How can we bring a unified, contemporary identity to a revered campus neighborhood?

The Danforth Campus at Washington University in St. Louis was designed by Cope & Stewardson in 1900. It is defined by Collegiate Gothic buildings, landscaped quadrangles, and pathways that encourage academic connections in a beautiful park-like setting. But over time, Danforth’s East End of campus had become plagued by roads and parking lots, interrupting this original planning vision.

In 2015, Washington University embarked on a major campaign to transform the East End into a vibrant and inviting gateway to the university. The car-centric site has been turned into a major new campus landscape framed by new buildings and pedestrian circulation in front of Brookings Hall, the campus’s landmark main building. Hundreds of surface parking spaces are now underground in the 790-space East End Garage, creating an expansive new park above. Five new buildings strengthen academic connections, enhance campus green space and circulation, and improve accessibility. Five of the eight major components in this capital campaign were designed by KieranTimberlake and completed in 2019.

Highlighting Art and Architecture

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts is one of the top programs for art, architecture, and design in the country. Anabeth and John Weil Hall, a new building for the school, embodies the university’s commitment to creativity in the 21st century. The new building includes flexible, naturally lit lofts for classes and studios, all of which are positioned around a digital fabrication shop and a light-filled central courtyard with a towering green wall.

Glass walls allow views between studio spaces, building a feeling of community among artists and designers. Meanwhile, a mural wall in the Commons features new work by alumni each year. In centering its studio spaces around the fabrication shop and courtyard, Weil Hall’s design inspires the university’s multidisciplinary scholarship, creative activity, and innovative research.

A major expansion of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum increases exhibition space for varied and outsized art and allows the museum to permanently display a larger portion of its world-class collection. The gallery’s striking new stainless steel exterior reflects the dynamic movement of campus and sky while the double-height, glass-lined lobby opens up an introverted building. The lobby offers expansive views of Brookings Hall, the campus’s landmark building, as well as the museum’s sculpture garden and Tisch Park, a new green space that replaces much of the East End’s surface parking lots.

Strengthening Connections

The Gary M. Sumers Welcome Center, a new building for Undergraduate Admissions and Student Financial Services, is the first stop for visitors and prospective students. The glass-enclosed building was designed to put the Welcome Center’s activity on display in addition to giving visitors upfront, personal views of the school’s distinct landscape, including the new Tisch Park, and Brookings Hall.

Sumers’ companion building, the Craig and Nancy Schnuck Pavilion, houses a large café and a bike hub in addition to the university’s Environmental Studies Program and Office of Sustainability. Together, the two new glass pavilions frame the towers of Brookings Hall beyond.

Balancing Transparency and Visual Comfort

Computational simulations optimized roller shade specifications to maintain visual comfort and projector visibility while preserving transparency.

Balancing Transparency and Visual Comfort

The Gary M. Sumers Welcome Center features floor-to-ceiling glass walls that showcase views of Brookings Hall and the new Tisch Park. This transparency created an important design question about maintaining comfortable conditions for presentations and meetings while preserving those signature views.

The Welcome Center’s presentation spaces required careful consideration of lighting conditions for effective projector use. For optimal viewing, the projection screen needs to be significantly brighter than surrounding surfaces—ideally achieving a contrast ratio between 10:1 and 25:1. This means balancing natural daylight with the technical requirements of audiovisual presentations, all while maintaining the building’s defining characteristic of visual connection to campus.

Through detailed computer simulations and physical modeling, the design team tested various roller shade options to find the optimal balance. The research examined how different shade colors and transparencies would perform throughout the year, considering factors like projector visibility, glare from the sun and sky, and maintaining connection to the outdoors. The team analyzed conditions at different times of day and seasons, studying how morning light, afternoon sun, and changing sky conditions would affect the spaces. Even shade color made a difference—darker gray fabrics proved more effective than lighter colors at reducing glare without becoming luminous sources themselves.

The solution uses gray roller shades with 5% openness on most elevations, with room-darkening shades to block intense afternoon sun. During overcast days—which occur frequently in St. Louis—shades can be lowered only partway, preserving views while reducing brightness from the sky. The study found that shades need to be fully deployed only about 20% of the academic year, ensuring that visitors and prospective students can enjoy the building’s transparency and connection to campus while maintaining comfortable conditions for presentations and meetings throughout the day.

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A new underground parking garage allows nearly six acres of impervious surface parking to be replaced with lawns, trees, and plantings. It also orients visitors, increases access to the new East End, and promotes low-carbon transportation by providing electric vehicle charging stations, designated car-share parking, and a campus shuttle stop.

Doubly-Curved Guardrail Prototype

The East End Garage’s vehicular entry features sculptural cast concrete walls that establish a distinctive architectural gesture at the threshold between landscape and infrastructure.

Doubly-Curved Guardrail Prototype

The East End Garage’s vehicular entry features sculptural cast concrete walls that establish a distinctive architectural gesture at the threshold between landscape and infrastructure. The design team envisioned a three-dimensionally curved concrete guardrail extending from the ground like a toroidal ring that blends into the landscape. However, significant questions surrounded the feasibility and cost of casting such complex double-curved geometry.

KieranTimberlake conducted extensive research investigating forming technologies, materials, and fabrication methods. The team examined both site-cast and precast approaches, discovering that while precast concrete offers superior finish quality and factory control, it would be prohibitively expensive for this project due to its relatively small scale and lack of repetition—each section of the guardrail is geometrically unique, requiring individual molds.

The research focused on site-cast solutions, evaluating wood formwork, fiberglass molds, and EPS foam systems. Formwork suppliers recommended integrating the curved guardrail with the cylindrical stair shaft as a unified system, ensuring perfect alignment while enabling monolithic pours that could eliminate cold joints and minimize hand-finishing.

Full-scale foam prototypes proved instrumental in understanding the geometry’s scale and curvature while facilitating technical discussions with fabricators. The prototypes revealed critical questions about standard plywood’s ability to achieve the subtle double curvature without compromising form quality.

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While remaining faithful to the original Cope & Stewardson plan, each of these buildings embodies a vibrant, contemporary approach to materials, technology, and sustainability. By emphasizing long-term flexibility, sustainability, and welcome, the newly built spaces ensure a unified and well connected East End for generations to come. They also reflect a redoubled commitment to art and design and the important roles both play at a private research university.