Anabeth and John Weil Hall

Rendering of Weil Hall at sunset

Weil Hall will be a symbol of the university’s commitment to creativity in the 21st century and identify the Sam Fox School as a leader in design practice and education. This new front door to the Sam Fox School will express the important roles for art and architecture in a research university and will help guide the future of these disciplines. Beautifully crafted and fundamentally sustainable, Weil Hall will be an inspiring place for advanced scholarship, creative activity, innovative research, and bold experimentation as faculty and students seek solutions to critical social and environmental challenges.

Landscape will be integral to the building design and will support Weil Hall as an interdisciplinary hub and home to a vibrant and diverse academic community. Weil Hall, its landscape, and its systems will be distinctive teaching tools and distinguish the Sam Fox School among its peers.

  • Weil Hall will support the school’s growing graduate programs, including the relocation of the Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program to the Danforth Campus.
  • Exceptional spaces for the generation, experience, and dissemination of art and design
  • Studios for graduate architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, graduate art and design, and interdisciplinary programs
  • Exhibition, critique, and review spaces
  • Digital fabrication and technology spaces
  • Experimental media, research, and collaborative spaces

The design of Weil Hall, a vibrant and engaging facility, centers around the ground floor’s centrally located Digital Fabrication Lab, where multiple disciplines will use shared resources to work with a variety of materials and techniques. Surrounding it are critique spaces, design studios, shared Commons space, and administrative offices and resources.

Two upper floors contain flexible and adaptable studios as well as faculty offices, seminar, and critique spaces. These surround the Kuehner Family Court. This central interior court, skylit from above, will provide flexible gathering and community space for the school’s students and faculty.

The lower level includes a pooled classroom, interior connections to other Sam Fox facilities, and space for future program growth.

Inside the Kuehner Family Court with wall of greenery
Kuehner Family Court. Credit: James Ewing Photography

Project details

  • 80,670 square ft. building with 174 studio desks and 30 MFA Studios
  • Located north of Givens Hall, west of the main drop-off to the Sumers Welcome Center, and south of the new Campus Green.

PROJECT TEAM

Michael Vergason Landscape Architects
landscape architect & planner

Cole
civil engineer

McClure
utilities engineer

McCarthy Building Companies
Simms Building Group
construction managers

KieranTimberlake
architect

BNIM
parking facility architect

Tao + Lee
local architect

KPFF
structural engineer

BuroHappold
mechanical, electrical, plumbing engineer

Learn more about the plan for the transformation of the east end of the Danforth Campus.