College of Built Environments at the University of Washington.
Letter from the Dean
Winter 2010
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
The Built Environments agenda calls for sustained intensification of interdisciplinary enterprise in response to complex grand challenge problems, in particular climate change, energy, and urbanization. Equally important is the way we continue to adapt and implement emerging digital technology in our academic and professional mission. Last year’s seismic economic shift and its continuing consequences further amplify the importance of rapid orientation to changing conditions. I’m pleased to offer this brief report highlighting some of the activities and accomplishments of our diverse faculty and students as we engage the challenges of a new decade.
Associate Professor Dan Abramson is studying coastal urban neighborhoods and villages in Fujian Province, China, at the point of origin for the large southeast diaspora. His work explores the impacts of transnational investment on characteristic cultural landscapes, architecture, local practices, and development policy. Working in collaboration with Associate Professor Jeff Hou, Abramson led students from architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design and planning to Taoping, to visit ethnic minority mountain villages recovering from the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan Province. Teams studied principles and approaches to heritage preservation, bioremediation, (agri)cultural tourism, and other physical and institutional programs that might help promote sustainable and resilient development.
Professor and Urban Ecology Research Lab director Marina Alberti is leading multiple projects that study and model interactions between socioeconomic forces and terrestrial ecosystems in urbanizing environments. Supported by grants from the Bullitt Foundation, UERL has been measuring carbon stocks on an urban-to-rural gradient in an effort to more deeply understand the mechanistic causes of change in the urban carbon cycle. Continuing UERL research includes a new project that links scenario planning and predictive modeling that will help identify and implement adaptive strategies to protect long-term ecosystem services in the rapidly evolving Snohomish River Basin, with particular focus on biodiversity, water, and carbon (funded by the Bullitt Foundation); a study of the impact of urbanization on shellfish growing areas in the coastal areas of Puget Sound (funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration); and a study of the effectiveness of King County’s Critical Areas Ordinance on stream quality and ecological function (funded by the Environmental Protection Agency).
Under the supervision of director Mark Baratta, the CBE computing services team has successfully adapted remote workflow practices and ideas from the business world, providing CBE students with remote access to complex and otherwise unaffordable discipline-specific applications that will help them develop anytime/anywhere models of collaboration increasingly important to success in our disciplines.
Assistant Professor Rob Corser investigates parametric design and digital fabrication strategies for scrap wood materials, including various approaches that digitally optimize structural shapes and produce parametrically flexible formwork for thin-shell wood structures. Related projects include work for the central Washington town of Twisp, where his fall design/build studio developed production concepts for a pre-fabricated “greener house” that offers its owners greater material and thermal efficiencies and greater year-round programming flexibility. He is editing a new anthology entitled Fabricating Architecture: Selected Readings in Digital Design and Manufacturing, a collection of critical essays on the topic of digital design and fabrication, forthcoming from Princeton Architectural Press, spring 2010.
Following last fall’s opening of the Pacific Northwest Center for Construction Research and Education at Sand Point, Assistant Professor Carrie Dossick and Professor Eddy Rojas have successfully launched the Department of Construction Management’s new state-of-the-art collaboration suites and its virtual construction lab, which features a multi-projector, 40-foot-wide display screen system. Using interactive digital tools to visualize and modify simulated construction processes in an immersive environment, CM students can now model processes and techniques that promise to increase efficiency, reduce construction errors, and save time.
Led by Assistant Professors Kimo Griggs and Rob Corser, the college has extended its strong tradition of craft into the digital realm with the integration into the curriculum of several laser cutters, a 3D printer, a CNC router and CNC plasma cutter, 3D digitizers, and CNC milling machines. While much of this equipment is capable of production work, its greatest value for our students is the opportunity to explore rapid prototyping—the process of going quickly from concept to complex physical model—reducing the time, effort, and resources needed to explore ideas.
Supported by grants from the UW Office of Facilities Services and Seattle City Light’s Office of Conservation—working in collaboration with College of Engineering professor Ashley Emery—Associate Professor Dean Heerwagen continues his research on air flow and air quality assessment. Papers documenting his work on Architecture Hall include “Evaluations of the Natural Ventilation Function in a University Building Using CO2 and Air Exchange Rate Measurements,” co-authored with Emery and others, presented at the American Solar Energy Society Annual Meeting in June 2009.
Assistant Professor Mehlika Inanici’s research on image based daylighting solutions demonstrates the use of High Dynamic Range fisheye images of the sky dome in lighting simulations. Early results show that image-based sky models can provide a more accurate and efficient method for defining sky luminance distributions and the impact of surrounding structures and vegetation, as compared to generic standard models and explicit modeling of urban fabric and forestry. Under Inanici’s supervision, Ph.D. BE student Kevin van den Wymelenberg examined the preferences of office workers for different luminance distribution patterns in office spaces, exploring ways to maximize energy savings in sensor-regulated systems that blend natural and electric lighting. Their paper, “A Study of Luminance Distribution Patterns and Occupant Preferences in Daylit Offices,” was one of the six finalists for the Best Paper award at the Passive and Low Energy Architecture (PLEA) 2009 Conference in Quebec City, Canada.
