Tyler S. Sprague PE., Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture, with an Adjunct appointment in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He holds engineering degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Washington (UW) and worked professionally as a structural engineer before completing a Ph.D. in architectural history in the College of Built Environments at the UW.
Dr. Sprague’s research investigates the intersection of architecture and structural engineering, in both post-war modern architecture and the present. He has written on the rise of concrete skyscrapers in the Pacific Northwest, the engineering of the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, and other topics. In 2019, he published Sculpture on a Grand Scale: Jack Christiansen’s Thin Shell Modernism (italicize, and link: https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295745619/sculpture-on-a-grand-scale/) with the University of Washington Press. This text explores Christiansen’s prolific work in thin-shell concrete which culminated in the largest free-standing concrete dome in the world: the Seattle Kingdome.
He currently serves on the board of docomomo wewa (the regional chapter of the international preservation advocacy group), and the Construction History Society of America.
Kathrina (Kate) Simonen is a Professor of Architecture at the University of Washington, founder and board chair of the nonprofit Carbon Leadership Forum and leader of the Life Cycle Lab. Licensed as an architect and structural engineer, she connects significant professional experience in high performance building design and technical expertise in environmental life cycle assessment working to accelerate the transformation of the building sector to radically reduce the greenhouse gas emissions attributed to materials (also known as embodied carbon) used in buildings and infrastructure.
She is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, an honorary fellow of the UK’s Institution of Structural Engineers and was named Engineering News Record Top 25 Newsmaker in 2020 for her impact rallying industry to reduce embodied carbon. Taking an entrepreneurial approach to academic work she helped launch two successful nonprofits, CLF and Building Transparency; spurred the formation of two embodied carbon commitment programs, SE2050 and MEP 2040; and develops and sustains networks of individuals and organizations working together to harmonize and optimize embodied carbon actions.
UW’s Life Cycle Lab is focused on supporting the next generation of researchers and pursuing critical research to advance life cycle assessment (LCA) data, methods and approaches. The research that we pursue aims to fill challenging knowledge gaps in order to inform impactful policies that support the integration of life cycle thinking, LCA findings and decarbonization strategies to implement into practice today.
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.
Christopher Meek, AIA, IES is Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Washington and a registered architect. He is Director of the Integrated Design Lab (IDL) at the University’s College of Built Environments and the Center for Integrated Design (CID). In this role, he consults with design teams in the Pacific Northwest and nationally with a focus on building energy performance, daylighting, visual comfort, electric lighting, and climate responsive design. Mr. Meek teaches graduate and undergraduate level courses on building design, daylighting, electric lighting, and building technology at the UW Department of Architecture and in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. His research has been funded by the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, regional utilities, New Buildings Institute, the Illuminating Engineering Society, the American Institute of Architects, and the National Science Foundation. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Washington he worked in architectural practice in Washington State, New Mexico, and New Orleans, LA.
He is co-author of Daylighting Design in the Pacific Northwest published in 2012 by the University of Washington Press and Daylighting and Integrated Lighting Design published in 2014 by Routledge.
Mehlika Inanici, Ph.D. is a Professor and the former director of the Design technology track of the Master of Science in Architecture program at the University of Washington, Department of Architecture.
The focus of her research is computational lighting design and analysis. The underlying presumption in her research and teaching is that analytical approaches employed throughout the design processes help architects envision the performance of their designs, accelerate and improve design decisions, and reduce the uncertainty of the outcome. A large body of her research centers on developing and utilizing computer-based (day)lighting analysis techniques and metrics that can facilitate occupant comfort, satisfaction, health, and productivity improvements, in conjunction with significant energy savings.
Inanici has authored or co-authored highly influential papers on the use of high dynamic range (HDR) photography to measure and evaluate existing environments and to conduct psychophysical studies on visual comfort and preference. Her work on lighting measurements with HDR photography was selected as one of the “25 classic papers” in the 50-year history of the Journal of Lighting Research and Technology (2018) among the 2048 papers published between 1969 to 2018. Some of her papers are on the most cited list in Leukos (the journal of Illuminating Engineering Society) and Lighting Research and Technology.
She developed Lark Multispectral Lighting tool in collaboration with ZGF Architects LLC. Lark is an open-source software to simulate the non-visual effects of light that entrains the human circadian system. She also co-developed hdrscope in collaboration with Viswanathan Kumaragurubaran.
Her research has been funded by the US Department of Energy, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the University of Washington Royalty Research Fund, UW Built Environments Innovations Collaborative Grant, and the Nuckolls Funding for Lighting Education.
Prof. Inanici’s teaching focuses on graduate-level courses on building performance simulation (Arch 524 Design Technology V, Arch 582 Computational Lighting Research, and 598 Performance-Driven Design) and research methodologies. She supervises students from the Master of Architecture, Master of Science in Architecture, and the Ph.D. program in Built Environments.
Inanici has received her Ph.D. degree from the University of Michigan. She has Master of Science degrees both in Architecture (University of Michigan) and Building Science (METU), and a Bachelor of Architecture degree (METU). Previously, she worked at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley California. Dr. Inanici is a member of the Illuminating Engineering Society, the International Commission on Illumination, and the International Building Performance Simulation Association.
Louisa Iarocci, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Washington, where she teaches in the areas of architectural history, theory and design. She is a licensed architect who has worked in architectural firms in Toronto, New York, St. Louis and Boston after receiving her professional architectural degree at the School of Architecture at the University of Waterloo in Canada. She completed a Masters in Arts and Science (1994) and a Masters in Liberal Arts (1992) at Washington University in St. Louis. She received her Ph.D. in the history of art and architecture from Boston University (2003). She served as editor and contributor to Visual Merchandising: The Image of Selling, published by Ashgate in 2013. Her monograph, The Urban Department Store in America was published by Ashgate in 2014.
Ann C. Huppert offers classes on architectural history, focusing particularly on urbanism, drawing and the architecture and art of the Renaissance. Recent courses have included the Drawing and the Design Professions, (Re)Building Rome 1400-1800, Architecture of Mediterranean Cities, 1300-1600, Drawing and Artistic Process in the Italian Renaissance (Department of Art History), and Italian Renaissance Art (Department of Art History). She also teaches survey courses including Architecture of the Ancient World, Medieval and Renaissance Architecture, and Appreciation of Architecture I.
Professor Huppert received an B.A. in Philosophy from Vassar College, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Architectural History from the University of Virginia. Before joining the faculty at the University of Washington, she taught in the architecture and art history departments at the University of Kansas, the Ohio State University and Syracuse University. She has been a fellow at Worcester College in Oxford and at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome, and has received additional fellowships from the American Philosophical Society and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
Professor Huppert’s book, Becoming an Architect in Renaissance Italy: Art, Science, and the Career of Baldassarre Peruzzi, (Yale University Press, 2015) investigates the close connections between the figural arts and architecture in the early sixteenth century through the lens of a remarkably large group of period drawings. Among the topics the book explores are the close connection of Peruzzi’s mathematical aptitude with his skill in perspective, and the influence of antiquity on his designs. Other publications have examined the role of perspectival drawings in the building workshop and designs for new St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, in the Journal of Architectural Historians, and Renaissance practices of mapping ancient Rome, in Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome. Recently published book chapters include “Practical Mathematics in the Drawings of Baldassarre Peruzzi and Antonio da Sangallo the Younger,” “Giorgio Vasari and the Art of Siena,” and “Material Matters: Training the Renaissance Architect.” She has presented her research at numerous academic conferences in the United States and in Europe.
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.
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.
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.