College of Built Environments at the University of Washington.
Student Profiles
Information about Current Students:
Student Honors, Awards, Fellowships:
- Ozge Sade: 2009-2010 Fellow, Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civilization
- Meriwether Wilson: 2008-2010 Honorary Fellow, University of Edinburgh, School of GeoSciences
- Kuang-Ting Huang: 2008-2009 China Studies Program Fellowship
- Paula Patterson: 2008-2009 American-Scandinavian Foundation dissertation research fellowship
- Jayde Lin Roberts: 2008-2009 Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad fellowship
- Jayde Lin Roberts: 2008-2009 Gething Travel Award
- Kuei-Hsien Liao: 2007-2008 Chester Fritz Endowment Fellow
- Ashish Nangia: 2007-2008 Research Cluster funding from Simpson Center for the Humanities
- Eric Noll: 2007 Public Humanities for Doctoral Students Fellowship
- Ashish Nangia: 2006-2007 India Association of Western Washington South Asian Studies Scholarship
- Paula Patterson: 2006-2007 Valle Scholarship, Finland
- Jayde Lin Roberts: 2006-2007 Blakemore Freeman Fellowships for Advanced Asian Language Study
- Paula Patterson: 2005-2006 FLAS Fellowship for French
- Meriwether Wilson: 2005-2006 Henry Luce Fellowship
- Paula Patterson: Summer 2005, FLAS Fellowship for Finnish
- Jayde Lin Roberts: 2004-2005 FLAS Fellowship for Hindi
- Paula Patterson: 2004, Kate Neal Kinley Memorial
- Ken Camarata: 2003-2005 Gerberding Fellowship
- Ken Yocom: 2002-2006 National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) Fellowship
M.Sc. of Architecture (1996-2002), Sahand Univ. of Technology, Iran
Registered Architect, Iran
Prior to pursuing my PhD studies at the University of Washington, I spent some years as a full-time teaching and research faculty at an Iranian university. My background in architecture interested me in the interaction between the environment and architecture, so I have primarily researched Environmental Control Systems and studied the climate-responsiveness aspects of architecture, and, in particular, vernacular architecture. In addition, I have studied the role the architectural design can play in achieving environmental sustainability. The results of my research were several papers presented at international conferences and two books translated from English into Persian.
My main research interest for doctoral study is sustainable architecture and construction, in its environmental sense. Specifically, I'm interested in developing a green building rating system as a tool capable of evaluating the performance of buildings with regard to environmental sustainability. Although several systems of this kind, including LEED, BREEAM, etc., have been developed in different countries over the last decade, there are major critiques of their ability to achieve environmental goals and questions about whether they are comprehensive enough to include all aspects of architecture and construction.
My research interests fall broadly into the categories of urban geography and landscape communication: the intersection of people, information, and space. I am interested in how we communicate in and with space as well as how we can "read" the built landscape as a text in order to uncover its subtle meanings and hidden agendas. More specifically, I am interested in how meanings are produced, presented, and interpreted by various users of places and how agendas are built-in by designers & planners and enforced by regulatory agencies. Furthermore, I am intrigued by how people perceive, assess, appropriate, and assert authority within the complex visual, auditory, and spatial din of built spaces. Moreover, I want to examine the shifting boundaries that define public versus private spaces, with special focus on the liminal areas in between.
As an archivist, I want to document the multiple conversations recorded in the frequently ephemeral artifacts of communication left behind in our public spaces. As an emerging scholar, I want to analyze these narratives by incorporating social science methods into studies of public spaces, placemaking, and urban contexts. My desire is to illuminate networks of communication, especially among marginalized populations, and the roles that various actors and stakeholders from transgressive to official play in the cultural maps of our built environments.
My pedagogic goals include encouraging students to find the extraordinary in the ordinary, to make sense of the subtleties in everyday places, and to critically assess their physical and social surroundings. I believe in balancing theory by testing it with first-hand observation in the field. Moreover, with the growing ubiquity of electronic technologies, I am eager to debate and explore the new ethical challenges, as well as opportunities, that they pose to research and scholarship.
