Throughout history, we’ve seen shifts in how people communicate regarding design. The question of how communication happens between architect and builder is as fundamental today as it was hundreds of years ago. While the dynamics of these communication processes are nuanced, our understanding of them has been colored by a narrative of the past. One CBE faculty member is challenging the standard narrative about how buildings get made, from design to construction through design communication and knowledge exchange. Today, we…
Research Theme: History & Theory & Conservation
Includes historical/theoretical analysis, conservation, land reuse and adaptation
Ana Costa
Urban governance, poverty and inequality, planning history and theory, housing policy, urban informality, community organization
Sunho Choi
Historic preservation planning and policy, community development, urban revitalization, social sustainability
PhD in the Built Environment
The College of Built Environments consists of five departments that together provide one of the country’s few comprehensive built environment programs within one academic unit: Architecture, Construction Management, Landscape Architecture, Real Estate, and Urban Design and Planning. Together, this combination of departments enable faculty and students to engage almost the entire development process, from economic and environmental planning, real estate, regulatory processes, siting and design, through actual financing and construction, to facility management and adaptive reuse in subsequent stages. Thus, the college is inherently multi-disciplinary, not only in terms of the dimensions of reality that it treats, but also in regard to the specialized disciplines, methods, and practices that it employs: history, theory, cultural criticism, engineering, design, planning, urban design, energy sciences, acoustics, lighting, environmental psychology, ecology, real estate analysis, statistics, management, horticulture, soil science, law, public policy, and ethics. In addition, because of the College’s focus on comprehensive analysis and practice concerning the built environment and its interrelation with society, it is substantially engaged in interdisciplinary work with other units on campus and outside of the campus, including mechanical, civil, and electrical engineering; with public policy and the health sciences; with art and art history; with textual interpretation in the humanities; with many of the computing and digitization activities that range from digital arts to the information school and technical communications; with education and social studies and services; with sustainability and ecological programs, including urban ecology, geography, the College of Forest Resources (especially urban horticulture and urban forestry), and Ocean Science and Fisheries; with environmental and land use law.
The College’s interdisciplinary character is a good fit with the emerging trends in today’s complex world, where only a pluralistic and collaborative approach will generate the necessary learning and teaching, research, and service. If we are to provide, in the end, both disciplinary and professional means to promote environmental well-being, the diverse environmental specializations must be fully integrated. Thus, working outside traditional disciplinary and departmental categories, the College’s faculty will advance solutions to problems that demand interdisciplinary perspectives and expertise. Other UW units bring much to bear on the built environment and students are wholeheartedly encouraged to explore possible cross-campus connections both in obvious and seemingly unlikely places. The Technology and Project Design/Delivery specialization especially connects with Psychology, the Information School, Technical Communication, Computer Science and Engineering, and Industrial Engineering; the Sustainable Systems and Prototypes field with Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, the Information School, Technical Communication, the College of Forest Resources (especially Eco-System Science and Conservation, Urban Horticulture and Urban Forestry), the Evans School of Public Affairs, Geography, Public Health, Ocean Science and Fisheries, and Social Work, Urban Ecology, and perhaps Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Processes and Nanotechnology; the area of History, Theory, and Representation with Textual Studies, Art History, Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences at Tacoma, and Comparative History of Ideas.
Elizabeth Umbanhowar
Through my studies, I am undertaking a critical investigation of the historic and future role of digital visual culture and technology in mediating, navigating and shaping personal and social cognition and connectivity in our contemporary urbanscapes. While design professions are actively adopting new digital technologies into the classroom and workplace, there has been less research on the role of mobile technologies and Virtual and Augmented Reality on user/stakeholder experience. I am collaborating with allied disciplines to establish methods to evaluate and potentially develop digital mobile technologies that will measure and enhance experience, engagement and connection to outdoor or public places. Ultimately I am interested in: how the use of and access to evolving digital mobile technologies effect human health and well-being; what are impacts on individual and collective rights to occupy, define, and participate in public places; and what are the implications for the teaching and practice of landscape architecture?
Chandigarh Urban Lab
The Chandigarh Urban Lab is dedicated to creating a forum to understand the contemporary Indian city in transformation. It is designed to support Indian and international students and scholars of architecture and urbanism interested in studying Chandigarh as a case-study in the above context.
The Lab is an investigation into issues of globalization, urbanization and preservation that are at play in Chandigarh today. Besides infrastructural and logistical support, the Lab offers linkages with local and national architects, academics, activists and citizens.
