April 7, 2023

College of Built Environments Announces 2023 Inspire Fund Awards

In 2021, the College of Built Environments launched the CBE Inspire Fund to “inspire” CBE research activities that are often underfunded, but for which a relatively small amount of support can be transformative. The Inspire Fund aims to support research where arts and humanities disciplines are centered, and community partners are engaged in substantive ways. Inspire Fund is also meant to support ‘seed’ projects, where a small investment in early research efforts may serve as a powerful lever for future research–and future funding. Learn more about Inspire Fund recipients from 2021 and 2022.

Four projects were selected for 2023 CBE Inspire Fund awards.

Benjamin F. McAdoo J. Research Collective

Led by PI Tyler Sprague of Architecture, this project is the next phase of the “Benjamin F. McAdoo J. Research Collective“. This project seeks to continue the research initiated on Benjamin F. McAdoo Jr. (1920-1981) – the first Black architect registered in Washington State (and CBE alumni). With hopes to have impact in both public and academic realms, this phase of the project would have two primary goals: 1) Organize and produce an exhibit of McAdoo’s work in the Gould Gallery space, and 2) Write and print an exhibit catalogue/ publication on McAdoo as a significant modernist of the region.

Preliminary Case Study: Readiness of Our Regional Electrical Vehicle Infrastructure Under the Increasingly Volatile Climate

Lingzi Wu of Construction Management received funds for the project titled “Preliminary Case Study: Readiness of Our Regional Electrical Vehicle Infrastructure Under the Increasingly Volatile Climate”. As indicated in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the ambitious goal of developing a nationwide network of 500,000 EV chargers by 2030 with up to $7.5 billion in funding, calls for a profound understanding and comprehensive analysis of the potential risks of the national EVI under increasingly volatile climate conditions, especially flooding as it accounts for two-thirds of the cost from all natural disasters, and impacts 99% of U.S. counties. The goals of this project are to: 1) model the interdependencies between the emerging infrastructure—EVI and traditional critical infrastructure systems, and 2) understand the spatial and temporal behaviors (e.g., damage types, probability of each damage type) of EVI under severe weather conditions and their impacts to our communities.

Participatory Design as a Tool for Green Space Development in Amazonian Cities, Iquitos, Peru

Co-PIs Coco Alarcon, Ken Yocom, and Rebecca Bachman, all of Landscape Architecture, were awarded funds for a project titled “Participatory design as a tool for green space development in Amazonian cities, Iquitos, Peru.” Like other cities in the Amazon rainforest, Iquitos, a city with half a million inhabitants, is a desert in the middle of the Peruvian jungle with extremely low green space per capita. The lack of green infrastructure in Amazonian cities undermines resilience to climate change and disproportionately affects systematically marginalized people locally and globally. Following a 2022 pilot program, the next phase of the project is to assess the efficacy of the new strategy on the recruitment of Healthy Amazonian Green Cities’ (HAGC) One Health program participants, which includes participatory design process workshops, lectures, and demonstrations.

Affordable Housing Book Project

Led by co-PIs Gregg Colburn and Rebecca Walter of the Runstad Department of Real Estate, the purpose of the book is to provide readers with a thorough review of the multiple domains and forces that interact to constitute the field of affordable housing. The book will provide undergraduate and graduate students, and the professional community, with a comprehensive summary of affordable housing and the systems, policies, and forces that interact to determine the affordability of housing in the U.S.