The Integrated Design Lab (IDL) is operated by the Department of Architecture in the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington. IDL’s mission is to discover solutions that overcome the most difficult building performance barriers, and to meet the building industry’s goals of moving towards radically higher performing buildings and healthy urban environments. The IDL advances their mission through interconnected research, technical assistance, and professional educational and tour programs.
The Integrated Design Lab carries out research to advance knowledge and policies that support the healthiest and highest performing buildings and cities. It measures and analyzes modeled and actual building performance data so as to influence the building industry’s understanding of how to radically improve the design and operation performance of buildings. The performance research includes energy efficiency, daylighting, electric lighting, occupant energy use behavior, human health and productivity in buildings, and advanced building management systems.
The Integrated Design Lab connects its discoveries and the transformative knowledge of others to the building industry and public through education. These offerings include classes, workshops, focus-group meetings, leadership forums, and exhibits of breakthrough technologies intended to transform the market for the highest performing buildings by reaching out and educating current and future leaders on meeting 21st century building performance challenges with the knowledge and policies that favor renewable and regenerative buildings, neighborhoods and cities.
The IDL is a self-sustaining organization that includes interdisciplinary faculty, staff, students, professional collaborators, and partner organizations.
The Institute for Hazards Mitigation Planning and Research is an interdisciplinary academic institute housed in the College of Built Environments. The Institute is dedicated to exploring ways to enhance Community Resilience, through integration of hazards mitigation principles across all aspects of community development. Its mission is to build a resource center that will enhance risk reduction and resilience activities through research and analysis of hazards, policies related to mitigation, and outreach to the community.
The Institute for Hazards Mitigation Planning and Research is dedicated to integrating hazards mitigation principles into a wide range of crisis, disaster, and risk management opportunities. The Institute provides expertise in disaster preparedness, response, and recovery with a special emphasis on mitigation and planning in the promotion of community sustainability. It is interdisciplinary in focus and structure, and the capabilities of the Institute are enhanced by its close relationship with other academic and research organizations. This incorporates collaboration with several other disciplines within the University of Washington.
The Institute’s faculty and researchers are involved in numerous innovative and path-breaking research initiatives with the ultimate goal of enhancing community capacity to anticipate, respond to, cope with, and recover from natural and man-made hazard events.
The Circular City + Living Systems Lab (CCLS) is an interdisciplinary group of faculty and students applying principles of research and design to investigate transformative strategies for future cities that are adaptive and resilient while facing climate change.
Synthesizing expertise from architecture, landscape architecture, engineering, planning, biology, and ecology, the Lab’s innovative research spans core topics such as the integration of living systems in the built environment to produce and circulate resources within the food-water-energy nexus, and spatial design responses to COVID-19.
Ongoing work at the CCLS includes research on urban integration of aquaponics, urban and building-integrated agriculture, circular economies in the food industry, algae production, and green roof performance.
The University of Washington Center for Integrated Design (CID) promotes a healthy, energy efficient built environment through research, education and outreach initiatives.
The University of Washington Center for Integrated Design includes the Integrated Design Lab (IDL), the Discovery Commons, and the Carbon Leadership Forum (CLF). The Center’s mission is to advance the highest performing built environment that better serves environmental and human health through research, technical assistance, education and outreach. The Center is anchored by the Integrated Design Lab which delivers its mission through the three core services of: discovery through research; guidance through technical assistance; and advocacy through education and outreach.
The Center and the Integrated Design Lab are supported by the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA), the U.S. Department of Energy (US DOE), The National Science Foundation (NSF), The UW Campus Sustainability Fund, Puget Sound Energy, AIA Seattle, The Bullitt Foundation, and innovative building owners, designers, and operators in the Pacific Northwest region and nationally.
Operating out of its own ‘living laboratory’, the Center is a self-sustaining service located at the Bullitt Center in Seattle, WA– the greenest commercial building in the world.
Kate Simonen joins the NORI podcast to share the ins and outs of life cycle assessments, or LCAs. Kate Simonen is a carbon accounting expert and professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Washington. As a licensed architect and structural engineer, she has an extensive background in high-performance building systems, seismic design and retrofitting, and net-zero energy construction. Kate’s research is focused on environmental life cycle assessment and innovative construction materials and methods. She is also the founding…
Laure Heland is Affiliate Associate Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture. She has been teaching as an Associate Professor at the National School of Architecture of Paris La Villette (France) since 2007. As research faculty she participated in several national and European public funded research programs on participatory process for sustainable design and the assessment of environmental and climate change policies at regional, local and building scales.
Trained in Ecology, Urban Design and Planning, she developed her professional experience in environmental consulting and training for professionals, local authorities and regional governments. She earned her PhD in 2008, studying the neighborhood as a place for emergence, experimentation and appropriation of sustainable development, through bottom-up ecological practices and community-led participatory design.
