Heerwagen’s abiding intellectual and professional interest is the identification of how buildings can be created to serve the occupants who will live and work within them. Thus, the principal goal of his work has been to characterize, first, the range and natures of activities which occupants wish or need to accomplish in buildings and, second, the types of services which should be present in buildings (i.e., to enable occupants to perform these activities). These services include, generally, means for ensuring the health and safety of building occupants, as well as means for supporting other human physical, physiological, and perceptual psychological requirements.
Throughout his teaching and research he has sought to acquire and communicate knowledge about how to design and construct buildings so that occupants have settings that satisfy these requirements. In his teaching, research, and writing he has concentrated on how the presences of heat, light, sound, and good air quality in buildings can be controlled so that occupants can be assured comfortable environments which operate efficiently. In his work he seeks to examine and describe how to create buildings whose internal environments are well-conditioned (i.e., to suit occupants’ needs and wishes). Basic examples of what he addresses include how to establish buildings that are thermally comfortable, well-daylighted, suitably quiet (while also enabling good communication by speech and music), and adequately ventilated. Necessarily, achievement of these performance attributes can rely, for instance, on various active control systems (e.g., mechanical and electrical systems) or on passive devices.
Kimo Griggs’ teaching is centered on the development of individual design strategies informed by a deep knowledge of materials and hands-on experience with processes of making, from hand-work to advanced digitally-enabled fabrication. Core teaching includes Design Studios as well as a required, workshop-based introductory Materials & Making course. Courses in Digital Craft and Materials are also offered, developed with the goal of advancing knowledge about, and incorporating the use of Digital-Design-and-Manufacturing in design practices.
Kimo’s current research is based on understanding how existing and proposed manufacturing technologies – particularly those which are digitally-enabled – can be absorbed into the well-established delivery systems that produce our buildings and infrastructure. These interests include looking at how alternative design practices can operate as well as how contracting and management of construction processes might change as digital technologies mature. Kimo is also keenly interested in specific processes and products with craft-based histories that have altered or widely affected how we build today, and in how craft and material concerns register culturally, particularly in our built environment.
Lecturer Jennifer Dee teaches beginning architectural design studios for graduate and undergraduate students. She also teaches several courses in architectural theory. A winner of the College of Architecture & Urban Planning Lionel “Spike” Pries Teaching Award, she serves as faculty advisor/editor of the Department’s architecture journal, Column 5, and has taught in several foreign study programs, including Scandinavia in 1998 and Rome in 1999 and 2001 in an interdisciplinary course with the Comparative History of Ideas Program. She received her Master of Architecture degree from the University of Washington.
Rob Corser, AIA is an architect, educator and designer who has worked and taught in the US, Italy and the UK. Educated at the University of Virginia and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, Corser has won numerous academic awards including Harvard’s Peter Rice Prize for the integration of engineering and architecture. Design Intelligence magazine named him one of the “30 Most Admired Educators” in design for 2013. He has taught at Syracuse University and the University of Kansas before joining the faculty at the University of Washington where he teaches architectural design, computer applications and digital fabrication courses. Corser is a licensed architect in the states of California and Washington, and his professional experience includes work in San Francisco and London.
Dedicated to design in the service of diverse communities, he has led collaborative design-build programs in Italy, and in post-Katrina New Orleans. In Washington, he has led award-winning programs working in collaboration with community groups in Twisp and Forks. His research focuses on collaborative design, and construction systems and strategies for deployable and sustainable structures. Some of this work continues areas of research born during his time as a member of ARUP’s Advanced Geometry Unit in London. Several of his furniture and building system designs have been featured in publications and exhibitions like the recent book: “The Shape of Green: Aesthetics, Ecology, and Design” and the exhibit “Design for the Other 90%” at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York.
Meredith L. Clausen, born in Los Angeles to a highly musical and literary middle-class family, with close ties to members of the avant-garde in L.A. in the postwar era; her father was on the faculty, then served as chair of music department at LACC for over 40 years. She obtained both M.A. (in Medieval) and Ph.D. (in Modern) in architectural history at UC Berkeley, taught briefly at Stanford, then at the University of Washington where she continues to teach in both the architecture and art history departments.
Her courses are all in architectural history: Architecture 20th c. and Beyond, American Architecture, Architecture Since 1945, Paris: Architecture & Urbanism; graduate seminars in architectural history.
Her scholarship and research interests range widely, from 19th c. Parisian department stores and pioneering shopping centers to Le Corbusian historiography, Michael Graves, and postmodernism. She has published on Craig Ellwood, Gehry, Koolhaas, and Tschumi, but is perhaps best known for her work on Pietro Belluschi, the Italian-born American architect who was a leading regional modernist in the Pacific Northwest in the ’30s and ’40s before becoming dean of architecture and urban planning at MIT in Boston. She subsequently published a book on the Pan Am Building, which Belluschi designed in collaboration with Walter Gropius, as well as a book on Belluschi churches. Her dissertation was on the Samaritaine department store in Paris of 1905-1910; it was published in 1986, and led to her being asked to contribute an essay on the building’s history in a recent book, La Samaritaine, Paris, 2015, as the well-known historic building on the Right Bank abutting the Pont Neuf just down from the Louvre undergoes major remodeling by the Pritzker prize winning office of SANAA Architects, Tokyo.
Current research interests include John Yeon, architect of the Pacific Northwest; Le Corbusier (then Jeanneret), and his first encounter with Paris in 1908; revisionist perspectives on American postmodernism; and the experiential aspect of architecture, especially as is playing out in the work of SANAA Architects.
