Architect-in-training Joseph Weishaar on Winning the WW1 Memorial Competition

What does it take to win a contest to memorialize the Great War? Join us as architect-in-training and design genius Joseph Weishaar talks about his journey through competitions and into national prominence.

Joe Weishaar is a 2013 graduate of the University of Arkansas Fay Jones School of Architecture. At 25, he is a relative newcomer to the architecture profession. He has 3-1/2 years experience working for firms in Fayetteville, Arkansas and Chicago, Illinois. Previously, Joe served as a Project Architect at Brininstool+Lynch Architecture Design. He now owns and operates his own small consulting business. JW Designs provides architectural rendering services and short-term contracting to help design professionals meet deadlines on a project by project basis. Concurrently he is completing the Architecture licensing exams with the intention of beginning his own practice within the next five years.  

To date, Joe has entered and been recognized in three national and international architecture competitions. Most recently, he was selected to design the National WW1 Memorial in Washington, DC. In 2011 he placed second in the Lyceum Fellowship Competition sponsored by the Lyceum Fellowship of Boston. In 2010 he was a part of the team that completed the HABS/HABER documentation of the Fay and Gus Jones Residence, which garnered the Peterson Prize for historic documentation. Weishaar has traveled extensively to participate in design studios taught in Mexico City at the Casa Barragan, and to Europe under the auspices of the Lyceum Traveling Fellowship. In 2012 he used this opportunity to take up residence in Rome in order to study the ancient housing typologies of Pompeii. 

Joe is an active oil pastel painter and has participated in multiple gallery exhibitions in Chicago.  He is an avid outdoorsman and Eagle Scout.