The Department of Architecture sponsors lectures featuring invited speakers from around the world. Department lectures are free and open to the public. Explore recent events below and recordings from past lecture series.
Architecture in the Age of AI
Wednesday, February 25, 2026, 6 p.m.
Gould Court
Artificial intelligence is transforming the way architects design and engage with the world. The University of Washington Department of Architecture hosted a discussion exploring how AI is shaping practice today and what it means for the next generation of designers.
Tomás Méndez Echenagucia, Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture, moderated Architecture in the Age of AI.
Featured panelists:
- Md Shariful Anik — Associate / Computational Designer, Mithun
- Gavin Argo — Associate, Olson Kundig
- Chris Grammens — Associate / BIM Manager, Miller Hull
- Simon Manning — Associate / Design Technology Integration Leader, NBBJ
Engineered Living Materials for the Built Environment
Wednesday, February 11, 2026
This interdisciplinary lecture explored how cutting-edge research is driving material innovation in the built environment, bringing together faculty whose work spans chemistry, engineering and architecture.
The presenters examined how living systems can be integrated into material design to address pressing challenges related to sustainability, resilience and the future of construction.
Featured speakers:
- Professor Alshakim Nelson, Chemistry
- Professor Ayokunle Olánrewájú, Mechanical Engineering & Bioengineering
- Professor Gundula Proksch, Architecture
The event was a collaboration among the Departments of Architecture, Chemistry, and Mechanical Engineering & Bioengineering and was hosted by the College of Built Environments.
Connecting Craftsmanship | Leif Johnson
Wednesday, February 26, 2025, 6 p.m.
147 Architecture Hall
Leif Johnson, Structural Engineering Director at StructureCraft, spoke at the University of Washington College of Built Environments as part of the Department of Architecture Lecture Series.
Johnson discussed the engineer-build mindset unique to timber design and how this vertically integrated approach can advance innovation in timber connections.
Using a recent StructureCraft project at the University of Kansas with BIG Architects, he explored the development of an all-timber connection for a diagrid system. By combining modern technology—including CNC fabrication and parametric design using StructureCraft’s proprietary program Branch—with traditional Japanese joinery, the team developed diagrid nodes without steel plates or screws.
Johnson also discussed how the overall diagrid system was analyzed using Branch and optimization methods, and how cost models were developed to compare the system with conventional steel connections.
Past Lecture Recordings
Planned Erasure: Recovering Asian American Spaces in the Pacific Northwest | Megan Asaka
Tuesday, April 2, 2024, 5:30 p.m.
Alder Auditorium
This talk examined the built environment as an archive for illuminating the erased histories of Asian migrants in the early twentieth-century Pacific Northwest. Floor plans, photographs and oral histories reveal the interracial social worlds forged by Asian migrants and their forgotten role in building the city.
Though derided as “slums” and targeted with demolition, the spaces inhabited by a diverse migrant workforce offer insight into a different kind of Seattle history and hold valuable lessons for the present.
Megan Asaka is an award-winning scholar, writer and teacher of Asian American history, urban history and public humanities. She is the author of Seattle from the Margins: Exclusion, Erasure, and the Making of a Pacific Coast City (University of Washington Press, 2022).
College of Built Environments
Histories Humanities Futures
Build a Future, Not a Fortune | Jeremy McLeod, Breathe Architecture
Wednesday, April 3, 2024, 7 p.m.
322 Gould Hall
Jeremy McLeod is the founding Director of Breathe Architecture, a practice that has built a reputation for delivering high-quality and sustainable architecture across a range of scales and typologies.
Jeremy is also a founder of Nightingale Housing, a Melbourne-based nonprofit organization dedicated to providing affordable and high-quality housing that is ecologically, socially and financially sustainable. He believes that through collaboration, architects can make a positive impact in their communities.
UW Department of Architecture 2024 Spring Lecture Series
Relatives | Chris Cornelius, studio:indigenous
Wednesday, April 10, 2024, 6 p.m.
147 Architecture Hall
Chris Cornelius is a citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin and Professor and Chair of the Department of Architecture at the University of New Mexico. He is the founding principal of studio:indigenous, a design practice serving Indigenous clients.
