Faculty
Professor
Associate Professor Assistant Professor Lecturers- Luanne Smith
- Nhon Truong
THAISA WAY
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Assistant Professor
MLA Program Co-Coordinator
Department of Landscape Architecture
Adjunct, Department of Architecture
Faculty, Historic Preservation Certificate
348F Gould Hall
Box 355734
Seattle WA 98195-5734
206 685 2523
tway@u.washington.edu
Dr. Thaisa Way is a landscape historian teaching history, theory, and design. Dr. Way received a Bachelor of Science in Conservation and Natural Resources from the University of California, Berkeley (1983), a Masters of Architectural History from the University of Virginia (1991), and a PhD in Architecture from Cornell University (2005). Her dissertation, Woman as Force in Landscape Architecture, 1893-1942, was acknowledged with a student honor award in research by the American Society of Landscape Architects. She has served as an Enid A. Haupt Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution and as a Henry Luce Fellow in American Art as well as receiving awards from the ASLA, Clarence Stein Institute, and the Graham Foundation. She has published and lectured on landscape history, in particular the role of women as professionals and practitioners, and her book , Unbounded Practices: Women, Landscape Architecture, and Early Twentieth Century Design, has recently (2009) been published by the University of Virginia Press, supported in part by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation and the Landscape Studies Foundation’s David Coffin Award. Dr. Way taught in the Faculty of Landscape Architecture at the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry before joining the department here in Seattle.
Dr. Way's interests are in the histories of landscape architecture as a profession, practice, and discipline. In particular her work considers how diverse approaches have shaped and informed relationships between people and landscape, cultures and nature, and practices and professions, Her teaching and scholarship seek to challenge our thinking about the history of landscape architecture by considering the active engagement of marginalized groups and individuals simultaneously as agents of change and signifiers of culture. Her research has asked how gender has served as a lens through which design is practiced and the landscape is created and formed. The act of professional practice has also been a topic addressed in her work as she investigates the relationships between practice of an art, application of a science, and participation in a profession. These inquiries offer alternative narratives of the profession, practice, and discipline of landscape architecture.
Another area of research is directed at sustainable design theory. Recent thesis projects have advanced the practice of sustainable design which must, in turn, address the complex web of environmental sustainability, social justice, and economic viability while creating potential for a rich and meaningful aesthetic experience. Landscape architecture has a critical opportunity to place itself at the center of contemporary discourse and policy-making on issues of ‘sustainable design’ and global warming. The department's vision to advance our knowledge of how we develop ecological infrastructures through our attention to natural processes, ecological planning and design, as well as technology is an important step towards leadership in the discipline and in the larger community of those concerned with sustainable development. Histories of design and the landscape play a critical role in the understanding, articulation, and development of the discipline and, more specifically, the potential of landscape architects to dynamically contribute to the making of exemplar culturally-based places.