In focusing on communication through non-traditional forms and novel expressions, I hope to promote a form of "urban/landscape literacy" that will give researchers, planners, and citizens the tools to better interpret our cities and to create more humane places. As cities face new challenges and growing pressures, I hope that my work will lead to places that are conducive to a congenial social climate, that are sustainable, and that facilitate a better quality of life.
B.A. Architecture, Tunghai University (2000)
M.S. Building and Planning, National Taiwan University (2003)
Due to my involvement as planning practitioner in a series of participatory planning and cultural landscape preservation projects in Taiwan, I am interested in the evolution of planning profession and its consequences, particularly from a comparative perspective. In order to expand my views of how planning is practiced in different social and political contexts, I investigated into a case of urban planning in Southeastern China (Zhenjiang City in Jiangsu Province), presented in my thesis A Case Study of Heritage Conservation and Old City Renewal in China: Zhenjiang City and Xijin Ferry Historic District. Through the process, I gradually expanded my interest from planning practice to its institutionalization and got interested in seeking the common ground among the different political entities in East Asia, including China, Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Following the current academic concerns with the East Asian developmental states, I will focus on the institutional change of the planning profession and explore its political embedded-ness in the process of state transformation. Thus, my dissertation would begin with empirical-based studies (using qualitative case studies to develop a comparative framework) and then go back to the case of China, questioning how the professionalization of planning is consistently held in check not only by the socialist state in the pre-reform era but also by the capitalist one in the reform era.
MSc in Building and Planning, National Taiwan University, Taiwan, 2004
Exchange student in Tilburg University, Netherlands, 2003-2004
BSc in Architecture, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan, 1997
Before pursuing further study in the Built Environment program, I worked as designer and planner in Taiwan, participating in community design and cultural landscape preservation projects, especially on the cases in the mountainous area inhabited by the indigenous people. With these experiences, I am very much interested in sustaining the nexus between indigenous communities and nature by practicing holistic landscape preservation. How people could actively participate in the process of preservation and meanwhile maintain their subjectivity has always been one of my research interests.
In addition to looking at people's dwelling in natural environments, how people spatially deal with their everyday life in the urban context is a research field I want to explore. In terms of people's everyday practice, what kind of action would be enacted to maintain their ability to narrate their spatial relations within the city? How could they participate in the making of the urban landscape instead of being isolated within those visible and invisible boundaries? As a researcher from Taiwan, I would like to conduct these questions in the context of East Asia, with the hope to enact my research in actions in the future.
Ph.C., Ph.D. program in the Built Environment
LEED Accredited Professional (2004)
Master of Landscape Architecture, University of Pennsylvania (2003)
Bachelor of Arts in Economics, National Taiwan University (NTU), Taipei, Taiwan (1996)
Many riverine cities across the globe have long histories of fighting the rivers for development. As a means to prevent the city from flooding, flood defense infrastructure (including river engineering works and the stormwater drainage networks) has become an integral part of urban river dynamics. At the expense of the health of the urban rivers, current flood infrastructure fails to even provide safety. This reveals how poorly we understand the dynamics of rivers and watersheds, and also calls for a re-examination of the fundamental assumptions behind the design of modern hydrological infrastructures and even cities.
Many environmental problems humans face today derive from our ignorance of the complex nature of the systems we are dealing with. Modern cities continue to suffer from flooding because we treat the river as a simple hydraulic system and use a simple solution to deal with flooding: getting the water out of the way as soon as possible. Flooding, however, is a subject of synergistic effects of both human and natural factors. It is important to recognize that the river in the urbanized watershed is not totally "natural," in the sense that it is a phenomenon emerging out of complex interactions between natural and human processes—it is a coupled human and natural system.
My dissertation research is toward understanding urban rivers as coupled human and natural systems and urban flooding as a complex phenomenon, exploring the feedback loop among urban flood-defense infrastructure, flood disasters, perception of floods, and river health. I am also investigating spatial strategies that could reduce flood disasters and enhance/restore the health of urban rivers. Essentially, I intend to conduct interdisciplinary research that integrates urban design, ecohydrology (environmental flows), and flood management.
