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EVENTSCAPE [SPRING
2009] DEPARTMENT NEWS Winter Quarter had Daniel Winterbottom in Guatamala on a Design Build Project with eleven students in landscape architecture and both Lynne Manzo and Nancy Rottle on sabbatical. Nancy is currently in New Zealand on a Fulbright and Lynne is busy launching another housing study as you can read below.
Admissions were higher this year, as is true in many programs, so the competition was tough. We are looking forward to a terrific class next year. With a diverse faculty of nine now, the department is in a strong position to lead into the future. On that note, please check the website as our annual report for 2007-2008 is out and has been put on the department website. FACULTY NEWS
While on sabbatical leave, Associate Professor Lynne Manzo gave several invited talks, including a paper to the American Institute of Architects/Association of Community Design special joint symposium on affordable housing in Phoenix, AZ, on mixed income housing strategies. She also participated in a panel discussion on mixing income and poverty deconcentration strategies at the Urban Affairs Association annual conference in Chicago, Il, in early March. In January, Lynne also presented a paper on the ethic of care at the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture. On the local level, Lynne was invited to give a talk at Swift and Co, the Seattle-based landscape architecture design firm on ethical challenges in practice, based on her book, "Environmental Dilemmas: Ethical Decision Making," co-authored with Robert Mugerauer. She also gave a talk at the City of Seattle's Dept of Planning and Development in January about how environmental psychology can inform design and planning practice in the city. Lynne is currently launching a five-year funded research project investigating the impact of the redevelopment of a former public housing site in Bremerton into a mixed-income community through the HOPE VI program. This research, conducted in collaboration with Prof Rachel Kleit of the UW Evans School of Public Affairs, will track residents and assess quality of life outcomes over the course of the five year grant. Associate Professor Iain Robertson taught the community design studio for the BLA program this winter. The 402 studio culminated in a combined charrette and presentation on Monday 9 March with Ms. Sheila Haase's 5th grade students at McCarver Elementary School in the Hilltop neighborhood of Tacoma. The event, orchestrated by the Greater Metroparks Foundation, provided a huge array of community leaders, politicians, business leaders, agency and school personnel, UWT leaders, local foundations and philanthropists with an opportunity to observe our class work with 5th graders on their design models (that they developed with us in an earlier charrette) for a proposed neighborhood park on the school's grounds. This was followed by a walk-around review of our design solutions by guests and the 5th graders. The studio provided landscape architecture students with hands-on experience of working with a "client" that we took to consist of McCarver school children and neighborhood families. it also provided us with a fascinating opportunity to observe and contribute to the process of design decision-making as we interacted with community and political leaders, regulatory staff and potential donors to promote exciting ideas for what will be a much-needed neighborhood park. Participation by the UWT Chancellor and the Director of the Urban Studies program indicated their interest in the studio teaching model, which combines teaching applied research and service into an integrated set of activities) as a technique for fostering greater interaction between UWT and the local community. In what was an interesting, activity-packed quarter, Iain found himself needing to do a "Fireside Chat" at Horizon House on the replanting work at Freeway Park at the same time as his Cultivating Creativity seminar. Undeterred, he took the class along to the presentation where the group of mostly-freshmen Honors students were exposed to the lives of Horizon House's retirement community. In terms of "cultivating" their "creativity" the session was fascinating. It provided students, whose lives are largely circumscribed by classes and dorm life, with a view of the longer arc of human life and an opportunity to reflect on how their education fits into their life goals. Assistant Professor Ben Spencer has been focused for much of his time on teaching- having taken students through courses in digital representation, materials, and a studio course focused on urban systems. He is working with the CBE shop committee to help develop and finalize digital fabrication equipment and design build tool purchases. With two new faculty members in Architecture, the college now has a critical mass in the area of digital fabrication. Ben’s participation will make sure that landscape architecture is actively engaged in these efforts. Ben also helped organize and implement the Digital Exchange this quarter – student run software workshops for ARCH LARCH, CM and UP students- Plans are in the works to expand this program next quarter, allowing students to develop advanced digital skills and knowledge as they become interested. Ben has also been working with the Tumbas Reales Museum of Lambayeque, University of Bergamo-UNESCO Chair and Architects w/o Borders-Seattle to design a roof structure to protect the oldest murals ever discovered in the Americas and plan a community-based tourism industry in the adjacent town of Ventarron, Peru. The project enlists the Ventarron community as stewards of the site's cultural heritage (rather than its looters) and leverage's the site's assets to create income generation opportunities, protect local ecosystems, and promote health and education in the town. The project will serve as case study for community integrated preservation of cultural hertitage sites in Peru. It will be included in the upcoming exhibit "Design Making Change" at the Seattle AIA starting March 17th. He is hoping that this project, and associated work he will be pursuing this summer in the squatter settlements of Lima will serve as a platform fo design/build/evaluate summer studios in coming years. Finally, after five years of prototyping, negotiating with the US Patent office and waiting Ben was awarded his first patent (for Paralign Blinds) in early March. In the midst of year two at the UW, Assistant Professor Thaisa Way has been busy teaching history, research, and design studios. She taught the landscape history survey in the fall covering 10,000 years and every continent in 10 weeks: what a tour! This winter she co-taught with Professor David C. Streatfield the course on modernism in landscape architecture- a leisurely stroll through the 20th century, at least in theory.
Recently Thaisa launched a research project focused on Rich Haag and his groundbreaking work in the Pacific Northwest as well as his legacy as a teacher and mentor. Should anyone have special additions to Rich’s incredible legacy, please send them to Thaisa. She has also overseen a collection of essays focused on the Alaska Yukon Pacific Exhibition (AYP) with authors including Professor Jeffrey Ochsner and Assistant Professor Kathryn Rogers Merlino, both in the Department of Architecture, Assistant Professor Manish Chalana in the Department of Urban Design and Planning, and Tyler Sprague, Phd student in the Program in Built Environments. the authors presented their work at the AYP Symposium on March 7 at MOHAI. The articles will be published in the Pacific Northwest Quarterly this summer as a two-issue collection. Thaisa also chaired a session for the annual meeting of the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA) in January in Arizona and a session for the annual meeting of the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) in April in Pasadena on cultural landscape studies and research. Thaisa was recently elected President of the Landscape History Chapter of SAH for a two year term. She was also elected a full member of ASLA this winter, a honor for a historian. |
Studios focused on a range issues from research on the issues of King Street in Seattle to garden designs for elementary schools. As you can read below, the faculty and students continue to play an active role in our community of greater Seattle. We also were privileged to have been able to host a number of our local practitioners and professionals in reviews and for guest lectures. This in addition to a few who are able to teach for us, including Luanne Smith, Chad Wickers, and Jamie Finklestein, is part of what makes our program so rich. Thank you to all who participated and we look forward to seeing more of you in the future.
Associate Professor Jeff Hou returned from Sabbatical leave this winter to teach a community design studio in Seattle’s International District. The project was to develop a plan for revitalizing and activating S. King Street, an important neighborhood corridor that connects Chinatown/International District and Little Saigon. In January, he presented a paper titled “Design Buffet: Serving Multiple Constituents in a Community-University Partnership” at the CELA Conference in Tucson, AZ. He and Prof. Dan Abramson of Urban Design and Planning receive funding from the College of Built Environments to organize the inaugural 
Thaisa’s book, Unbounded Practices: Women and Landscape Architecture in the Early Twentieth Century, comes out this month. She has been invited to speak about the research framework for the book for the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation Fellows Colloquim at The Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York City in June.