Dan Abramson approaches the discipline of planning through urban design, historic preservation and planning history, methods of socio-spatial analysis and public participation, and qualitative study of the politics and cultures of development decision-making. His experience in community-engaged planning, research, and design – mostly with immigrant, low-income, indigenous, or otherwise marginalized communities – ranges from Boston to the American and Canadian Pacific Northwest, and from Poland to China and Japan.
Currently Abramson focuses on community resilience and adaptive planning in disaster recovery and hazard mitigation, as well as periurban and rural responses to rapid urbanization. Students at all levels of undergraduate and graduate education join his work, through course projects, community-engaged studios as well as thesis and dissertation research. Projects in Asia have included six China Village Studios with academic partners from Chengdu and Taiwan; a six-month Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship in recovery planning after the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake in Sichuan; and a collaboration with Kobe University to use participatory GIS for urban neighborhood earthquake recovery. Projects in Washington integrate studios with FEMA- and NSF-funded research on new protocols for state agencies and communities to envision earthquake- and tsunami-resilient development.
Beside his appointment in Urban Design & Planning at UW, he is adjunct in the Departments of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, and a member of the China Studies and Canadian Studies faculty. Before teaching at UW, he held a Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Human Settlements, where he initiated the first Ford Foundation-funded urban community-based planning project in China, in Quanzhou, Fujian. His degrees include a B.A. in History from Harvard University; dual masters in Architecture and City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and a doctorate in Urban Planning from Tsinghua University in Beijing. (He was the first American to earn a degree in urban planning from a Chinese university, and possibly the first American to earn any mainland Chinese graduate-level degree.) In 2005-2009, he served as Secretary on the founding Board of the International Association for China Planning (IACP) and remains an active member. He have also served on the editorial board of the Journal of the American Planning Association and am currently an editorial board member for Planning Perspectives.
While focusing on public urban projects in professional practice and teaching, Julie’s work explores landscape architecture as a practice that incorporates innovative landscape and ecological strategies as a framework and model for designing dynamic landscapes which evolve over time. At the base of this approach are the fundamentals of design – the physical and spatial qualities created. The challenge is to create places that are articulate, site specific and well-crafted while remaining adaptive and open.
Currently as a Lecturer in the Dept of Landscape Architecture at the University of Washington, Julie’s teaching investigates connections between reading and seeing landscapes and design methodology. As a practicing landscape architect, Julie heads a small consultancy firm and has previous professional experience developing award-winning and visionary large-scale public sites and urban planning projects as well as intimate neighborhood parks. As Design Director for the People’s Waterfront Coalition, an organization she helped to co-found, she developed an award-winning proposal for re-envisioning Seattle’s downtown waterfront without the Alaskan Way Viaduct as a dynamic water’s edge with parks, beaches, recreation paths, event space and an urban street integrated into a functional shore ecology, and a transportation solution that supports a sustainable and livable future city.
In addition to the University of Washington, Julie has taught landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. She holds a MLA from the University of Pennsylvania, BS in Architecture from the University of Virginia and was a Fellow with CHORA Institute of Architecture and Urbanism in London. Additionally, Julie currently sits on the Seattle Design Commission and Seattle’s Public Art Advisory Council.
Ken Yocom is Department Chair and Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture. He also has an adjunct appointment in the Department of Urban Design and Planning, serves on the steering committee of the PhD in the Built Environments Program, and is core faculty for the Interdisciplinary PhD Program in Urban Design and Planning within the College of Built Environments. He primarily teaches seminar and studio courses in theory, ecology, and urban design.
Trained as an ecologist and landscape architect with professional experience in the environmental consulting and construction industries, he is a graduate of our MLA program (2002). Ken also earned his PhD from the Program in the Built Environments (2007), where he researched nature and society relations through the contemporary context of urban ecological restoration practices.
Ken’s current research, teaching, and practice explore the convergence of urban infrastructure and ecological systems through adaptive design approaches that serve to demystify emerging strategies and technologies for sustainable and resilient development. More specifically, he investigates how water –in all its forms- shapes the past to future functions and patterns of our built environments. He has written extensively on the themes developed from his work including two books, Ecological Design (with Nancy Rottle, Bloomsbury, 2012) and NOW Urbanism: The Future City is Here (with Jeff Hou, Ben Spencer, and Thaisa Way (editors), Routledge, 2014). He has also written for professional practice and scholarly publications on issues of global biodiversity, urban environmental governance, ecological design, and contemporary nature and society relations in the urban context.
