As a resident of St. Louis, it goes without saying that if you drive downtown, you will see various angles of the Arch along the way. It stands as a tribute to the Louisiana Purchase among other historical events, and is an easily recognizable icon of Missouri at the very least. As a student tour guide at Washington University, I often point out the nearby Arch, which you can see on campus if you’re lucky (and it’s winter). It was all I knew about St. Louis for a long while – that the city was home to the “Gateway to the West.”
In late January, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum opened a new exhibit on Eero Saarinen, the architect who designed the Arch, and invited the public to join in a free symposium held at Washington University’s Steinberg Auditorium. The Symposium was hosted by Washington University’s Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts and sponsored by ASSA ABLOY. I dropped by for one of the last portions of the day-long discussions, arriving in time to hear Patricia Heyda, a visiting assistant professor of architecture at Washington University, speak about the “Riverfront Charrette.” The “Charrette” took place last November, with students gathering from Midwestern schools to re-design the Riverfront property (theoretically) here in St. Louis.