Sam Fox School retiring faculty leave legacies of excellence in research, teaching

Associate Professor Zeuler R. Lima has honed a unique humanistic and cross-disciplinary perspective to teaching and research, building up the school’s broad capabilities in architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, and art. He has taught in both graduate and undergraduate programs since 1999, including design studios and history-theory courses, architecture study abroad programs, and the collaborative course Urban Books.

His education includes a doctorate in urban history and theory and a postdoctorate in comparative literature. Lima has taught and conducted research in several prestigious universities around the world, including New York, Michigan, Brazil, Italy, Japan, and France. Earlier in his career, he shared partnership as a principal architect and landscape architect in a design firm in São Paulo, which received several awards in design competitions in Brazil.

As a designer, curator, educator, artist, scholar, writer, musician, and polyglot, Lima’s prolific creative activities include design projects, art exhibitions, and scholarship on twentieth-century design and art cultures. He is the world expert on architect Lina Bo Bardi and has published several books on her life in multiple languages, leading to lectures and exhibition curatorship and design worldwide, along with a biopic film project currently under development in Brazil.

He has received numerous awards, including the Sam Fox School’s Oustanding Teaching Award and WashU Student Union’s Faculty of the Year. His wide passion for intellectual and humanistic endeavors led him to the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute, where he has pursued education as an academic candidate since 2022.

Professor Adrian Luchini has been a leader in graduate architecture programs at WashU since he arrived in 1985. Known for his work supervising final degree projects, he served as the Raymond E. Maritz Professor of Architecture from 2002-2023, and directed graduate architecture programs and international programs for graduate students. Luchini’s 40-year career at the university is marked by his impact on the architecture program’s focus on design pedagogy — making explicit the relationships between theory and practice — along with running successful international programs in South America.

An internationally recognized architect who has practiced in Argentina and the U.S., his work has been published in top industry journals in the U.S. and abroad, shown globally, won numerous awards from the American Institute of Architects, and collected in a monograph as part of the Contemporary World Architects series. In addition to his position at WashU, Luchini was a senior designer at HOK; design director of Jacobs Facilities; principal at Schwete Luchini Maritz Architects. He launched his firm, Luchini AD, in 2001. His built projects include a variety of commercial, residential, and educational work in the U.S., Argentina, Canada, China, and Saudi Arabia.

Luchini is also a painter whose works have been shown throughout the U.S. and Latin America.

Art-activist and educator Denise Ward-Brown began teaching in the College and Graduate School of Art in 1991. In recent years, she’s taught in both the MFA in Visual Arts and undergraduate studio art curriculums. A documentary filmmaker, she directs and produces films that reframe moments in history from an African American point of view, ensuring that the narrative in the American historical record and public memory is infused with multiple voices and perspectives.  She’s particularly known for her effect on students. Alum Yvonne Osei, MFA ’16, said that Ward-Brown nurtured in her the principle that her voice is valid and authentic.

Ward-Brown’s film projects include “Josephine’s World,” a jazz dance tribute to the legendary 1920s dancer Josephine Baker; “Never Been a Time,” a reframing of the events of the 1917 East St. Louis massacre; “Jim Crow to Barack Obama,” which includes intergenerational conversations about the era of segregation between African American youth and elders over 75; and “Home Going,” which honors the rich traditions of the African American church. In the wake of the killing death of Michael Brown in Ferguson and the subsequent uprising in St. Louis, she designed two WashU courses to provide students the opportunity to explore nonprofit civic organizations and historiography through video.

Ward-Brown has won numerous grants and awards, ranging from a Sam Fox School Creative Activity Research Grant, to artist support grants from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities and St. Louis’ Regional Arts Commission, to a Fulbright Scholar Award. Her work has been shown in exhibitions throughout the region, as well as in New York; Washington, D.C.; Tanzania; Ghana; and more.