In his teaching, Ken emphasizes the development of a holistic and integrated approach that embraces the complexity of our built environments, yet discreetly explores the intersections and overlaps that frame our understanding and appreciation of particular places. He has a strong belief that collaboratively, the allied design professions can act as catalysts in recognizing, utilizing, and transforming the inherent potential of our built environments into places that are socially equitable, environmentally just, and economically sustainable.
Daniel Winterbottom, RLA, FASLA, a landscape architect with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Tufts University and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Washington. His firm, Winterbottom Design Inc., focuses their practice on healing/restorative gardens. His research interests include the landscape as a cultural expression, ecological urban design and the role of restorative/healing landscapes in the built environment. He has been published widely in Northwest Public Health, Places, the New York Times, Seattle Times, Seattle P.I., Landscape Architecture Magazine. He has authored “Wood in the Landscape” and has contributed to several books on sustainable design, community gardens, therapeutic landscapes and community service learning.
He has developed several programs including the participatory design design/build program in 1995 where with his students he works with communities to design and build projects that address the social and ecological concerns of the community. He has completed projects in Seattle, New York City, Bedford Hills New York, Mexico, Guatemala, Bosnia/Herzegovina and Croatia. In 2006 he developed the Healing Garden Certificate program at the University of Washington.
Professor Nancy Rottle brings over two decades of landscape architecture professional experience to her role at the UW, where she has been teaching since 2001. Her work centers upon design as a means to create places that are ecologically healthy, culturally meaningful, and educationally and experientially resonant. Her recent scholarship, including the co-authored book Ecological Design, has focused on the application of theory and new practices to regenerate the health of urban and urbanizing environments.
Professor Rottle currently directs the UW’s Green Futures Research and Design Lab, which addresses questions and projects related to urban green infrastructure, topics on which Nancy publishes and lectures (www.greenfutures.washington.edu). Collaborative projects and publications include the use of waterfronts to treat and re-use stormwater; urban green infrastructure for city streets and college campuses; public space planning and design; pedestrian and active transport environments; green roofs and walls; metrics to evaluate sustainable design projects; public engagement to envision positive futures; and the role of green infrastructure in mitigating and adapting to climate change. She co-edited the 2007 special journal edition of Places on Climate Change and Place, and researched this topic in New Zealand supported by a Senior Scholar Fulbright Fellowship.
Professor Rottle teaches design studio, theory and technical courses and advises on theses that examine the potential of design to positively affect our urban ecological futures, taking a special focus on public space design, water in the landscape and design for environmental literacy. Professor Rottle regularly teaches courses that integrate water into the planning and design process, from watershed to site scales, integrating knowledge of urban water-based projects from around the world. With support from the ScanlDesign Foundation, she leads urban design study tours to Denmark and Sweden, and collaborates with Gehl Architects of Copenhagen to teach interdisciplinary studios at the UW that merge considerations for ecological, economic, social and physical health. As the UW’s ScanlDesign Endowed Chair in Built Environments she also facilitates internships and exchanges between the UW and Denmark.
A registered landscape architect, Nancy’s professional and academic planning and design projects have won local and national awards, including the acclaimed Cedar River Watershed Education Center, and Open Space Seattle 2100, a multidisciplinary planning process to develop a 100-year vision for Seattle’s green infrastructure. Her studios, thesis students and work of the Green Futures Lab have also won prestigious college, local, national and international awards. Passionate about sharing ecological design approaches and models, Nancy has lectured in the US, New Zealand, China, Canada, Russia and Europe.
Lynne Manzo, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture. She teaches in both the BLA and MLA programs. Dr. Manzo is also an Affiliate Faculty member in the PhD Program in the Built Environment and the Interdisciplinary PhD Program in Urban Design and Planning, and an Adjunct Professor in the UW School of Social Work.
As an Environmental Psychologist by training, Manzo specializes in the study of the interrelationships between people and their physical surroundings. Her view of the environment includes not only natural and built settings, but also the socio-cultural and political milieu that shape the appearance, meanings and uses of space.
Manzo’s interests and areas of research focus on people-place relationship in urban space through a social justice lens, with particular attention to place attachment, place meaning & identity, as well as the politics of place. She has spent years conducting housing research and participating in advocacy efforts for affordable housing. This includes investigations of grassroots organizing and building rehabilitation efforts among residents of landlord-abandoned buildings in Harlem and the South Bronx, and conducting research for the Seattle Housing Authority, the King County Housing Authority and the Bremerton Housing Authority to understand the impacts of public housing demolition and redevelopment on low-income communities.
