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.
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.
Peter Cohan teaches graduate and undergraduate architecture design studios in the Department of Architecture. He has twice received the Lionel Pries Prize for excellence in teaching. He also leads an architecture practice, Peter Cohan Architect, specializing in single-family residential design. His research interests focus on the nature of materials, their expressive role in construction, and the practical application of tectonic theory to architecture. He has written a number of papers and articles on this subject in addition to exploring these issues in teaching and practice.
Cohan also has an abiding interest in Scandinavian architecture. He is the director of the Scan|Design Visiting Guest Professor Program, which annually brings a distinguished Danish architect to teach in the CBE, and the Scan|Design Architecture Internship Program, which provides internships in Denmark for students enrolled in the Master of Architecture programs.
Elizabeth Golden is an architect and an Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Washington, where she teaches in the areas of design, materials, and building technology. Her teaching, academic research, and creative work are dedicated to revealing the systemic complexities that shape our physical and cultural realities. Golden investigates the relationship between people and their environments, both at the micro and macro scales, analyzing architecture as an index to its larger cultural context.
Golden is a licensed architect in Washington and New York state and has practiced nationally and internationally for over 25 years. She holds a Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University GSAPP and a Bachelor of Architecture (professional degree) from the University of Arkansas. She currently serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Architectural Education. Underpinning her practice is an ongoing analysis of the complex relationship of architecture and the built environment to systemic issues such as social marginalization and economic globalization. Together, her built and speculative work, research, and community activism demonstrate architecture’s dynamic potential to drive social change.
Research + Practice
Golden cultivates a reciprocal relationship between her research and practice, treating them as integral parts of an interconnected feedback loop. She frequently collaborates on design initiatives that combine expertise from the University of Washington, local nonprofits, governmental agencies, and other educational institutions. A recent example is the Seattle Street Sink and Clean Hands Collective, a community effort to promote hand hygiene in the midst of COVID-19. Her collaborative projects have received numerous honors including a National Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects (AIA), an Award of Merit from AIA Seattle, and an R+D Award from Architect Magazine. They have been published internationally including features in Architectural Record, Architectural Review, and the BBC World Service.
Across her research and teaching, Golden is committed to transforming the discipline of architecture by building productive connections between academia and professional practice. Her recent book Building from Tradition: Local Materials and Methods in Contemporary Architecture (Routledge, 2018) offers a critical analysis of traditional building practices and their contemporary resurgence in the context of globalization. A belief in the power of collective intelligence drives the practice, with the expertise of local professionals, craftspeople, and user groups integral to each project. Ultimately, Golden is concerned with the mutual exchange between people and place, studying ways in which architecture can evoke our shared humanity.
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).