January 3, 2023

College of Built Environments’ Research Restart Fund Awards Four Grants in Second Cycle

The College of Built Environments launched a funding opportunity for those whose research has been affected by the ongoing pandemic. The Research Restart Fund, with awards up to $5,000, has awarded 4 grants in the second of its two cycles.

A grant was awarded to Manish Chalana, faculty member with Urban Design and Planning to help support his efforts to carry out archival research and fieldwork in India for his new book exploring the history and memory of non-dominant groups as shaped by historic preservation practice. The goal of this work is to understand how sites associated with underrepresented communities appear in the historical record and what types of histories and memories have been lost and how some of those could be recovered.

Additionally, a grant was awarded to Architecture faculty member Elizabeth Golden to support her efforts to explore how earth-based construction might be leveraged for sustainable urban development in the Phoenix metropolitan region. The project will bring together students and faculty from the architecture programs at the University of Washington and Arizona State University, the City of Scottsdale’s Human Services Department, and community members from the Iglesia Cristiana El Buen Pastor Church to design a shelter for people seeking asylum in the United States.

A third grant was awarded to Jeff Hou, faculty member with Landscape Architecture to explore how the policies and practices of neoliberal capitalism in East Asia are being politically and materially contested by citizens through social actions and creative space-making. Through field research with local organizers and stakeholders at the locations of their engagement in creative space-making and acts of resistance in East Asia, this project will explore the significance of those actions to stage socio-political movements, to create new relationships with peripheral communities in both local and urban areas, and to experiment with new forms of livelihood and alternative economies.

A fourth grant was awarded to Architecture faculty member Kathryn Rogers Merlino to research  how historic preservation and building reuse can promote equity, restorative and distributive justice in Seattle neighborhoods. Through field research, mapping and collaboration with community stakeholders, the project will seek to understand current historic preservation policy and the effect on urban sustainability, community development, and neighborhood culture.  This project seeks to challenge current practices and conceptions of what traditionally defines historic preservation, adaptive reuse and cultural sustainability. This project will build on her 2018 book, “Building Reuse: Sustainability, Preservation and the Value of Design.”