I spent 16 years working in the software industry prior to resuming my educational studies, and am interested in researching and developing new software tools / technologies that help the AEC industries migrate to the use of Digital Technologies. Specifically this includes: Integrated Practice (IP), Building Information Modeling (BIM), Collaboration, Rapid Prototyping (RP) and Construction Simulation. My dissertation research will focus on shared cognition and its interaction with 3D construction representations.
B.A. Community, Regional and Environmental Studies, Bard College (1997), M.U.P. UW (2005)
APA scholarship (Spring 2003) Valle Scholar, Gothenburg, Sweden (September 2004–February 2005)
I've had a long and abiding interest in what I like to call "human/land interactions," in objection to the dichotomization of human and nature. This human/land interplay is a critical nexus for issues of ecology, human justice, interspecies justice and therefore land use planning and the design of the built environment. I have several current research interests including: regional planning, bicycle transportation planning (the subject of my master's thesis), the relationships between behavior and environment (the topic of my thesis research on bicycle transportation in Gothenburg, Sweden), visual elements of representational theory and environmental justice. I have used a combination of quantitative (e.g. GIS and statistical analysis) and qualitative (e.g. historical and visual) methods in past research and continue to employ that hybrid approach in my present work. My work has also combined visual methods with the more conventional academic medium of words. Most of the visual representations that I have incorporated into my academic writings are either photographs or diagrammatic sketches including: conceptual models, functional models and graphic renderings of place and space. Presently I am engaged in a new effort to work with and study film and video media. One potential dissertation topic is the role of film and video media in pedagogical theory, more specifically in the representation of the human experience of the city, especially as related to design and planning education. My work has been strongly informed by a Lefebvrean approach to understanding the production of space.
B.A. Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley (1996); M.U.P, University of Washington (2004).
My backgrounds in Rhetoric and Urban Planning connect as I seek to understand the construction and effects of culture, landscape, and policy within my current research. Broadly, my research interests are to understand the effect of conservation and cultural heritage preservation policies on local communities. Particularly, my research will focus on understanding change in cultural landscapes under management by UNESCO's World Heritage Program. While current conservation and preservation policies are often focused (for good reason) on conserving or preserving "natural" environments or "cultural artifacts" towards the goal of biological and cultural diversity, little attention is focused on the effect of these policies on the local communities that are inseparable from the places these policies are designed to conserve and protect. I generally take conservation and preservation to be "good" practices. But, if we are to be successful at maintaining places that are unique and of local significance, then we need to look closely at whether our policies to preserve biological and cultural diversity maintain the necessary conditions for local characteristics of place to survive and evolve.
B.A. Human Geography & Urban Studies, University of British Columbia (1999)
MScPl. Urban Planning, University of Toronto (2001)
During my studies at the University of Toronto, I worked primarily on urban design issues and youth participatory planning processes, integrating the two in my current issues paper on Skateboard Park planning and designing. After completing my Masters in Urban Planning, I worked at the Philadelphia City Planning Commission as a policy planner in the Strategic Planning and Policy Division. At the Planning Commission, my work focused primarily on public open space, parks, and recreation. I was also involved with the School District of PhiladelphiaÕs capital budget program.
My current interests remain focused on urban youth, participatory planning, and open public spaces. Specifically, I hope to explore the cultural conflicts that arise from the use, design, control, and identity of urban spaces. I am interested in the production, preservation, and meaning of public space as it relates to urban youth. Central to my current studies are the issues of behavior, marginality, regulations, and rights relative to public spaces. In my professional experiences as an Urban Planner I encountered few instances in which youth were actively sought to participate in the development or revitalization of public spaces. Most policy-makers seem to have a limited desire to understand the reasons for conflict and the meanings of space to youth. I want to better understand the spatial dimensions of cultural conflicts of youth and public spaces.
