Dear Alumni and Friends,
I hope that this letter finds you and yours healthy and thriving as we enter 2025. Now in my second year as chair, I’m delighted to tell you that the department is healthy and thriving amidst exciting changes and impressive accomplishments by faculty, students, and alumni.
Department News
Upon my appointment as chair last year, the department released a draft Strategic Plan and was externally reviewed through a very positive and insightful UW Ten-Year Program Review process and report. The simultaneity of these two events was fortuitous as they are well aligned and provide clear direction for the department. Both call for greater administrative capacity for fiscal analysis and strategic planning and we spent the past year restructuring the department administration in response. Claudine Manio has been promoted to department Administrator and we are delighted to welcome Tracy Pitt from UW Tacoma as Claudine’s replacement as Graduate Program Advisor. We also welcome Nancy Dragun as our new Admissions and Outreach Coordinator. Together with Undergraduate Program Advisor Kim Sawada and Manager Shanna Sukol, our capable staff ensure that the department runs smoothly.
We hosted our first of what will be an annual UW Architecture Alumni and Friends Reception at the AIA A24 Conference in Washington, D.C. in June. Our sincere thanks to ZGF Architects and Principal Tim Williams (MArch 1995) for hosting the event in their beautiful office just blocks from the White House. Our Alumni and Friends Reception for the upcoming AIA A25 Conference in Boston will be at DesignLAB Architects and we thank them and Principal Sam Batchelor (MArch 2004) in advance. If you will be attending the conference please join us! We will send an invite and will be on the AIA A25 Conference app.
We have established an exciting collaboration with ARCADE, the Pacific Northwest design magazine, in which writer Lauren Gallow teaches a Storytelling in Architecture class in the department and the resulting student essays, with introductions penned by practicing professionals, are published in a dedicated issue of ARCADE titled COLLABORATION. We hosted the first launch party in November and look forward to more as we amplify the voices of our students while strengthening ties with the professional community.
We are excited to announce the department’s fourth Alumni Awards program with the gala event to take place on the evening of Thursday, April 17 at the LMN Shop Space in downtown Seattle. Please save the date! In addition, please submit your nominations for Distinguished Alumni and Graduate of the Last Decade Awards HERE. The deadline is February 3.
Faculty News
We are delighted to welcome Zahra Rasti as an Assistant Teaching Professor of Beginning Design. Zahra comes to us from Cal Poly San Louis Obispo but brings international experience in teaching and practice to her introductory studios and seminars.
We are also delighted to announce that four department faculty were promoted in the 2024-25 academic year including Heather Burpee (Research Professor), Tomás Méndez Echenagucia (Associate Professor with Tenure), Gundula Proksch (Professor), and David Strauss (Affiliate Associate Professor).
Associate Professor Kimo Griggs, who since 2008 has taught material and fabrication courses within the department and led the CBE Digital Design and Fabrication Labs as Director (2018-2021) and Associate Dean for Technology Transfer (2012-2018), retired at the end of fall quarter. Student work from Kimo’s popular Furniture Design Studios has won dozens of awards over the past sixteen years and his custom fabricated designs including tables, rolling partitions, and modular stage components are found throughout the college. Kimo will be missed as he continues his creative pursuits in his home state of Vermont.
It was a truly remarkable year for faculty accomplishment and recognition and the following are only highlights from a much longer list. Professors Ann Marie Borys and Kate Simonen were both elevated to FAIA bringing the total number of fellows on our faculty to eight. Affiliate Associate Professor Susan Jones and Professor Kate Simonen were each one of five women nationally to receive a 2024 Women in Architecture Award from Architectural Record magazine (yes, you read that correctly…five winners nationally, two on our faculty). Susan and Kate were also prominently featured in a recently released national documentary, Women of Carbon, which chronicles the outsized impact women in the built environment disciplines are having in the fight against climate change.
