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.
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.
Dr. Vikramaditya “Vikram” Prakash is an architect, architectural historian and theorist. He is Professor of Architecture at the University of Washington with adjunct appointments in Landscape Architecture and Urban Design and Planning. He received his B. Arch. from Chandigarh College of Architecture, India and his M.A. and PhD in History of Architecture and Urbanism from Cornell University.
Vikram works on issues of modernism, postcoloniality, global history and fashion & architecture. His books include Chandigarh’s Le Corbusier: The Struggle for Modernity in Postcolonial India, A Global History of Architecture (with Francis DK Ching & Mark Jarzombek), Colonial Modernities (co-edited with Peter Scriver), The Architecture of Shivdatt Sharma and Chandigarh: An Architectural Guide. A Global History is widely used as a textbook and being translated into five languages. His next book, One Continuous Line: Art, Architecture and Urbanism of Aditya Prakash, is due in summer 2020.
Vikram is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the College of Built Environments. He previously served as Associate Dean for External Affairs, Chair of Architecture and Director of Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Programs. His public service includes terms on the Boards of Seattle Center and the Seattle AIA. He also directed Chandigarh Urban Lab, a series of interdisciplinary international studios.
Vikram is co-PI (with Mark Jarzombek, MIT) of three successive grants of $1.0 million (2014), $1.5 million (2016) and $1.0 million (2019) awarded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. These resulted in the creation of GAHTC – a collective of over 200 teachers of global architectural history.
Vikram is host of ArchitectureTalk – a bi-weekly podcast based on curated conversations with invited guests. In its first two years, ArchitectureTalk received over 60,000 unique downloads and has been independently reviewed in The American Scholar.
The 2020 Annual meeting of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture recognized Vikram with the title of ACSA Distinguished Professor.
Ken Tadashi Oshima is Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Washington, where he teaches in the areas of trans-national architectural history, theory, representation, and design. He has also been a visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and taught at Columbia University and the University of British Columbia. He earned an A.B. degree, magna cum laude, in East Asian Studies and Visual & Environmental Studies from Harvard College, M. Arch. degree from U. C. Berkeley and Ph.D. in architectural history and theory from Columbia University. From 2003-5, he was a Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Fellow at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures in London.
Dr. Oshima’s publications include Kiyonori Kikutake: Between Land and Sea (Lars Müller/Harvard GSD, 2015), Architecturalized Asia (University of Hawaii Press/Hong Kong University Press, 2013), GLOBAL ENDS: towards the beginning (Toto, 2012), International Architecture in Interwar Japan: Constructing Kokusai Kenchiku (University of Washington Press, 2009) and Arata Isozaki (Phaidon, 2009). He curated “Tectonic Visions Between Land and Sea: Works of Kiyonori Kikutake” (Harvard GSD, 2012), “SANAA: Beyond Borders”” (Henry Art Gallery 2007-8), and co-curator of “Crafting a Modern World: The Architecture and Design of Antonin and Noemi Raymond” (University of Pennsylvania, UC Santa Barbara, Kamakura Museum of Modern Art, 2006-7). He served as President of the Society of Architectural Historians from 2016-18 and was an editor and contributor to Architecture + Urbanism for more than ten years, co-authoring the two-volume special issue, Visions of the Real: Modern Houses in the 20th Century (2000). His articles on the international context of architecture and urbanism in Japan have been published in The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Architectural Review, Architectural Theory Review, Kenchiku Bunka, Japan Architect, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, and the AA Files.
Robert B. Peña, Associate Professor and Graduate Program Coordinator in the Department of Architecture, teaches in the areas of architectural design and building science with an emphasis on ecological design and high-performance buildings. Professor Peña is also an adjunct faculty member in the Landscape Architecture department. He received a B.S. in Architectural Engineering from the University of Colorado and an M.Arch. from the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Peña has over a decade of professional experience gained while working as a principal at Van der Ryn Architects and the Ecological Design Institute in Sausalito, California; EHDD Architects in San Francisco; Mazria Architects in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and in private practice in Washington, Idaho, Montana and Oregon. Professor Peña has held teaching appointments at Montana State University, The University of Oregon, and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and has taught as a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.
Professor Peña’s academic and professional work can be characterized by three interconnected themes: critical practice in the architecture sub-discipline of ecological design; teaching through the development of the knowledge and methods for sustainable design; and service in the university and community aimed at ecological literacy, environmental health, and resource conservation. In partnership with the UW Center for Integrated Design, Professor Peña works regionally with design teams on the development of high performance and net-zero energy buildings. Since the inception of the Bullitt Center, he worked with the Bullitt Foundation, the Miller Hull Partnership, and Schuchart Construction on the design and development of this groundbreaking high performance building.