M.A. China Studies, University of Washington
B.A. Architecture, UC Berkeley
My Ph.D. research will explore the locality/ies of identity in the translocal Chinese diaspora, focusing specifically on the Chinese-Burmese in Yangon (Rangoon) Chinatown, and in Mandalay, Burma/Myanmar. What is the relationship between the overseas Chinese sense of identity and their sense and construction of place?
As a Chinese-American who was born in Taiwan and grew up in Southern California, the confusion and potential of transnational and translocal interactions have been potent forces in my life. These forces not only affected me individually, compelling me to question my own identity, they are constantly manifesting themselves in the built environment. How and why do cities or districts take on new forms or acquire new identities? What are the forces behind these changes?
Before returning to school in 2002, I was a simultaneous and consecutive interpreter (Mandarin and English) in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, and a facilitator for participatory and team building processes.
M.S. History of Architecture, Istanbul Technical University (2005)
B. Arch. Istanbul Technical University (2002)
I am interested in the history and theory of architecture and my studies focus on the interaction between the political developments and the progress of architecture in Turkey. Due to their representative aspects that reflect the cultural, social and political characteristics of the communities to which they belong, museum buildings and their interpretation in terms of social memory and the role of memory in politics are of particular interest in my studies.
M.S. in Civil Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2006)
M.S. in Architectural Engineering, Yonsei University, Korea (2004)
B.A. in Architectural Engineering, Yonsei University, Korea (1999)
My research interests are the improvement of productivity in construction industry, collaboration among participants in construction projects, modeling and simulation of construction processes, and application of emerging technologies in construction production processes. Currently, I am working toward developing "Dynamic Productivity-Based Planning for Large-Scale Construction Projects" that is expected to overcome the limitations of current construction planning methods by modeling complex and dynamic construction production processes and taking into account changing business environments in the construction industry such as process integration, close collaboration, and adopting emerging technologies. This research will involve developing an agent-based organizational simulation model, building productivity causal relation models capable of simulating performance of construction processes, and also developing a way to define construction activities in schedule networks to make them more compatible with process analysis.
I hold a B.S. in Naval Architecture & Ocean Engineering from the National Taiwan University (1996), and an M.Arch. from the University of Washington (2002)
The primary focus of my doctoral studies will be the integration of sustainability and cultural identity into small-scale built environment. The intention is to assist designers to re-achieve sustainability in a built environment that befits the cultural context. Bio-climatic design inherited from the vernacular or developed by building science research will be carefully studied in order to be integrated into a design vocabulary and knowledge that is commonly agreed and practiced by the architectural profession.
I am a first-year student on the History, Theory, Representation track, developing a dissertation topic on residential architecture of the 1950s and 1960s in Japan. In that era modes of living and the conception of the family were fluid and rapidly-changing; in response architects produced residential work of remarkable sophistication. My initial research focuses on exploring how innovative design strategies were developed by architects, often in the face of severely constrained resources and other difficult conditions. I am interested in all scales of design, from furniture to the city, and especially in how architects saw their work in relation to everyday life. My approach is broadly comparative, considering the Japanese discourse in relation to the global. Among the architects whose work is of interest to me are: Ikebe Kiyoshi, Kikutake Kiyonori, Seike Kiyoshi, Shinohara Kazuo, Azuma Takamitsu, Yoshimura Junzo, and Yoshizaka Takamasa.
My previous academic work includes a B.A. in political theory from Michigan State University, and an M.S. in Architecture (history and theory) from the University of Pennsylvania.
Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg is a student in the Built Environment program at the University of Washington, an Assistant Professor at the University of Idaho, and Director of the Integrated Design Lab in Boise (IDL-Boise). His undergraduate degree in architecture is from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and his M.Arch. is from the University of Washington. He teaches classes in daylighting and simulation techniques for integrated design to graduate students and design professionals in Boise. Kevin opened the IDL-Boise in 2004 for the University of Idaho and has successfully secured and completed grants for the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, Environmental Protection Agency, Idaho Power Company and the Lighting Research Center totaling over $1,000,000. As part of the Pacific Northwest Daylight Lab Network, Kevin has consulted on over 400 projects with architects regarding daylight and energy in buildings since 2000. He has a long-term relationship with UW's Integrated Design Lab-Puget Sound and continues to research daylight in buildings at UW. His doctoral research is currently titled: Accommodating Visual Preference While Optimizing Energy Savings in Workspaces with Daylight & View. He works with Professors Inanici and Loveland.