Other faculty awards include Professor Gundula Proksch receiving the 2024 Architectural Research Centers Consortium (ARCC) Mid-Career Research Impact Award, Professor Mehlika Inanici being awarded the 2023 Leon Gaster Award (in 2024) by the Society of Light and Lighting, and Associate Professor Elizabeth Golden receiving (with ASU colleague Marc Neveu) the 2024 Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ASCA) Course Development Prize.
Student News
It was a remarkable year for our students as well. Morocco Branting (MArch 2024) was one of thirty MArch students nationally to receive a 2024 Future 100 Award from Metropolis magazine.
AIAS-UW, our American Institute of Architecture Students chapter, hosted BLOOM: Emerging Solutions for Urban Sustainability, the 2024 AIAS West Quad Conference on campus and set a new benchmark for national AIAS events by breaking records for fundraising, attendance, revenue, and quality of programming. Bloom co-chair Trevin Thompson, a grad student in his final year, is now the AIAS West Quad Director and national board member.
For the second year in a row, students in our National Organization of Minority Architecture Students (UWNOMAS) chapter participated in the NOMA Barbara G. Laurie Student Design Competition as members of a self-organized team working over the summer. Ten students travelled to the annual NOMA Conference in Baltimore to present their submission. While their submission did not advance to the finals, the students made a number of important national connections including meeting architect Leon Bridges, the oldest living NOMA member and a graduate of our department (BArch 1960). This spring, the department will launch the first NOMA Barbara G. Laurie Student Design Competition Studio to provide the 2025 student team with additional support.
AIAS and NOMAS are but two of several departmental student organizations and affinity groups that are cultivating leadership while advancing the department’s goals of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion and the department is proud to support them in these efforts.
Alumni News
As with our faculty, the following are highlights from a very long list of alumni accomplishments this past year. Four graduates of our department were elevated to AIA Fellow in 2024. They include Sam Batchelor, FAIA of DesignLAB in Boston (MArch 2004) and Doug Ito, FAIA of SMR (BA Arch 1989), Rob Misel, FAIA of Miller Hull (BA Arch 1992), and John Shoesmith, FAIA of Perkins Eastman (MArch 1994) in Seattle. Of the 98 AIA members elevated to Fellowship internationally in 2024, six are either faculty or graduates of our department.
In addition, Doug Ito received the 2024 AIA Whitney M. Young, Jr. Award which is given annually to an architect or architectural organization that embodies social responsibility and actively addresses a pressing social issue. Doug’s tireless efforts to advocate for progressive affordable housing policy while leading SMR, a firm staunchly committed to advancing affordable housing design, make him especially deserving of this coveted award. Doug and the six other newly elevated AIA fellows were honored at the AIA A24 national conference in Washington, D.C. in June.
I would like to acknowledge and honor the passing of L. Jane Hastings, FAIA (BArch 1952), who, like many of those mentioned above, was an innovator, pioneer, and impactful member of our community. Jane was only the eighth licensed woman architect in Washington State, maintained an award-winning practice for over forty years, was elected an AIA Fellow in 1980, Chancellor of the AIA College of Fellows in 1992 (the first woman to hold the position), received the AIA Seattle Chapter Medal in 1995, and was the first recipient of the AIA Northwest & Pacific Region Medal of Honor in 2002.Her memoir, The Woman in the Room, was published fours months before her death on March 25, 2024. While we are saddened by her passing, we are inspired by her legacy as will future generations of architects in our community and beyond.
While I’ve had many reasons to be optimistic for the department’s future throughout my nearly four decades on the faculty, I’ve never been as excited for it than I am today. Much of this excitement stems from the extraordinary support we receive in so many ways from our alumni, friends, and the practicing community. If you would like to further support the department and our students, please consider a contribution today. 2024 has been an extraordinary year for the department and I look forward to an even more exciting year in 2025. Please do not hesitate to reach out or pay us a visit. We’d be delighted to hear from you!
Rick Mohler, FAIA, NCARB
Professor and Chair