The Chandigarh Urban Lab is conceived as an ongoing forum on contemporary Indian architecture and urbanism. The Lab invites interested academic and research organizations to engage the Lab, either to simply access our facilities and framework and/or to propose full- fledged collaborations.
Center for Preservation and Adaptive Reuse
The Center for Preservation and Adaptive Reuse (CPAR) is a research, education and advocacy center that recognizes the value of our existing historic and non-historic buildings. The Center produces innovative research, advances knowledge, and promotes educational initiatives addressing the reuse and preservation of the built environment at all scales. The Center recognizes that existing buildings provide cultural continuity of place, communicate stories of our past, and play a critical role in promoting environmental sustainability through reuse rather than demolition.
CPAR is based in the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Storytelling in the Podcast Age
The spoken word has much in common with the built environment. Both pervade our lives without asking us to interrogate their origins or intentions—but, generously, they reward us if we make the time to do so. Vikram Prakash‘s podcast, ArchitectureTalk, leaves us looking at the everyday space around us with greater curiosity, piqued by the weirdest and most beautiful of stuff. Read more
Donald King
Donald King is an architect, planner and educator with over 50 years of professional experience. He is currently Principal Architect of Mimar Studio, a predevelopment planning and design consultancy. Since 2017, he has been an Affiliate Professor of Architecture in the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington. He is a co-founder of the Nehemiah Inititaive Seattle.
Manish Chalana
Chalana engages urban planning through the lenses of urban design, historic preservation, urban & planning history and equity & social justice. He has degrees in Architecture (B’Arch –Mangalore University; M’Arch from the School of Planning & Architecture, New Delhi), Landscape Architecture (M’Larch from Penn State) and Urban Planning (Ph.D. from University of Colorado). Besides his appointment in Urban Design & Planning at UW, he is adjunct in the Departments of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, and a member of the South Asia Program in the Jackson School of International Studies (JSIS). Before teaching at UW, he taught as a graduate student/ lecturer in the University of Colorado and Pennsylvania State University. He has worked in India with the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) and Housing and Urban Development Corporation of India (HUDCO). Additionally, he consults on international projects mostly around historic preservation. He is one of the two founding directors of the Center for Preservation and Adaptive Reuse (CPAR), which strives to connect academia to practice of historic preservation. He is also affiliated with both the Graduate Certificates in Urban Design and Historic Preservation and both the PhD programs in our College; PhD in the Built Environment; and the Interdisciplinary PhD in Urban Planning.
He has offered a variety of courses ranging from study abroad; lectures; seminars and studios. He teaches graduate seminars in American Urban History and Introduction to Historic Preservation. Additionally, he teaches Urban Form and Communication and Analysis in the MUP core curriculum; and the Race and Social Justice Seminar. His studios have typically been on urban design and historic preservation topics engaging sites in the Pacific Northwest. For his study abroad classes, he has brought students for a quarter long programs to Chandigarh, India (co-led with Prakash) and month long exploration seminars to the Kumaon region in the upper Himalayas to study topics of urban design, planning and preservation. He has also co-taught study abroad classes in China and Japan along with his colleagues Dan Abramson and Bob Freitag on topics of hazard mitigation and cultural resilience, among others. He has been twice honored with the CBE’s Lionel Pries Distinguished Professor Award.
He is interested in topics of diversity and social justice in the context of historic preservation and urban planning. He engages these topics in his teaching and through my service. As a member of the Historic Preservation Advisory Committee (HPAC) of the 4Culture, Cultural Services Agency for King County, he mentors the diversity intern who works on uncovering systemic biases in the listing of historic sites in King County to the exclusion of under-represented minority communities. He has served on the UW Diversity Council’s Campus Climate Committee, which encouraged him to start the UDP department’s Diversity Committee (with Branden Born) that has worked for the last 10 years toward creating a welcoming environment for the underrepresented minority students in the College of Built Environments. Additionally, he has volunteered to serve on a committee of the National Council of Preservation Educators (NCPE) to understand the diversity of students enrolled in preservation programs in the country to better understand the accessibility and openness of the programs to underrepresented minority students.
He publishes on topics of urban design, planning history and preservation in a variety of journal including Future Anterior, Journal of Architectural Education, Journal of American Planning Association, Journal of Planning History and Planning Perspectives. He has co-edited a book on the topic of urbanism in Asia (along with Jeff Hou) – Messy Urbansim: understanding the “other” cities of Asia. He recently completed working on another edited volume (along with Ashima Krishna) on the status of preservation practice in India.