Currently, Manzo’s work focuses on place change, displacement and anti-displacement strategies. In one of her research projects, she is working with the non-profit, community-based organization Wa Na Wari, which “creates space for Black homeownership, possibility, belonging, and artistic creativity” in Seattle’s historically Black Central District, to conduct research that supports their ongoing anti-displacement organizing work. Related to this, in the Spring of 2020, Manzo led an advanced, graduate-level research studio on anti-displacement strategies with King County as the client, focusing on the diverse communities of Skyway-West Hill and White Center/North Highline (report forthcoming). These majority minority communities are currently under serious threat of gentrification and displacement.
Associate Professor Julie Johnson teaches in the BLA and MLA Programs, focusing on the design, use and participatory design processes of civic landscapes, including children’s outdoor learning environments, urban parks, and neighborhoods. She views childhood experiences as key to fostering a more ecologically literate society and more sustainable future. Her research and teaching explore how design processes can engage children in the shaping and stewarding of innovative and enriching places. Similarly, she is interested in how the design of neighborhoods and urban open space can support community life and ecological processes, where transit and mixed uses enable greater choice and walkability. She is co-author of Greening Cities, Growing Communities: Learning from Urban Community Gardens in Seattle (2009). She has traveled around the world and lived in different parts of the US, but loves calling Seattle (and Gould Hall) home.
Julie is an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Architecture and a faculty member of the College’s Urban Design Certificate Program. She has a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from Utah State University and a Master of City Planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Julie is a registered Landscape Architect in Washington. Her professional experience includes urban and landscape design in firms, a public agency, and a university-based center.
Jeffrey Karl Ochsner FAIA is a Professor in the Department of Architecture, where he has taught since 1988 in the areas of architectural design, urban design, historic preservation, and architectural history. He holds adjunct positions in the Departments of Landscape Architecture and Urban Design & Planning and is a member of the faculties of the CBE Preservation Certificate, Urban Design Certificate and BE Ph.D. He served as Chair of the Department of Architecture from 1996 to 2002. He served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the College from 2007 to 2019. He currently serves as CBE Senior Advisor for Policy and Procedures. Professor Ochsner has twice won the College of Built Environments Lionel Pries Award for teaching excellence. He is a Fellow in the American Institute of Architects and a recipient of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Distinguished Professor Award.
Professor Ochsner is author of H. H. Richardson: Complete Architectural Works (1982), editor and co-author of Shaping Seattle Architecture: A Historical Guide to the Architects (First Edition, 1994; Second Edition, 2014), co-author of Distant Corner: Seattle Architects and the Legacy of H. H. Richardson (2003), and author of Lionel H. Pries, Architect-Artist-Educator: From Arts & Crafts to Modern Architecture (2007), and Furniture Studio: Materials, Craft, and Architecture (2012). Lionel H. Pries, Architect-Artist-Educator was a finalist for the 2008 Washington State Book Award in History/Biography. Professor Ochsner has published in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, JAE: Journal of Architectural Education, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, ARCADE and other journals. From 1990 to 1994 he was member of the editorial board of JAE: Journal of Architectural Education. He was the Local Chair for the annual meeting of the Society of Architectural Historians in Seattle in 1995, and he served on the Board of the Society from 2000 to 2003. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of Pacific Northwest Quarterly.
Kathryn Rogers Merlino is an Associate Professor of Architecture and an adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Landscape architecture. She teaches courses on architectural history, theories of preservation and building reuse, vernacular architecture as well as graduate and undergraduate design studios. Courses include Building REuse Seminar; Appreciation of Architecture, Public Spaces Public Life master studio with Gehl Architects (co-taught with Nancy Rottle in Landscape Architecture), Architecture in Rome (history, design studio) and design studios 400, 401 and 503.
Her current research argues that the reuse of existing buildings – both everyday ‘non- historic’ and ‘historic’ – is a critical part of our sustainable future. Informing her work are two research grants that study how building reuse and historic preservation can be sustainable both at the building and neighborhood scale. One project, funded by the Washington State Department of Archeology and Historic Preservation is looking at ways to communicate how historic preservation rehabilitation projects can be high performing, sustainable and historic. Another project, funded by the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Preservation Green Lab, is developing metrics for measuring urban grain of existing, older neighborhoods, and seeks to illustrate how older fabric can contribute to more vibrant city neighborhoods.
After receiving a B.A. in Architecture from the University of Washington, Kathryn practiced in the Seattle area for several years and worked with Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects (now Olson Kundig), where she received several awards for projects designed with the firm. She received both a Master of Architecture and a Master of Architectural History from the University of Virginia in 1999. She sits on the executive committee of the department and serves as the undergraduate program coordinator and the graduate faculty advisor. She is on the Board of Directors for the Vernacular Architecture Forum, and recently completed four years on the King County Landmarks Commission.
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.