Off-campus studios that currently house the work of several architecture graduate students may not be needed as soon as spring 2016.

Preliminary plans are in place to add an 80,000-square-foot building to the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts in place of the current parking spaces near the school. The building, to be named Weil Hall in honor of John and Anabeth Weil’s $12.5 million donation, will house the graduate program of art and architecture as well as a number of interdisciplinary programs for undergraduate students.

However, because of the funding currently available for the building, a formal timeline for its construction has not yet been set.

According to Carmon Colangelo, dean of the Sam Fox School, the University has established an estimated budget of around $38 million for Weil Hall, but only $18 million has been collected so far. The goal is to get half of the funding before making any formal decisions, and the University hopes to reach this halfway mark during the design and development process for the building.

Colangelo said Weil Hall is intended to move the graduate architecture students currently off campus back to the same area as other Sam Fox students.

“The idea is to get our graduate students back to main campus and connect them to the rest of the programs,” Colangelo said. “This will help consolidate and improve our facilities to make our school more contemporary. But there hasn’t been anything approved, and nothing formal has been advanced as of yet.”

The University plans on selecting architects for the building as early as spring 2015. Once this step happens, proposed designs of Weil Hall will be presented to students in order to get them involved in the decision-making process.

“We want this process to be visible and transparent to the students,” Colangelo said. “The presentations will help give them a good idea of our design plans for the building.”

The addition of Weil Hall is part of the University’s plans to redesign the east side of the Danforth Campus, which is currently dominated with parking spaces. Aside from expanding the art school, the redesign will expand the School of Engineering & Applied Science with two new buildings—one to be named Jubel Hall—add an underground parking lot and create a more pedestrian-accessible area.

The board of trustees has selected Michael Vergason Landscape Architects as the firm overseeing the whole process. According to Jill Friedman, vice chancellor of public affairs, enhancing the east part of campus has been a conversation for several years. She hopes that plans of this redesign will be clearer by next semester.

“We are in a continual conversation about ways to enhance the campus,” Friedman said. “We’ve been talking about ways to better utilize [the front entrance] and how to incorporate new architecture. But right now, this is something that hasn’t been completely funded. Hopefully we’ll get a better sense as to whether this will go forward this spring.”

Local blog nextSTL released an article on the construction on Friday, including sketches of the eastern side of campus redesigned. But according to Friedman, the University’s board of trustees has not decided on or finalized the sketches and information presented in the article.

“Much of what was shared in that piece was conceptual,” Friedman said. “They had some outdated renderings in their piece. They didn’t call for our reflection or thoughts on this.”