Throughout history, we’ve seen shifts in how people communicate regarding design. The question of how communication happens between architect and builder is as fundamental today as it was hundreds of years ago. While the dynamics of these communication processes are nuanced, our understanding of them has been colored by a narrative of the past. One CBE faculty member is challenging the standard narrative about how buildings get made, from design to construction through design communication and knowledge exchange. Today, we…
Category: Spotlight
Renée Cheng: Change Agency, Value Change
Collisions are violent. The greater the mass or velocity of objects, the greater the energy released. The crises of the pandemic, economic crash, and social justice outcries are massive and still accelerating. In the wake of their collision, they will reveal new questions for our profession—and newfound energy to address them. Previously, architects pondering whether a new building was worthy of adding to our canon would ask “What does it look like?” and maybe “How well does it function?”…
CBE Spotlight: Rachel Berney
Rachel Berney is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban Design and Planning, Adjunct Assistant Professor in Landscape Architecture, an Urban@UW Fellow, and author of Learning from Bogotá: Pedagogical Urbanism and the Reshaping of Public Space. Her primary interests include community sustainable design, public space, and international development in the Americas, as well as urban design and planning history and theory with an emphasis on social and cultural factors. Urban@UW sat down with her in 2019 to discuss her work and research…
CBE Spotlight: Heather Burpee
Heather Burpee is a Research Assistant Professor in University of Washington’s Department of Architecture and a director of the Integrated Design Lab in the Center for Integrated Design, located in the Bullitt Center. We sat down with her to discuss her work and research on high-performance buildings. What are your current research interests at the University of Washington? I am a research associate professor in the Department of Architecture, and I work in a small group called the Integrated Design Lab. We focus on ideas around high-performance buildings. What we…