Steinberg Hall Café at Washington University

Set within Steinberg Hall - designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect Fumihiko Maki - this pavilion project reconsiders how everyday infrastructure can elevate the experience of a place.

Commissioned by the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, the intervention introduces a destination café within the school’s primary gathering space. The program was simple: consolidate vending, coffee, and water into a single point of access for a building that operates continuously, supporting students working around the clock. The challenge was to transform these utilitarian functions into an integrated architectural presence - intentional, composed, and appropriate to its setting.

The design conceals the necessary while amplifying the communal. Equipment is embedded within a continuous architectural volume, reducing visual noise and allowing the space to read as a singular element within the gallery. What might otherwise be a collection of machines becomes a quiet backdrop to the life unfolding around it.

At its perimeter, the café opens into seating that supports both individual pause and collective gathering. These moments extend the function of the gallery, offering space for informal critique, conversation, and study. The intervention remains in dialogue with adjacent exhibitions and end-of-year reviews hosted in the adjacent gallery space. 

The canopy of the cafe structure responds to the clarity and restraint of Maki’s original architecture and intentionally remains open to above, highlighting and framing the sculptural folded ceiling.

Careful material selections offer a softer counterpoint to the concrete and terrazzo of the existing building. Natural wood, brass accents, curved plywood, and felt are bring warmth and tactility to the space. These materials temper the hardness of the surrounding architecture, creating a more human-scaled environment within a larger, volume.

More than a café, the project establishes a new center of gravity within Steinberg Hall: a place where daily rituals - coffee, water, a brief pause -become part of the broader culture of making, discussion, and exchange that defines the school.

LOCATION
St. Louis, MO

YEAR
2024

ROLE
Architecture
Interior Design