Richard E. (Rick) Mohler, AIA, NCARB, is a licensed architect and Professor of Architecture at the University of Washington where he teaches graduate level design studios and professional practice. Professor Mohler will assume the role of Chair of the Department of Architecture beginning in June 2023. He received his B.A. and Master of Architecture degrees from the University of Pennsylvania where he received top awards for design and master’s thesis. Following graduation he worked for firms in Philadelphia including Mitchell Giurgola and Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown where he was a member of the winning competition team for the extension to the National Gallery in London.
In 1986 he joined the University of Washington architecture faculty and Olson Sundberg Architects (now Olson Kundig). In 1991, he co-founded Adams/Mohler Architects (now Mohler + Ghillino Architects), a firm engaged in residential, commercial adaptive re-use, and commercial interior design projects that has been recognized through numerous design awards and publications. With his own firm, other firms and individuals he has been recognized in urban design and housing competitions in Philadelphia, Seattle and Montreal. His own house and accessory dwelling unit, the Flip/Flop House(s), was recognized with multiple Seattle AIA awards and named one of the top ten innovative houses of 2010 by Builder magazine.
Professor Mohler maintains that the nexus of land use, affordable housing, transportation and the public realm is key to a sustainable future. He has explored urban issues through multiple UW interdisciplinary design studios focused on land use legislation, transit oriented development and the future of urban form in Seattle and surrounding communities. His current research focuses on housing affordability at three scales – the urban parcel, the city and the region. In pursuing this research Rick strives to be a bridge between the city, profession and academy. He is a member of the Seattle Planning Commission and Seattle’s ADU working group, co-chairs the AIA Seattle Public Policy Board and was a 2015 Affiliate Fellow of the UW Runstad Center for Real Estate Studies.
Rick is an enthusiastic and effective design studio instructor whose students have been recognized in regional, national and international design awards programs and competitions eighteen times and a dozen times in the past decade. He is active in professional, civic and community organizations including serving as founding co-chair of the AIA Seattle Future Shack program, which recognizes innovative housing solutions, and has served as a juror, moderator and co-chair of AIA Honor Awards programs throughout the country. He is a UW representative to the City/University Community Advisory Committee, was vice president and land use chair of the Madrona Community Council, a founding member of the housing advocacy group Welcoming Wallingford, a design committee member of the Friends of McDonald School Playground and received a mayoral appointment to the Downtown Project Review Panel for Seattle’s CAP Initiative.
David Strauss combines professional practice as a principal with SHKS Architects with teaching undergraduate classes in architecture theory and graduate architecture design studios in the College of Built Environments.
The focus of Strauss’s professional practice and research is public places. His doctoral dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania, In Campo Verde: The Project of the Piazza Nuova in Ferrara, described the symbolism and experience of early modern public space. His architectural practice has focused on work with existing buildings where the relationships between the imagined, the concrete, and the contingent have been subjects of research.
Strauss’s design projects include the Magnolia Library Addition and Renovation, Seattle Fire Stations 31, 18, and 8, the UW Facilities Services Training Center, the Ferndale Library, and the Eddon Boat Building. He has served on the Pioneer Square Preservation Board and the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation Board.
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.
Bob Freitag is a Senior Instructor and Director of the Institute for Hazards Mitigation Planning and Research (IHMP). The University of Washington Institute for Hazards Mitigation is an interdisciplinary academic Institute housed in the Department of Urban Design and Planning within the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington. He is the past Executive Director of the Cascadia Region Earthquake Workgroup and past member of the Association of State Floodplain Managers’ Board of Directors. Bob is also a Certified Floodplain Manager. He has published many articles and written courses for FEMA and others concerning hazards mitigation and floodplain management, and was lead author of “Floodplain Management: a new approach for a new era” (Island Press 2009). Before coming to the University, he had a 25-year career with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) serving as Federal Coordinating Officer (FCO); Public Assistance, Mitigation and Education Officer. Prior to FEMA he was employed by several private architectural and engineering consultant firms in Hawaii and Australia, and taught science as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines. Freitag received his Master of Urban Planning degree from the University of Washington.
H. Pike Oliver focuses on advancing sustainable development. Early in his career, Pike worked for public agencies, including the California Governor’s Office of Planning and Research where he was principal contributor to An Urban Strategy for California (1978.) For the next three decades, he worked on master-planned communities at the Irvine Ranch in Southern California and other properties in western North America and abroad. Prior to relocating to Seattle in 2013, Pike taught real estate development at Cornell University and directed the undergraduate program in urban and regional studies. He is a graduate of the urban studies and planning program at San Francisco State University and holds a master’s degree in urban planning from UCLA. Pike serves on the Thriving Communities Task Force of the Urban Land Institute’s Northwest District Council.