Professor Carrie Sturts Dossick, P.E. is a Professor of Construction Management and the Associate Dean of Research in the College of Built Environments, University of Washington. Dr. Dossick also holds an adjunct professor appointment in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and is currently the Vice-Chair of the National BIM Standard -US Planning Committee. Dr. Dossick co-directs the Communication, Technology, and Organizational Practices lab in the Center for Education and Research in Construction (CERC). Dr. Dossick has over two decades of research and teaching experience focused on emerging collaboration methods and technologies such as Building Information Modeling (BIM). She is an active member of the National Institute of Building Sciences BIM Council, and the Academic Interoperability Coalition (AiC). Current research and teaching projects include Cybersecurity for Large Institutional owners, a Pankow funded project on Owner Decision-making and Project Delivery, The Core BIM Module for the National BIM Standard US, an Introduction to BIM for Construction Management Certificate with Skanska, a new online Certificate for digital fabrication workflows for concrete formwork with Turner Construction, and the IB Index with the University of Technology Sydney. Recent work includes BIM-based information exchange between design, construction and operations, BIM Standards and Processes for the Port of Seattle, the use of Virtual Reality for Facilities Management Training, and BIM workflows for Preconstruction Services. Recent Technical Publications. She has received funding from the National Science Foundation, U.S. Army, U.S. Department of Education, General Services Administration, Mechanical Contractors Association of Western Washington, Sound Transit, Skanska USA Building, Mortenson Company, University of Washington Royalty Research Fund, University of Washington Capital Projects and Facilities services.
Nicole Huber is a licensed architect in Germany where she graduated as Diplom-Ingenieur (M.Arch.) from the Technical University Darmstadt and held a Post-Graduate Research Position at the University of the Arts Berlin. She was a Visiting Scholar at the History, Theory and Criticism Section of the Department of Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2003) and holds a PhD from the Bauhaus University Weimar (Dr. des., summa cum laude, 2006). Before joining the faculty of the UW, she taught architectural and urban history, theory and design at the University of the Arts Berlin (1996-2001), where she also co-directed the Program for Urban Processes (2001-2004) focusing on the interrelationships between urbanization, globalization, and representation.
At the University of Washington’s Department of Architecture Professor Huber teaches in the areas of architectural and urban history, theory and design. Her studios and seminars use the Pacific Northwest and Northern Europe as laboratories examining the relations between processes of urbanization, strategies of sustainable development and emerging visual technologies in regionalizing and globalizing contexts.
Her research focuses on comparative urbanization processes and urban representation in Europe and the US. It has been presented at numerous international conferences; single and co-authored articles have appeared in publications such as the Journal of Urban History, aafiles, Informationen zur Modernen Stadtgeschichte, Topos, Bauwelt, DAMn, Places, and various anthologies. She has published Urbanizing the Mojave Desert: Las Vegas (Berlin 2008) and is co-editing an anthology entitled Visionary Urbanism: Representations of the Postwar American West (both with Ralph Stern). Her book on German conceptualizations of natural environment, national identity, and design education The Architecture of “Sachlichkeit”: Visuality, Nationality and Modernity, 1890-1919, forthcoming as a German-language edition (Weimar: Bauhaus-University Press) is currently under revision for an English-language edition. Her next book project will map the transfers of urban design strategies between Europe and the US impacting recent North-American theories such as “everyday,” “landscape,” “postmodern,” and “postcolonial” urbanisms.
Brian McLaren’s teaching and scholarship are influenced by a background in cultural history and an ongoing interest in Marxist and contemporary critical theory, as well as postcolonial studies. The broad focus of his concerns have been on the relationship between architecture and politics during the Fascist period in Italy, with particular attention to the tensions that linked modernism and regional expression.
McLaren’s dissertation research and initial publications concentrated on the colonial context of Libya, in particular the relationship between modern architecture and local culture under the auspices of tourism. These publications include an edited collection with D. Medina Lasansky, Architecture and Tourism: Perception, Performance and Place, and a completed major book project, Architecture and Tourism in Italian Colonial Libya: An Ambivalent Modernism. More recently, this research has appeared in the Journal of Architecture and Giovanni Arena.
McLaren’s current research is related to a new book project, Modern Architecture, Colonialism and Race in Fascist Italy, 1935-1945, which was presented at the Annual Conference of the College Art Association in New York (February 2015) and Society of Architectural Historians in Chicago (April 2015). It is also published in abbreviated form in a themed issue of Architectural Theory Review (Fall 2015). McLaren is a member of the Race and Modern Architecture Project, a research collaborative co-directed by Professors Mabel Wilson (Columbia University), Charles Davis (University of North Carolina – Charlotte) and Irene Cheng (California College of the Arts).