He served as a cultural consultant and design collaborator with Antoine Predock on the Indian Community School of Milwaukee, which received an AIA Design Excellence award from the Committee on Architecture for Education.
Cornelius holds a Master of Architecture from the University of Virginia and a Bachelor of Science in Architectural Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His work has received numerous awards and honors and has been exhibited internationally, including at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale.
UW Department of Architecture 2024 Spring Lecture Series
Sponsored by the UW Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies
2023 Scan Design Foundation Visiting Professor: Søren Nielsen
Wednesday, October 4, 2023
Søren Nielsen was the 2023 Scan Design Foundation Distinguished Visiting Professor in the University of Washington College of Built Environments.
Søren is an architect and co-owner of Vandkunsten Architects in Copenhagen, one of the country’s leading socially and environmentally engaged offices. Responsible for Vandkunsten’s research and development activities, he focuses on design strategies for sustainability, particularly resource protection, building transformation and the social, cultural and aesthetic aspects of reuse.
Seeking Abundance | Katie Swenson, MASS Design Group
Wednesday, November 8, 2023
Katie Swenson is a Senior Principal at MASS Design Group, where she leads the Advocacy team. Her work explores how critical design practice can promote economic and social equity, environmental sustainability and healthy communities.
She has more than 20 years of experience in the theoretical and practical applications of design thinking. She teaches at Parsons School of Design at The New School and lectures extensively on sustainable community development and affordable housing.
On the Ground: Indigenous Voices
On the Ground: Indigenous Voices on Constructed Place is a lecture series centering the voices, stories and knowledge of Indigenous architects, researchers and community organizers.
November 5, 2021
Praxis — “Recent Work”
Speaker: Alfred Waugh, Architect AIBC, NWTAA, OAA, MRAIC, LEED AP
Owner | Principal, Formline Architecture, Canada
Cultural Affiliation: Status First Nations registered with the Fond Du Lac (Denesuline) Nation of northern Saskatchewan, Canada, part of Treaty 8.
November 12, 2021
Academia — “Pluriverse Rising: Indigenous Design”
Speaker: Wanda Dalla Costa, Architect, AIA, OAA, AAA, LEED AP, Saddle Lake Cree Nation
Institute Professor, The Design School, Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts
Associate Professor, Del E. Webb School of Construction, School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment
Senior Global Futures Scientist, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory
Design Director and Founder, Indigenous Design Collaborative
November 19, 2021
Community Activism — “Returning Home: Community Driven: Practice from Within”
Speakers: Bobbie Koch and Daniel Glenn
Bobbie Koch, Sicangu Lakota — Rosebud Sioux Tribe
Master of Architecture + MS in Architectural History & Theory
University of Washington/Seattle — Class of 2022
Architectural Designer, 7 Directions Architects/Planners
Daniel Glenn, Architect, AIA, AICE, NCARB
Akchiiá iishúuchiia (His Horse Is a Palamino)
Apsáalooke — Crow Nation
Principal Architect, 7 Directions Architects/Planners
February 2, 2022
“Indigenous Design & Relationality”
Speaker: Owen Oliver (Quinault / Isleta Pueblo)
Owen discussed the importance of Indigenous relationship building in the built environment and how Indigenous design is crafted and presented through a relationship with the land, including a case study addressing salmon and the Salish Sea.
Hosted by Myer Harrell, Principal at Weber Thompson and ARCH 504 studio instructor, and Ann Marie Borys, PhD, AIA, Associate Professor.
Afrofuturism: The Past, Present and Future of African American Architects
This Spring 2022 series of lectures and panel discussions focused on the exploration of Afrofuturism as a design influence in the built environment.
Invited guests led a dialogue on the contributions of Black architects, landscape architects and urban designers; how their African American experiences inform planning and design approaches; and their influence on the built environment.
Led by Affiliate Professor Donald I. King, FAIA, NOMA
- April 1, 2022: Introduction
- April 8, 2022: Lecture 2
- April 15, 2022: Lecture 3