Laure’s current research focuses on the Pacific Northwest experience and leadership on stormwater management at different scales, and more generally the social, ecological and economical consequences of implementing ecological infrastructure in dense urban environments. She is analyzing their impact on local communities, on the praxis of design professionals, and the management of ecological systems over the long term through the collaboration of various actors: local communities, NGOs, public and private professionals and agencies.
She also explores community-led ecological design projects and participatory process in various socio-cultural contexts. She is teaching a fall seminar on Perceptions of Nature in dense urban environments and she collaborated with the past two McKinley BE Studios on
interdisciplinary teaching pedagogy.
Monica Huang is a research engineer for the Carbon Leadership Forum at the University of Washington with expertise in environmental life cycle assessment (LCA). Recent research topics include the environmental impact of housing, optimizing tall wood structures, and developing data on the environmental impact of earthquake damage. She was also the lead author for a guide on the use of LCA in design and construction practice. Past research experience includes diverse topics such as astronomy, electronic waste, and sea level rise. As a graduate student, she developed the Port of Seattle’s first study on the impacts of sea level rise on seaport structures.
Hyun Woo “Chris” Lee is a PD Koon Endowed Associate Professor in the Department of Construction Management (CM). Prior to joining the CM Department in January 2016, he spent 3.5 years as an Assistant Professor at Oregon State University, and 7 years in the U.S. and Korean construction industries as field engineer, project engineer, and estimator. He received his B.S. in Architectural Engineering from Seoul National University in 1999, and his M.S. and PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004 and 2012, respectively.
Prof. Lee’s research interests center on developing models to identify, quantify, and mitigate various risk factors inherent in the development of energy-efficient commercial buildings and sustainable infrastructures. His research is currently focused on 3 types of risk factors: (1) financial risks associated with sustainability and energy-efficiency investments, (2) worker safety risks associated with sustainable design features, and (3) design-related risks due to project complexity.
Since 2012, Prof. Lee has led or been involved in 20 research projects (a combined value of over $1.5M), funded by various organizations including Washington State, Google, the US Department of Energy (DOE), the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT), and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Currently, he has 5 on-going projects with a combined value of over $400,000.
As of October 2020, Prof. Lee has published 33 peer-reviewed journal papers in top-quality journals such as Applied Energy, Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering, Automation in Construction, and Journal of Construction Engineering and Management. In addition, he has co-authored 24 peer-reviewed conference papers and 14 technical reports.
Himanshu Grover’s research focus is at the intersection of land use planning, community resilience, and climate change. Dr. Grover, is also the co-Director of the Institute for Hazard Mitigation and Planning at the College of Built Environments. Dr. Grover received his PhD in Urban and Regional Sciences from Texas A&M University. In his research, Dr. Grover examines inter-linkages between physical development, socio-economic concerns, and the natural environment. His research is primarily focused on planning for development of safe, equitable, and sustainable communities. Dr. Grover is broadly interested in climate change management (both mitigation and adaptation strategies), environmental and land use planning, social equity, urban infrastructure management, hazard mitigation, and community resilience. His research emphasizes place-based planning policies to balance economic, environmental and social priorities to achieve equitable development and enhance community resilience.
Dr. Grover has been a practicing planner for more than a decade and is a certified planner in India (ITPI), and in United States (AICP). He has received research funding from a number of agencies including National Science Foundation (NSF), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Dr. Grover is also a fellow of the prestigious NSF funded Enabling the Next Generation of Hazards & Disasters Researchers Fellowship Program (Round 4). Dr. Grover teaches courses in Research Methods, Comprehensive Planning, Land use and Infrastructure Management, Introduction to Emergency Management, and Introduction to Urban Planning. His recent research projects focus on pro-environmental decision-making, and adaptive planning for urban resilience. Dr. Grover also interested in issues related to social vulnerability, and environmental justice. More details about his ongoing research are available on his homepage.
Marina Alberti is Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning in the Department of Urban Design and Planning at the University of Washington. She is Director of the Urban Ecology Research Lab and PI of the NSF Funded Research Collaboration Networks on Urban Eco-Evolutionary Dynamics. She teaches courses in Urban Science, Urban Ecology, Environmental Planning, Research Design, Geographic Information Systems, and Group Dynamic and Conflict resolution. Alberti’s research interests are in urban ecology and evolution. Her studies focus on the interactions between urban patterns and ecosystem function, urban signatures of evolutionary change, and the properties of cities that enhance their resilience and transformative capacity. She also leads research on urban ecological modeling, scenario planning, and urban ecological metrics to monitor progress and inform policy-making and planning. In her book Cities That Think like Planets (UW Press 2016), Alberti advances a science of cities that work on a planetary scale and link unpredictable dynamics to the potential for socio-ecological innovation.