Kathryn Merlino

Associate Professor

Kathryn Rogers Merlino is an Associate Professor of Architecture and Director of the Center for Preservation and Adaptive Reuse (CPAR) at the University of Washington. She also serves as the Scan Design Endowed Chair in the College of Built Environments and holds an adjunct appointment in the Department of Landscape Architecture.

Her research, design work, and teaching approach the built environment as a palimpsest of cultural, material, and ecological histories. She examines how adaptive reuse can reduce resource depletion, mitigate embodied carbon, and advance environmental justice and social equity—conceiving architecture not as singular authorship but as a layered, interdependent, and continuously evolving environment. Her scholarship advocates for embedding adaptive reuse within architectural education, foregrounding ecological literacy and the stewardship of existing structures as essential competencies for contemporary design practice.

Merlino’s publications include her book, Building Reuse: Sustainability, Preservation, and the Value of Design (University of Washington Press, 2018), which argues that existing buildings are material archives of extracted resources and embedded energy. She has published articles in The Public Historian, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Places: Forum of Design for the Public Realm, and the ARCC Journal of Architectural Research, and her recent chapter in Upkeep, Repair, and Maintenance in Adaptive Interiors (Routledge, 2025) examines the cultural, material, and environmental implications of reuse as a design methodology within domestic spaces. She serves as a regular peer reviewer of academic manuscripts, papers, and conference proceedings and lectures widely in national and international forums that advance conservation and adaptive reuse as foundational methodologies in contemporary design practice. Her work has been supported by competitive grants from the National Park Service and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and she has presented and published peer-reviewed conference papers nationally and internationally.

Her teaching spans architectural history, theories of preservation and building reuse, vernacular architecture, and architectural design. She leads interdisciplinary studios and seminars that foreground designing for reuse, material life cycles, cultural histories, and the urban palimpsest. Merlino also directs and teaches study-abroad programs centered on site-based learning in Rome, Denmark, and France. Her international teaching emphasizes the city as a living archive of layered material and cultural histories, using the study of urban palimpsest as a generative design framework.

In addition to her scholarly work, Merlino frequently consults with award-winning architecture firms on preservation planning, research, and adaptive reuse strategies, offering expertise as both a historian and designer, and has written over a dozen historic research reports to support design and conservation strategies. She currently serves as a preservation and design consultant for the renovation of the ASUW Shell House—the University of Washington’s first building on the National Register of Historic Places and its first Seattle Landmark—supporting design committee work, Section 106 coordination with the National Park Service, historic tax credit compliance, and long-range preservation planning.

Merlino holds a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from the University of Washington and both a Master of Architecture and Master of Architectural History from the University of Virginia. She currently serves on the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture Dean’s Advisory Board and the ASUW Shell House Advisory Board, is a past board member of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, and has served on the Washington State Governor’s Advisory Council on Unreinforced Masonry Buildings and Seattle’s Professional Council for Unreinforced Masonry Buildings. She has served as an expert witness for the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation, as a juror for AIA Washington Civic Architecture Awards, and is a former commissioner with the King County Landmarks Commission.