Heather Burpee, Research Professor at the University of Washington Integrated Design Lab, is a nationally recognized scholar in high-performance buildings — buildings that reduce energy and promote healthy indoor environments. Her work bridges practice, research, and education with collaboration between practitioners, faculty, and students. Her research addresses both qualitative and quantitative aspects of buildings including tracking health impacts and synergies between environmental quality, natural systems, sensory environments, and energy efficiency. She has led several efforts to create protocols for performance-based tracking and auditing for hospitals, higher education, and commercial buildings. She regularly applies these roadmaps in practice, consulting with leading design teams nationally that are charged with implementing high-performance buildings.
As the Director of Education and Outreach at the UW IDL, she leads a tour program at the Bullitt Center “The World’s Greenest Building,” and develops curriculum and implementation of other educational opportunities related to high-performance buildings to multi-faceted audiences. Heather is a Pacific Northwest native and received her Master of Architecture degree from the University of Washington College of Built Environments and her undergraduate degree in biology from Whitman College.
Ann Marie Borys is an architect and scholar who studies practice and the built environment as material culture. Her research explores the relationship of construction, intention, and meaning. She examines the processes and influences that contribute to design and their relationship to the physical and experiential qualities of architecture. She published the first English-language book on the 16th century northern Italian architect Vincenzo Scamozzi in 2014, and is currently at work on a study of American Unitarian churches. She has practiced architecture full time in Boston, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati, and is licensed in several states; she has served on the Conservation Board of the City of Cincinnati and the Board of the Unity Temple Restoration Foundation. She serves as the Department of Architecture’s Undergraduate Program Coordinator as well as its Architect Licensing Adviser, encouraging the next generation of architects to engage in the rapidly changing profession and be among its leaders.
Steve Badanes is the Howard S. Wright Professor of Architecture, Director of the Neighborhood Design Build Studio at the University of Washington, and a partner in Jersey Devil Design Build, an architectural firm perpetuating the tradition of medieval craftsmen.
Badanes attended Wesleyan University for undergraduate studies and Princeton University, where he received his Masters of Architecture degree. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Graham Foundation of Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, as well as a Fellowship from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. He has conducted design/build workshops at the University of Technology in Helsinki, Finland, the University of Oregon, the University of Washington, the University of Miami, Ball State University, the University of California at San Diego, Florida A&M University, McGill University, Miami University in Ohio, North Dakota State University, University of Michigan, and the University of Wisconsin.
Alex T. Anderson, Ph.D., Associate Professor in Architecture and Director of the MS program in Architectural History and Theory, teaches in the areas of architectural history, theory, representation, and design. Professor Anderson is also an adjunct faculty member in Landscape Architecture, and a faculty member in the the Ph.D. in the Built Environment program.
Professor Anderson received a B.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Cornell University, and an M.Arch., M.S.Arch., and Ph.D. in Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. Before assuming his position at University of Washington in the fall of 1998, Professor Anderson taught architectural history, theory, and design at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, building structures and architectural theory at the Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science, and architectural drawing at the University of Pennsylvania.
Professor Anderson’s book, The Problem of the House: French Domestic Life and the Rise of Modern Architecture (University of Washington Press, 2006) examines domestic interiors and their role in shaping modern architecture as it developed in France during the early 20th century. Professor Anderson’s translation with commentary of Le Corbusier’s 1912 Étude sur le mouvement d’art décoratif en Allemagne (A Study of the Decorative Art Movement in Germany) expands this study of domestic architecture’s influence on modernism into Germany (with Mateo Kries, Vitra Design Museum, 2008). Professor Anderson’s other publications include “Table Settings: The Pleasures of Well-Situated Eating,” in Eating Architecture (MIT Press, 2004) and “On the Human Figure in Architectural Representation” in the Journal of Architectural Education, May 2002. He has presented papers on architectural history, theory, representation, and pedagogy at conferences in the United States and Europe and has contributed book reviews to journals in architecture and aesthetics.
Gundula Proksch is a scholar, licensed architect, and Professor in the Department of Architecture and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture. She is the Founding Director of the Circular City + Living Systems Lab (CCLS), an interdisciplinary research group investigating transformative strategies for sustainable urban futures. The CCLS leverages research and design methods to investigate the potential of synergetic systems to apply circular economy principles and integrate living systems in buildings and cities. These approaches produce and circulate resources within the food-water-energy nexus toward efficient, just, and sustainable urban built environments.
Professor Proksch is the Principal Investigator of the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded research project “Belmont Forum Collaborative Research: CITYFOOD.” As part of an international research consortium, with partners in Germany, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and Brazil, CITYFOOD investigates the potential of integration of aquaponic systems into cities on a broad scale, as an innovative solution to mitigate daunting environmental, economic, and social challenges. Her book Creating Urban Agricultural Systems: An Integrated Approach to Design (Routledge, 2017) is the first source book on how to approach urban agriculture from a systems perspective. It explores the ways urban farms provide integrated environmental systems, innovative operational strategies, and design approaches to create environmentally sound and economically viable urban agricultural operations.
Professor Proksch’s interdisciplinary sustainability research builds on her professional experience spanning fifteen years of practice in Europe and the United States. She practiced with renowned architects, David Chipperfield in London and Richard Meier, Stan Allen and Roger Duffy of SOM in New York. She holds a Master of Architecture from Cornell University and a master-level degree from the Technical University Braunschweig in Germany. She received a DAAD scholarship for independent studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich in Switzerland.