“Tracery,” an ongoing project under development by Associate Professor and Design Machine Group director Brian Johnson, aims to develop web-based tools and deployment patterns that make graphical input, “quotation,” and interaction as richly supported as text input is now in web applications. Sample deployment patterns have been developed illustrating graphical bulletin boards, collaborative design exploration, student submission, and faculty feedback of visual exercises (sketching, photography, remote design review, etc.). Another DMG project, “Touchy,” explores touch-based opportunities in general and multi-user, multi-touch interaction paradigms and applications, in particular within the space of building design and collaboration activities. TiMBA (Tangible Interface to Model Building and Analysis) describes research conducted by DMG graduate student Chih-Pin Hsiao as part of his Master of Science thesis in Design Computing. Chih-Pin Hsiao’s work explores the simultaneous production of digital and physical models, creating opportunities to map analyses derived from the digital model onto its physical counterpart throughout the design process.
Associate Professor and Green Futures Lab director Nancy Rottle recently returned from a Fulbright scholarship supporting five months of study in New Zealand to investigate and document best practices in urban ecological infrastructure, and to assess the extent to which these systems are seen as mitigating or assisting with adaptation to climate change. With support from the Scan Design Foundation, Rottle operates ongoing studio exchange programs in Denmark, exploring tested urban solutions that incorporate low-impact development strategies for urban water systems, community space, habitat restoration, low-carbon energy and pedestrian and bicycle mobility.
Professor and Urban Form Lab director Anne Vernez-Moudon continues work on several research grants, including projects that study the effect of light rail transit on physical activity; better estimate the causal influence of the change in transportation systems and built environment on walking and physical activity; assess strategies to increase the number of children walking to school; examine the relationship between factors in the built environment, diet quality, and health outcomes; validate continuous spatio-temporal measures of energy expenditure and intake using a micro device called the Multisensor Board (MSB); assess the impact of new urbanist community design on physical activity of public housing residents; and collect and map food sources for King County, Washington.
Working in collaboration with Professor Anne Vernez-Moudon, Assistant Professor Jan Whittington formed a team across five UW disciplines and three UW laboratories to investigate the causal factors in autism spectrum disorders. She earned a competitive invitation from the Department of Defense to submit a proposal for a Clinical Trial, which provides $1.1 million to examine genetic susceptibility and body burden of lead and mercury in 100 autistic and 200 non-autistic children. Whittington’s team will further investigate possible environmental sources of these neurotoxins, including paints; composite and aged materials in water conveyance systems; pollution from existing and historic smelters and power plants; occupational exposures; dental amalgams from parents; and inadvertent exposure from soil sedimentation and fish.
Associate Professor Daniel Winterbottom is developing a project to lead students in the design and construction of therapeutic gardens for a facility serving 200 disabled children in Zagreb, Croatia. Other ongoing projects include work with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center to create a master plan for a cancer clinic in Kampala, Uganda; work with students in partnership with the Veterans Affairs medical center in Seattle to create a therapeutic garden; and designing a garden for Eastside Adults Developmental Services that serves disabled adults in Bellevue. Winterbottom recently completed a chapter entitled “Developing a Safe, Nurturing and Therapeutic Environment for the Children of the Garbage Pickers and Disabled Children in Bosnia and Herzegovina” for the forthcoming book Greening in the Red Zone.
Assistant Professor Ken Yocom and Assistant Professor Ben Spencer are collaborating on a long-term comparative study of green roof performance in the Puget Lowlands, measuring hydrologic performance for detaining storm water and native plant survivability and proliferation. Working with Professor Marina Alberti, Yocom received a grant from the United Nations Habitat Program and the International Urban Training Center, Republic of Korea, to produce a training manual for mid-level government agency employees in developing nations in the Asian-Pacific region, designed to implement mitigation protocols and develop strategies for climate change adaptation in low-lying, coastal urban centers.
Likewise CBE faculty members have enriched the built environments discourse with three recent and notable books:
Jeffrey Hou and Julie M. Johnson, associate professors, Department of Landscape Architecture, with landscape architect Laura J. Lawson: Greening Cities, Growing Communities: Learning from Seattle's Urban Community Gardens (University of Washington Press, 2009).
Ken Tadashi Oshima, associate professor, Department of Architecture: International Architecture in Interwar Japan: Constructing Kokusai Kenchiku (University of Washington Press, 2010).
Thaisa Way, assistant professor, Department of Landscape Architecture: Unbounded Practice: Women and Landscape Architecture in the Early Twentieth Century (University of Virginia Press, 2009).
Please join me in congratulating Professors Hou, Johnson, Oshima, and Way, and all the aforementioned colleagues on their continuing productivity and achievement.
I’ll return to this column in the spring with more news, reports, and updates on exemplary contributions by our faculty and students. Meanwhile, if you’re in our neighborhood or near Gould Hall, please drop by for a coffee and conversation. I’d greatly welcome your advice and perspective on our increasingly challenging future.
Daniel S. Friedman, Ph.D., FAIA
Dean