The virtual ceremony — which will be broadcast at 7 p.m. Thursday, May 14 — will celebrate graduating students from the Sam Fox School’s undergraduate College of Art and College of Architecture, and from the Graduate School of Art and Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Design at Washington University in St. Louis.

Susan Barrett (BA and BFA ’89; MArch ’94), president and founder of St. Louis’ Barrett Barrera Projects, will deliver the alumni address.

“In these extraordinary times of uncertainty, it’s important that we continue finding ways to come together as a school,” says Carmon Colangelo, Ralph J. Nagel Dean of the Sam Fox School and the E. Desmond Lee Professor for Collaboration in the Arts.

“I am incredibly excited about our speakers and cannot imagine a more inspiring lineup,” Colangelo continued. “Susan Barrett’s cutting-edge galleries and project spaces have had a major impact on the St. Louis art scene, while Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara have long considered teaching to be a vital component of their larger architectural practice, in addition to producing amazing beautiful projects.”

“All three truly speak to the sustaining values of the Sam Fox School.”

Listent to our conversation with Yvonne Farrell from Archinect Sessions

An unparalleled practice

Founded in 1978, Grafton Architects has completed dozens of educational, civic and residential commissions across Ireland, the United Kingdom and Europe. Recent projects range from the Town House building for Kingston University London and the Toulouse School of Economics to the Institut Mines-Télécom building for the Université Paris-Saclay.

“Grafton Architects is one of the most important and celebrated architectural practices of the 21st century, and one of the few internationally recognized practices led by female partners,” said Robert McCarter, the Ruth and Norman Moore Professor of Architecture and author of a 2018 monograph about the firm.

“They are also unparalleled among practices in having been recognized and honored in three different and parallel pursuits,” McCarter continues. “In addition to the 2020 Pritzker Prize, the very highest honor in international architecture, they were selected as curators of the 2018 Venice Biennale of Architecture, in which they challenged the global architectural profession to recognize that ‘the earth is your client;’ and they have demonstrated their dedication to the next generations through more than 40 years of continuous teaching.”

Heather Woofter, the Sam and Marilyn Fox Professor and director of the College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design, says that Farrell and McNamara are notable for the care and attention they bring to questions of site, context and sustainability.

“Grafton Architects has a distinctive design ethos and voice, but their projects are also generous neighbors,” Woofter says. “There’s a real attentiveness to urban context and an admirable sensitivity to nature, geography and climate. There’s also a sophisticated awareness of how the intermingling of public and private space can shape our understanding of belonging, access and even citizenship.”

Woofter adds: “For young architects and designers, Yvonne and Shelley are both thoughtful guides to critical contemporary issues and generous exemplars of how to build a professional practice.”

Spirit and accomplishment

With a background in painting, architecture, publishing and fashion, Barrett is known for genre-defying projects that aim to create community and dialogue around important contemporary issues.

“Susan is a visionary, a problem-solver and a fearless champion for the arts,” says Amy Hauft the Jane Reuter Hitzeman and Herbert F. Hitzeman, Jr. Professor of Art and director of the College of Art and Graduate School of Art. 

Hauft notes that, as a graduate of both the art and architecture programs, Barrett is ideally situated to address the Sam Fox School’s combined graduation ceremony — just as her company, Barrett Barrera Projects, serves as a nexus for experimental artists and designers.

“There’s a playfulness to Susan’s work and the projects she supports,” Hauft says, “but there’s also deep intentionality. She highlights the overlapping in-between of culture, the hard-to-categorize. Her exhibitions don’t feel like traditional gallery endeavors. They feel like a whole new ecosystem, at once culturally resonant and deeply personal — idiosyncratic in all the best ways.

“Susan keeps pushing the culture forward,” Hauft concludes, “and thank goodness, pushing us with her.”