Research Interests: Designing built environments to enhance human happiness, and related principles: Justice, Nature Integration, Access, Identity, Well-Being, Resiliency.
Research Theme: Safety & Health & Wellbeing
Scholarship on supporting human safety, health and well-being, from the individual, to built environment industries, to the region
Amy Thorton
My research area is art and design for public health.
Through built investigations, illustration, photography, video, movement practices, narrative, the full-sensory experience of rural farming, community gatherings, and back country explorations, I explore the root cause for accelerating anthropogenic environmental destruction and human chronic disease: disconnection, divide, and lack of care.
I believe in order to address this challenge for human and planetary health and human to human reconnection, we must radically alter our methods of learning and communicating. I call on designers, artists, scientists, and the academy to eschew sensory-limiting, isolating, disembodied, sedentary, screen-based, occularcentric practices and employ full-sensory, embodied, and experiential modes of understanding, communication, and synthesizing. I believe that research and the communication of that research must also be experiential, full sensory, and embodied in order to grapple with the complex challenges with which we are faced. My work, therefore, explodes the confines of text and the occularcentric to include a multi-sensory, place-and-body based approach.
I am interested in empirical (or field study) design research and analysis. Implementing design and art installations which aim to inspire reconnections, I subsequently observe, document, collect informal, qualitative, and multi-sensory “data”, and communicate the outcomes through full-sensory experiential production which strives to provoke and engage the experiencer’s senses. Supporting this work, I deploy theoretical research based on intersectional feminism, indigenous knowledges, knowledge held by multi-species beings, and a canon (bibliography) of female and intersectional theorists.
My hope is to inspire and encourage reconnections to body, to natural environment, and to each other. My work is situated in the rural environment including its human and other-than-human community which has been largely neglected by academia and contemporary art. I enjoy trashing the anthropocentric concept of trans-urbanism and replacing it with trans-wilderness or trans-ruralism. Gastrointestinal microbes are from where?
Jonathan A. Childers
I am interested in environmental democracy and the material and social dynamics that interact to affect community well-being and ecological health. While completing my Master of Public Health degree at UW, I led projects for the Health Impact Assessment of the Cleanup Plan for the Duwamish Superfund Site in Seattle, and then evaluated the outcomes of that HIA. Research for my PhD in the Built Environment will build on that work, further considering the determinants and production of adaptive capacity, resilience, sustainability, and vitality.
Helen Beck
My research is focused on the management of public park and recreation services in urban areas. I am particularly interested in the role of the modern green space manager and the way in which our public park services are delivered in the face of extreme poverty. Public parks are on the frontline in our cities responding to complex social and environmental challenges. This role is likely to get more important in the future. Short-term, broken window styles of park management that try to control and sanitize park use are not sustainable. I am exploring the application of an ethic of care to the delivery of park services, what this could entail and how this would change current practice.
Hyun Woo “Chris” Lee and Laura Osburn publish design guide for worker safety
Previous studies on construction hazard prevention have shown that almost 50% of construction fatalities and accidents can be linked to decisions made during the design process. To address the influence of upstream design decisions on worker safety, researchers have developed the Prevention through Design (PtD) concept to proactively eliminate safety hazards in the workplace. In response, CBE researchers, Hyun Woo “Chris” Lee, PD Koon Endowed Associate Professor in Construction Management and Dr. Laura Osburn, Senior Research Scientist in Construction Management,…
2019 UW Resilience and Compassion Initiatives Seed Grant Summary Reports
The 2019 UW Resilience and Compassion Initiatives Seed Grant supported a project called “Raising Resilience: Connecting Compassion + Well-Being with Pedagogy in the College of Built Environments”. This grant allowed a group of CBE faculty to collaboratively explore their pedagogy and support for students through the lenses of resilience and well-being, systems thinking, and biophilic design. Seed Grant leads include Julie Johnson, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Brooke Sullivan, Landscape Architecture Lecturer. The project sought to continue the work…
Sensol Systems to participate in the National Science Foundation (NSF) I-Corps program
Sensol Systems, a startup founded in 2020 by Janie Bube–a recent UW Masters of Landscape Architecture graduate–along with other students at University of Washington, was recently awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) award to participate in the I-Corps program. This NSF program uses experiential education to help researchers gain valuable insight into entrepreneurship, starting a business or industry requirements and challenges. The curriculum integrates scientific inquiry and industrial discovery in an inclusive, data-driven culture driven by rigor, relevance, and evidence….
Inaugural CBE Inspire Fund awardees announced
This winter quarter the College of Built Environments launched its new CBE Inspire Fund. Designed to support CBE research activities for which a relatively small amount of support can be transformative, in mid-February the college awarded the first 6 grants. Projects supported by the CBE Inspire Fund hail from 4 departments within the college and tackling topics such as food systems, mapping cultural spaces, and energy justice. The CBE Inspire Fund is the first research funding opportunity offered by the…
SHARE Lab produces ergonomics best practice booklet and training videos
The SHARE Lab (Safety and Health Advancement through Research and Education) has produced two ergonomics best practice booklets and two training videos on the use of 4-wheel carts in the roofing trade. Housed in the Department of Construction Management, the mission of the SHARE Lab is to promote construction safety and health through evidence-based innovative research, education, and practices. For more information, please contact Contact Dr. Ken-Yu Lin, Associate Professor, if you’d like access to the guide book or the…
The Environmental Psychology of COVID-19 with Professor Lynne Manzo
We are living through a new reality, adjusting to life during a global pandemic. We are all changing our routines, our travel plans, our holiday traditions. For those of us who have been able to keep our jobs through this economic crash, we have had to adapt to a new working environment, working from our homes. Some of us have transformed our homes to accommodate remote learning, and others have moved to be closer to family. Whatever your current living…