Year: 2018

Written by Thaisa Way, faculty director of Urban@UW and Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture in the College of Built Environments.

In cities, access to parks is strongly linked with better health for both people and neighborhoods.

Children suffer higher rates of obesity when they grow up in urban areas without a park in easy reach. Because low-income neighborhoods have fewer green spaces, poorer children are most likely to face other health problems, too, including asthma due to poor air quality.

But access to green space is not the only ingredient in creating healthy communities, my research on urban landscapes shows. Parks are good for people only if people use them. And that’s a question of design.

The first truly public park – a green space paid for by public funds, on publicly owned land and intended to serve the public – was Birkenhead Park, near Liverpool, England. Designed by Joseph Paxton to improve the health of the poor, it opened in 1847 to a crowd of 10,000. When landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted visited Birkenhead in 1850, he was inspired to bring the idea home to “democratic America.”

Continue reading at The Conversation >

Originally posted on The Conversation

Peter Kelley
UW News

In her new book, Kathryn Rogers Merlino, University of Washington associate professor of architecture, argues for the environmental benefit of reusing buildings rather than tearing them down and building anew.

“I was trained as both an architect and architectural historian,” Merlino says, “and have always been drawn to older buildings and the layered narrative of history they embody.”

Her book, “Building Reuse: Sustainability, Preservation, and the Value of Design” was published this year by UW Press. Merlino discussed the book, and the topic of building reuse, with UW News.

What are the central ideas of the book?

It draws from three main concepts, she said. “First, I believe most of us are attracted to older buildings. This is a major driver of why we travel — to learn about cultures. Older buildings can teach us so much about the past. I think the patina of age and the combination of styles and textures in older buildings intrigues all of us.”

The second and perhaps the most important idea is sustainability. Here in the environmentally progressive Pacific Northwest, Merlino said, “We are so good at recycling and composting on a daily basis, but it’s surprising that we have no cultural ethic about reusing our largest manufactured goods — our buildings. We quickly demolish buildings in the name of new, ‘green’ structures, rather than looking for the possibilities of how we can work with what exists. To me there is an inherent conflict in there, and I think we can do better.”

Tearing down buildings and “throwing away the energy and materials embodied in them” is contrary to our values as sustainable builders and environmental stewards of our community, she said. Sustainability is particularly relevant “in a city that has been leading development nationally for the past several years.”

The third idea is that architects have the opportunity to use their knowledge to change the culture around building design “and embrace adaptive reuse as much as we embrace designing new structures.

“I’m not arguing that all buildings are worthy of preservation and reuse, but I think a change in discourse is necessary. Currently we have one way buildings can be saved from the wrecking ball: through historic preservation designation. While this is necessary and applicable for many buildings, it’s a challenging process, and it doesn’t apply to the majority of our building stock — such as the vernacular, everyday buildings that have plenty of good use left in them.”

If a building is not deemed historic, she said, “that can be used as an argument for demolition. Failed historic designations are used to justify demolition all the time. So I think we need to fundamentally shift our perspective on what constitutes ‘significance’ in our buildings.  I think all of these things need to be reevaluated if we are going to have truly sustainable buildings.”

Read the whole interview at UW News >

Jeffrey Hou, ASLA is a professor of landscape architecture at the University of Washington. There, his work and research focus on issues of social and environmental justice including design activism, public space and democracy, and engagement of marginalized groups in design and planning.

What drew you to landscape architecture?

I would say education and a trip to a far-flung place.

Like many in the field, my professional education was first in architecture. As an undergraduate at Cooper Union and like the instructors who taught us (including A.E. Bye), we aspired to be nonconformists, to challenge the established norms and status quo, to take a radical stand on design and the profession. In retrospect, switching to landscape architecture was perhaps my way of being radical.

More directly, when I finished my fourth year at Cooper, I had a chance to visit Pongso-no-Ta’u, a small volcanic island southeast of Taiwan. The indigenous tribe on the island still retained two of their traditional, pre-modern settlements. Built on a complex, sculpted, terraced landform, the settlements provide protection from fierce winter wind while allowing for drainage, privacy, and other social functions. The experience was eye-opening and made me see the built environment beyond the lens of architecture. It drew me to landscape.

I went on to develop a design thesis on the disappearance of architectural sites in my final year at Cooper, worked on several projects in rural Taiwan after graduation, then returned to the States for my MLA study at Penn where Ian McHarg was in his last years of teaching ecological planning studio. What I learned at Penn opened another world for me. It enabled me to see landscape as dynamic systems and processes.

My interest in social issues then brought me to Berkeley, where I took classes in anthropology, planning, and participation. Working with Randy Hester, I got involved in environmental activism (to protect coastal wetland habitats in Taiwan) and learned that landscape architects could be agents of social change. My career path would have been very different had I not studied at Cooper or traveled to Pongo-no-Ta’u 30 years ago.

What is driving you professionally right now?

My professional and scholarly work has been driven by my interest in issues of social and environmental justice. The relationship between landscape architecture and social and environmental justice is twofold. On one hand, the environmental challenges that we face today are in essence social, political, and cultural. They require us to look beyond technical and rationalistic solutions. On the other hand, the impact of social and environmental catastrophes tend to weigh heavier in socially and economically disadvantaged communities than those that are more privileged. I see it as our ethical and professional responsibility to address the deep social and economic divides in our society as we deal with the impacts of climate change, access to clean water, air, and food, and other issues of equity and justice in the environment.

In addition to these issues, I am also interested in the agency of ordinary people in transforming and shaping the built environment. This stems from my earlier collaborative research on community gardening in Seattle in which we learned about the profound, collective efforts of individuals and communities in transforming not only sites in the neighborhood but also city decisions regarding parks, green space, and food policy. I carried this focus into my later work looking at public space and placemaking, including Insurgent Public Space (2010) and Transcultural Cities (2013).

Historically, landscape architecture has been viewed as a domain of professionals which dismisses the agency of citizens and communities despite the rhetoric of participation and engagement. By discounting the agency of the public, we lose our biggest ally in shaping the built environment. In my teaching, research, and practice, I try to focus on a model of co-production and co-creation that challenges the established paradigm and bias.

Read the whole interview on lafoundation.org >

LAF’s Perspectives interview series showcases landscape architects from diverse backgrounds discussing how they came to the profession and where they see it heading.

Every year, students at the UW study a city and help that city with its biggest problems. This year, they’ll study Bellevue.

Running a city like Bellevue, a person can get consumed by the problems of the day. “Our staff are so busy, because of the level of service we provide to the city residents,” said Danielle Verwahren, a Bellevue official.

In that environment, politics and money can narrow a bureaucrat’s view of what’s possible. But students haven’t been worn down by countless public meetings and budget negotiations, yet.

The UW Livable City Year program brings these two sides together.

This week, students met Bellevue officials at the UW for the first time. In the year ahead, they’ll spend hours talking to Bellevue residents and businesses. Under the guidance of faculty, they’ll study the latest academic research on making cities livable. And at the end of the year, they’ll produce glossy reports officials can share with the wider Bellevue public.

Read the whole story at KUOW >