Nine Sam Fox School faculty awarded funding to further research and creative practice
2026-06-05 • Sam Fox School
Graduate studios in Anabeth and John Weil Hall. Photo: Geoff Cardin/WashU.
Nine faculty members in the Sam Fox School at WashU have been awarded funding by the school to further their research and creative practice during the 2026-27 academic year.
Matthew Allen will conduct archival research and oral history interviews on the impact the introduction of digital technology has had on architecture in China. The research will lay the groundwork for his next book project, a monograph on the digital transformation of East Asian architecture.
Wyly Brown will fabricate, install, test, and exhibit four vertical bamboo-structured solar-tree prototypes in an urban park in downtown Munich, Germany as a continuation of his ongoing exploration of “Architecture of Regeneration.”
Sage Dawson’s award will support the production of “Eternal Loop,” an upcoming solo exhibition at the University of Illinois Springfield Visual Arts Gallery featuring a series of large-scale block-printed textiles and paper lattices that materialize the continuity between traditional artisanship and contemporary digital production.
Senior Lecturer
Assistant Professor
Senior Lecturer; Area Coordinator - Foundations
Rayshad Dorsey will conduct preliminary research for “Vacancy as Return: Rural-Urban Memoryscapes, Black Domesticity, and Community Agency” in preparation for a research fellowship at the Canadian Centre for Architecture—Window Research Institute. The project, which will establish a long-term framework for community-based scholarship and teaching, repositions vacancy as a site of potential.
Pablo Moyano Fernández’ award will support large-scale prototyping of his MICRO House project, an innovative concrete casting system that builds on prior research in cast-in-place, tilt-up, and precast concrete construction to create a more efficient, durable, and scalable alternative to wood-frame housing.
Michelle Hauk will use her faculty research award to produce high-quality architectural drawings and physical models of Japanese bathroom, kitchen, and water closet precedent studies as part of her book project, “Dwelling with Water: Technology, Design, and the Architecture of Everyday Life in Twentieth-Century Japan.”
Assistant Professor
Associate Professor
Assistant Professor; Minor Advisor, Architectural History and Theory
Bei Hu will use her award to advance work in AI-based wearable technologies that enable caregivers to read and understand emotional states of patients with limited ability to communicate. Hu’s project bridges gaps in interaction design, digital health, and affective computing.
Aggie Toppins will use funding to produce her second book, “Design Provocations.” The collection of polemical essays foregrounds design’s contradictory relationship to power, productive relations, and the social imagination as it is expressed through artifacts, sites, and discourses.
Constance Vale’s award will support further development of her “Autonomous Cities: Architectures of Mobility in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” research project, particularly the development and production of speculative drawings, physical models, and a related publication.
Assistant Professor; Minor Advisor, HCI
Associate Professor
Chair, Undergraduate Architecture; Associate Professor
Sam Fox School Faculty Research Awards up to $10,000 are awarded annually and funded by the Ralph J. Nagel Deanship Endowment.