New work on view at Weil Project Wall

Alumni and former faculty Nathaniel Elberfeld, Lavender Tessmer, and Alexandra Waller — together forming the collaborative Teltta — were commissioned to design this year’s installation for the Weil Project Wall. The work, “Neighbors to Your Right and Left,” uses textile fabrication, aggregation, and full-scale assembly to explore how soft components can produce architectural enclosure, thickness, surface, and expression. The resulting installation is a wall of stacked, CNC-knit sandbags in blue and peach yarns, with three distinct openings, or apertures.

Now assistant professors at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (Waller and Elberfeld) and Clemson University (Tessmer), the group investigates novel workflows and holistic systems of production, prioritizing dialogue between computation, craft, and contextual resource economies. “Neighbors to Your Right and Left” merges their experiences with carbon fiber-braided textiles and industrial knitting.

Three distinct strains of ideas contributed to how the project developed. First, the team thought deeply about St. Louis, its significant brick architecture, iconic Gateway Arch, and the flooding cycles of the Mississippi River. “The tectonic, aesthetic, and performance of stacked sandbags, filled and assembled locally into ad hoc barriers by communities in times of crisis, therefore became central to the project,” they shared.

The work is also an architectural experiment, prototyping a modular knit-bag assembly system wherein a single component acts simultaneously as structure, insulation, and exterior cladding. The work’s three apertures are intended to feel familiar, domestic, and comfortable — a front porch to an inviting dwelling.

Finally, the team purposely shifted away from computational emphasis and towards rules for assembly. “We used the logic of ‘cellular automata,’ — simple computational rules that generate patterns in a grid and that determine successive cell states from information about the cells to the right and to the left of the cell in the same position in the previous row,” they said. With the predetermined apertures and initial course order, just eight placement rules determined the final pattern of the installation.

They also limited the project to three yarn colors to avoid longer production times. “During the installation,” they shared, “we were happily surprised that the peach color we chose resembles the signature granite used on the Danforth campus, which further connects the project to its immediate context.”

The team believes that while the work has many ideas and considerations behind it, on its own it is playful and accessible. “We hope viewers are intrigued, curious, and delighted by the work,” they shared, “and that it makes a good neighbor itself during its time at the Sam Fox School!”

The work is on display for the 2026-27 academic year. The designers will return for a lecture later this year.

The Weil Project Wall, located just inside the north and west entrances to Weil Hall, features commissioned works by Sam Fox School alumni. With new work on view each year, the space is generously supported by Anabeth and John Weil.

Elberfeld, Tessmer, and Waller earned their Master of Architecture degrees from WashU’s Sam Fox School in 2011, later serving as faculty. Their shared interest and scholarship in design computation, labor optimization, material economy, and customizable production led them to formalize their collaboration as Teltta in 2020. Their work has been exhibited at galleries and museums including the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and Design Seaport in Boston.