The built environment often shapes the spread of disease. Many early cases of COVID-19, the 2019 novel coronavirus, centered on a seafood market in Wuhan City, China. Airports, hospitals and other gathering points can easily become sites of virus transmission. But as the world grapples with the COVID-19 outbreak, Hongxi Yin, associate professor in advanced building systems and architectural design at Washington University in St. Louis, is exploring whether using portable furnaces to sterilize contaminated building exhaust might help to stem the contagion.

“Midnight Special,” a new exhibition by Heather Bennett, lecturer in art in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, will open March 13 at Monaco, the artists’ cooperative gallery.

Develop an open-source nuclear detection system. That was the charge from the U.S. Department of Defense to members of its new internship program, the X-Force Fellowship. Washington University in St. Louis sophomore Andrew Bass had been selected to serve in the pilot cohort and arrived at Cape Canaveral in Florida convinced he would fail. 

Senior Libby Evan and junior Jina Hyun are representing the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis in Varsity Art XXIV. The annual exhibition, which opens Feb. 28, is hosted by Art St. Louis and features work by undergraduate and graduate students from St. Louis college- and university-level art programs.

A community development project led by Linda C. Samuels, associate professor in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, and Christopher Trumble, associate professor at the University of Arizona, has won a national Architectural Education Award for Collaborative Practice.

PGAV Destinations, led by alumnus Mike Konzen, has created an enthralling and educational indoor attraction with the new St. Louis Aquarium.

Just when Michelangelo was considering retirement, he was asked to help oversee construction of St. Peter’s Basilica and helped create one of the world’s great architectural masterpieces.

Two WashU alums and one current student helped take a cosmetics startup from a dream to a reality.

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis will unveil a suite of five new galleries Feb. 7, during the opening reception for its spring exhibitions.

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis has received a $40,000 grant from the Art Works program of the National Endowment for the Arts.