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.
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.