Christopher Meek is Professor of Architecture at the University of Washington and Director of the Center for Integrated Design at the University’s College of Built Environments. Professor Meek’s areas of research include building energy performance for new construction and retrofits, daylighting, visual comfort, electric lighting, and climate responsive design. His work bridges practice, research, and education with collaboration between practitioners, faculty, and students. Under his leadership, the Center advances its mission through interconnected research, technical assistance, and educational programs that create impact in three primary areas: (1) influential new construction and renovation projects that achieve exceptional energy performance targets and serve as a model for future buildings; (2) the development and advancement of tools, methods, and technologies to accelerate energy efficient buildings through peer-reviewed publications and competitive grant awards, and; (3) the delivery of educational programs and experiences that form the next generation of leaders in the building industry.
Over the past decade, Professor Meek has consulted on over 20 million square feet of commercial and institutional buildings including working, learning, and healing environments including the net-zero energy Bullitt Center in Seattle. His research has been funded by the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Energy, the Illuminating Engineering Society, the Bullitt Foundation, and the American Institute of Architects. Professor Meek teaches graduate and undergraduate level courses on building design and technology at the UW Department of Architecture.
Professor Meek is co-author of Daylighting Design in the Pacific Northwest and Daylighting and Integrated Lighting Design. He was elevated to Fellowship in the American Institute of Architects in 2020.
Mehlika Inanici, Ph.D. is a Professor and the former director of the Design technology track of the Master of Science in Architecture program at the University of Washington, Department of Architecture.
The focus of her research is computational lighting design and analysis. The underlying presumption in her research and teaching is that analytical approaches employed throughout the design processes help architects envision the performance of their designs, accelerate and improve design decisions, and reduce the uncertainty of the outcome. A large body of her research centers on developing and utilizing computer-based (day)lighting analysis techniques and metrics that can facilitate occupant comfort, satisfaction, health, and productivity improvements, in conjunction with significant energy savings.
Inanici has authored or co-authored highly influential papers on the use of high dynamic range (HDR) photography to measure and evaluate existing environments and to conduct psychophysical studies on visual comfort and preference. Her work on lighting measurements with HDR photography was selected as one of the “25 classic papers” in the 50-year history of the Journal of Lighting Research and Technology (2018) among the 2048 papers published between 1969 to 2018. Some of her papers are on the most cited list in Leukos (the journal of Illuminating Engineering Society) and Lighting Research and Technology.
She developed Lark Multispectral Lighting tool in collaboration with ZGF Architects LLC. Lark is an open-source software to simulate the non-visual effects of light that entrains the human circadian system. She also co-developed hdrscope in collaboration with Viswanathan Kumaragurubaran.
Her research has been funded by the US Department of Energy, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the University of Washington Royalty Research Fund, UW Built Environments Innovations Collaborative Grant, and the Nuckolls Funding for Lighting Education.
Prof. Inanici’s teaching focuses on graduate-level courses on building performance simulation (Arch 524 Design Technology V, Arch 582 Computational Lighting Research, and 598 Performance-Driven Design) and research methodologies. She supervises students from the Master of Architecture, Master of Science in Architecture, and the Ph.D. program in Built Environments.
Inanici has received her Ph.D. degree from the University of Michigan. She has Master of Science degrees both in Architecture (University of Michigan) and Building Science (METU), and a Bachelor of Architecture degree (METU). Previously, she worked at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley California. Dr. Inanici is a member of the Illuminating Engineering Society, the International Commission on Illumination, and the International Building Performance Simulation Association.
Heather Burpee, Research Professor at the University of Washington Integrated Design Lab, is a nationally recognized scholar in high-performance buildings — buildings that reduce energy and promote healthy indoor environments. Her work bridges practice, research, and education with collaboration between practitioners, faculty, and students. Her research addresses both qualitative and quantitative aspects of buildings including tracking health impacts and synergies between environmental quality, natural systems, sensory environments, and energy efficiency. She has led several efforts to create protocols for performance-based tracking and auditing for hospitals, higher education, and commercial buildings. She regularly applies these roadmaps in practice, consulting with leading design teams nationally that are charged with implementing high-performance buildings.
As the Director of Education and Outreach at the UW IDL, she leads a tour program at the Bullitt Center “The World’s Greenest Building,” and develops curriculum and implementation of other educational opportunities related to high-performance buildings to multi-faceted audiences. Heather is a Pacific Northwest native and received her Master of Architecture degree from the University of Washington College of Built Environments and her undergraduate degree in biology from Whitman College.
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.
Professor Carrie Sturts Dossick, P.E. is a Professor of Construction Management and the Associate Dean of Research in the College of Built Environments, University of Washington. Dr. Dossick also holds an adjunct professor appointment in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and is currently the Vice-Chair of the National BIM Standard -US Planning Committee. Dr. Dossick co-directs the Communication, Technology, and Organizational Practices lab in the Center for Education and Research in Construction (CERC). Dr. Dossick has over two decades of research and teaching experience focused on emerging collaboration methods and technologies such as Building Information Modeling (BIM). She is an active member of the National Institute of Building Sciences BIM Council, and the Academic Interoperability Coalition (AiC). Current research and teaching projects include Cybersecurity for Large Institutional owners, a Pankow funded project on Owner Decision-making and Project Delivery, The Core BIM Module for the National BIM Standard US, an Introduction to BIM for Construction Management Certificate with Skanska, a new online Certificate for digital fabrication workflows for concrete formwork with Turner Construction, and the IB Index with the University of Technology Sydney. Recent work includes BIM-based information exchange between design, construction and operations, BIM Standards and Processes for the Port of Seattle, the use of Virtual Reality for Facilities Management Training, and BIM workflows for Preconstruction Services. Recent Technical Publications. She has received funding from the National Science Foundation, U.S. Army, U.S. Department of Education, General Services Administration, Mechanical Contractors Association of Western Washington, Sound Transit, Skanska USA Building, Mortenson Company, University of Washington Royalty Research Fund, University of Washington Capital Projects and Facilities services.