My current Ph.D. research is investigating the history of transportation in the U.S. national parks. My research will explore from a historical and ecological perspective how to protect and preserve the park's natural resources, while accommodating the public's ability to visit the parks without causing irreparable harm. I believe a new strategy is required to address the critical transportation issues in these parks. I would like to formulate, develop, and evaluate a strategic model that explores alternatives to traditional modes of transport within national parks. There are three basic components of my research: conflict resolution, environmental ethics, and the ecological effects of roads (road ecology).
The main impetus for my decision to apply to the PhD program in the Built Environment, at the University of Washington is the opportunity to work in a program that offers me a unique opportunity to investigate the complicated problem of human-environment relationships. This will allow me to realize my belief that environments can be manipulated and planned to enhance the quality of people's lives. I believe that significant impacts on the development of sustainable responses to environmental challenges can best be achieved through education and research.
I currently work as a consultant for the National Park Service (NPS) in the Cultural Landscape Division at the Seattle Cascade Support Office and the Alaska Regional Office in Anchorage, Alaska. My work there focuses on the documentation of existing conditions, analysis and evaluation of the natural systems and features within park boundaries, and the formulation of a treatment plan that ensures the preservation and protection of the park's natural and cultural heritage. I am presently in the process of developing a treatment plan for Crater Lake National Park's Rim Drive in Oregon and the Dyea Townsite and Chilkoot Trail in Klondike Goldrush National Park, Skagway, Alaska.
I have served for the past three years as Professor David Streatfield's teaching assistant covering the full range of urban and landscape design history courses offered at University of Washington. These courses include both Ancient and Modern Landscape History, and the History of Urban Design.
I received my Masters Degree in Landscape Architecture and Bachelor of Arts in Asian Design at the University of Washington. The chair of my dissertation committee is Professor David Streatfield; co-chairs are Associate Professor Kristina Hill, Dean Bob Mugerauer, Professor Gail Dubrow, and Professor Hilda Blanco.
M.E.S. Yale University (Coastal Resources and Anthropology), 1984
B.A. Duke University (Zoology & Botany Major; Minor Anthropology), 1981
I am pursuing a Ph.D. in the Built Environment through the "Sustainable Systems and Prototypes" track. My research examines the influences of built environments on marine and coastal systems, and explores how human-created interventions can be ecologically positive rather than degenerative for long-term coastal-marine functioning. Examples include marine restoration opportunities that arise through the revitalization of urban waterfronts, and planning and design horizons to mitigate impacts of anticipated climate change in coastal-marine areas.
My interest in "built-environment" solutions as an avenue to enhance the functionality of marine ecosystems is an evolution from my career horizon of the last twenty years. I have worked as a coastal-marine ecologist, planner and policy strategist for various multi-national initiatives organizations (World Bank, UNDP, UNESCO, et al.) in over 30 countries, and remain an active member of the World Commission of Protected Areas. In spite of major strides in the marine conservation arena, most coastal and marine habitats are increasingly degraded and fragmented by human influences; therefore, it is urgent that we re-think and re-shape built environment paradigms to complement conservation efforts.
My course of study is collaborative between the College of Architecture, Urban Planning (BE) and the College of Oceanography / School of Marine Affairs, through which I am pursing both the Ph.D. in the Built Environment and a Graduate Certificate in "Interdisciplinary and Policy Dimensions of the Earth Sciences."
M.S. National Taiwan University, Graduate Institute of Building and Planning, 2002
B.A. National Chengchi University, Department of Land Economics and Administration. 1998
My research interests are: cultural preservation and development in ethnic communities; community development, urban planning, environmental laws and policy, especially in Asian cities; community development studies; environmental protection and international network studies.