2018 Laskey Charrette, Sam Fox School, Washington University in St Louis

The Laskey Charrette honors Professor Emeritus Leslie J. Laskey and his singular approach to design education during his 35-year tenure at Washington University. For this intensive, weekend-long workshop, sophomore architecture students work in teams to brainstorm ideas for a given design challenge. Their final designs are exhibited and reviewed, with a jury of faculty awarding prizes. The charrette is presented annually by Studio Lin collaboration with the College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design.

Artist, writer, and lecturer Ian Monroe, BFA95, served as the moderator for the 2018 Laskey Charrette, issuing the design challenge, "The World Needs a New Network." Our commercial, digital, political, and transport networks have had major successes, but all are also facing huge problems. As the architects of tomorrow, you will be forming the structures and therefore infrastructures of the future. Can you invent a new network? Students were asked to do three things: 1) Propose a new global network; 2) Make one (or more) objects that are evidence of it already existing; 3) Create a one-page conspiracy website that reveals further evidence of this network.

First prize (which included $1,500), went to the team of John Adrian Anak Christopher, Sebastian Bernal, and Wentao Guo. Honorable mentions were awarded to the team of Dylan Chan, Qian Huang, Philipp Kentner, and Thomas Spalter; and to the team of Yutong Ma, Graham McAllister, and Taili Zhuang.