New faculty join the Sam Fox School for 2025-26

David Dowell will be a Ruth & Norman Moore Visiting Professor of Architecture this fall. Dowell, a Professor of Practice at Kansas State University’s College of Architecture, Planning, and Design, was a partner at the architecture firm El Dorado — a practice integrating architecture, urban design, curation, education, and fabrication — for more than 25 years. With a dedication to a Midwestern ethos, the firm’s work has been published in The New York Times, Vogue, Architectural Digest, and many more, and its projects are regularly featured on Architizer, ArchDaily, Dezeen, Slate, and Inhabit. Dowell founded the Design + Make Studio at Kansas State University and has also held teaching positions at the University of California, Berkeley; the Technical University in Dresden, Germany; the Kansas City Art Institute; and the University of Kansas. A past guest critic at WashU and an undergraduate architecture alumnus, Dowell delivered the school’s annual Historic Preservation Lecture in 2024.

Also serving as Ruth & Norman Moore Visiting Professors of Architecture are returning faculty Jonathan Louie and Nicole McIntosh. The pair taught courses in architecture last year, including an options studio that designed Swiss chocolate factories — a nod to their Zurich-based firm, Architecture Office. Their work has won awards from ACSA, the Architectural League, the Swiss Art Awards, and more. Their recent publication, “Swissness Applied: Learning from New Glarus,” won the Deutsches Architekturmuseum Architectural Book Award. They also led the school’s 2024 Laskey Charrette.

In landscape architecture, Alaa Suliman Hamid will join as a visiting assistant professor. She previously served as a visiting faculty fellow in design for spatial justice at the University of Oregon. She earned a Master of Design from Harvard University.

Aida Lizalde comes to the College of Art from a visiting faculty role at the University of Nevada Reno. Their multimedia work explores relationships between the physical and psychological, natural and artificial. They earned an MFA in Sculpture and Extended Media from Virigina Commonwealth University.

Laurel Schwulst will be the 2025-26 Louis D. Beaumont Designer-in-Residence. A designer, artist, writer, educator, and technologist, Schwulst is recognized for her experiential and educational projects, writing, creative leadership, and websites. She has taught design courses and workshops at Yale University and Princeton University and presented at institutions like Google, Wikipedia, the Rhode Island School of Design, and BBC Radio 4.

Several current faculty members have taken on leadership roles or been promoted. Associate Professor Chandler Ahrens will serve as the chair of graduate architecture and Professor D.B. Dowd will serve as the chair of undergraduate design. Derek Hoeferlin, chair of landscape architecture, was named the Raymond E. Maritz Professor of Architecture. In addition, Matthew Allen, Josh Azzarella, Carl Karlen, Karel Klein, Melisa Betts Sanders, and Aaron Schump have all been promoted to senior lecturer.