they also could improve the lives of the vulnerable and the invisible.
“I am Black, I’m gay and I also have Crohn’s disease, so I’ve always felt on the outside a little bit,” Levy said. “Being sick a lot of time and being around other people who were disabled has allowed me to see we need to make sure that everyone is being cared for.”
Levy started his education in architecture at Morgan State University. In 2019, he received a full scholarship to attend Washington University as a Chancellor’s Fellow, a cohort program for exceptional graduate students. During his time at Washington University, Levy was named a 2021 Foundation Fellow by the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) and interned at Robert A.M. Stern Architects in New York. After graduation, he hopes to find a position in the D.C. area that marries his passion for architecture and advocacy.
“I want to lift up the voices of the marginalized in the built environment,” Levy said. “I would like to work with communities who are not having their voice heard and being a mediator between design decisions, policy and people so that decisions are equitable in the end.”
