Faculty Projects
Building Reuse: Sustainability, Preservation, and the Value of Design (Sustainable Design Solutions from the Pacific Northwest)
In Building Reuse: Sustainability, Preservation, and the Value of Design, Kathryn Rogers Merlino makes an impassioned case that truly sustainable design requires reusing and reimagining existing buildings. The construction and operation of buildings is responsible for 41 percent of all primary energy use and 48 percent of all carbon emissions. The impact of the demolition and removal of an older building can greatly diminish the advantages of adding green technologies to new construction. Reusing existing buildings can be challenging to accomplish, but changing the way we think about environmentally conscious architecture has the potential to significantly reduce carbon emissions. Additionally, Merlino calls for a more expansive view of historic preservation that goes beyond keeping only the most distinctive structures and requiring that they remain fundamentally unchanged to embracing the creative reuse of even unremarkable buildings.
In support of these points, Building Reuse includes a compelling range of case studies―from an eighteen-story office building to a private home―all located in the Pacific Northwest, a region with a long history of sustainable design and urban growth policies that have made reuse projects feasible.
Messy Urbanism: Understanding the “Other” Cities of Asia
Seemingly messy and chaotic, the landscapes and urban life of cities in Asia possess an order and hierarchy that often challenges understanding and appreciation. With contributions by a cross-disciplinary group of authors, Messy Urbanism: Understanding the “Other” Cities of Asia examines a range of cases in Asia to explore the social and institutional politics of urban formality and the contexts in which this “messiness” emerges or is constructed. The book brings a distinct perspective to the broader patterns of informal urban orders and processes as well as their interplay with formalized systems and mechanisms. It also raises questions about the production of cities, cityscapes, and citizenship.
Messy Urbanism will appeal to professionals, students, and scholars in the fields of urban studies, architecture, landscape architecture, planning and policy, as well as Asian studies.
Manish Chalana is associate professor of urban design and planning at the University of Washington. His work focuses on urban design, urban history, historic preservation, and international planning and development.
Jeffrey Hou is professor and chair of landscape architecture at the University of Washington. He is the editor of Insurgent Public Space: Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary City.
ReEvaluating significance: the environmental and cultural value in older and historic buildings
Author: Kathryn Merlino
Year: 2014
From: The Public Historian
Description: Traditionally the value of a building is measured through the historical, cultural, or architectural significance that has emerged from the established traditions of historic preservation policy in the United States. Although the designation of historic properties is a critical venue to save our most historically significant buildings, it does not account for those that fall outside of the established categories of significance. Accounting for the environmental value of buildings and understanding them as repositories of energy and materials repositions the way we value of the built environment for a more sustainable future.
Classicizing the Wilderness: Washington State’s Forestry Building at the 1909 AYP
Author: Kathryn Merlino
Year: 2009
From: The Pacific Northwest Quarterly
Description:
Of Mills and Malls: The Future of Urban Industrial Heritage in Neoliberal Mumbai
Author: Manish Chalana
Year: 2012
From: Journal of Historic Preservation, History, Theory, and Criticism
Description: The mandate of historic preservation is to maintain vestiges of diverse cultural heritage, a task that is becoming increasingly difficult in rapidly globalizing India. Much of the country’s urban heritage outside of the “monument-and-site” framework is threatened by massive restructuring of cities facilitated by neoliberal urban policies. Mumbai has a rich cultural heritage, associated with diverse sociocultural and economic groups. Much of this is threatened by development practices pursued by various forces with a particular vision of Mumbai as an emerging “global city.” In this work Chalana examines Girangaon, an early industrial district of Mumbai, currently being transformed by forces of domestic and global capital. He argues that Girangaon’s urban industrial heritage is a significant piece of the city’s development history, which future visions of a global metropolis should embrace. While the expansion of Mumbai’s economy has benefited some avenues of preservation practice in Mumbai, in Girangaon its consequences have also been negative, as a working-class neighborhood is restructured into a hypermodern district for the elite. The current forms of preservation practice in the city have been insufficient in addressing the complexity around managing heritage in low-income neighborhoods. Girangaon, and Mumbai overall, reveal the many ways that economic, cultural, and political globalization can impact historic preservation practice.
Balancing History and Development in Seattle’s Pike/Pine Neighborhood Conservation District
Author: Manish Chalana
Year: 2016
From: Journal of the American Planning Association
Description:
Slumdogs vs. Millionaires: Balancing Urban Informality and Global Modernity in Mumbai, India
Author: Manish Chalana
Year: 2010
From: Journal of Architectural Education
Description: Mumbai and other Indian cities are rapidly transforming to address the needs of global commerce and the expanding middle class. Mumbai’s vernacular environments, home to most working-class residents, are consequently being redeveloped using supermodern global aesthetics. The urbanism emerging from the current wave of modernism is an unprecedented radical departure from existing patterns of place. Proponents claim the new developments serve low-income residents’ interests, when actually they ignore fundamental socio-cultural and economic realities. This paper considers two case studies, Dharavi and Girangaon, highlighting a subset of Mumbai’s vernacular environments to argue for their significance and to explore alternative redevelopment approaches.
National Parks for New Audiences: Diversifying Interpretation for Enhanced Contemporary Relevance
Author: Manish Chalana and Daniel Coslett
Year: 2016
From: The Public Historian
Description: Changing sociocultural and historiographic contexts require new approaches to interpretation and presentation at National Park Service-administered sites. Through the study of two NPS parks in Washington State (San Juan Island National Historical Park and Whitman Mission National Historic Site), this article explores the agency’s interpretive programs and practices in relation to founding mandates and contemporary relevance. As demonstrated by these case studies, efforts to expand programming and presentations within the NPS system are ongoing but at present insufficient in light of current changes in demographics and visitation. Ultimately, for the NPS to remain relevant in the twenty-first century it must respect founding mandates but diversify interpretation of its parks’ contested histories, thereby enhancing its contemporary relevance and better engaging today’s audiences.
Integrating Preservation and Hazard Mitigation for Unreinforced Masonry Buildings in Seattle
Author: Manish Chalana and Jeana C Wiser
Year: 2013
From: APT Bulletin
Description:
Beyond Le Corbusier and the modernist city: reframing Chandigarh’s ‘World Heritage’ legacy
Author: Manish Chalana and Tyler Sprague
Year: 2013
From: Planning Perspectives
Description: The heritage of Chandigarh, India is a complex subject. While widely acknowledged by academic and professional communities worldwide as a significant work of modernist architecture and urban design, Chandigarh’s specific temporal, geographical and cultural contexts complicate efforts to get the city inscribed on United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s World Heritage List. This article outlines the persistent attempts by both local and international organizations to achieve this inscription, efforts that have not yet been successful. Relying on historical scholarship and fieldwork, the authors reassess the value of Chandigarh’s heritage both in terms of historical significance and contemporary planning. By addressing the complexity and scope of the design and planning process, embracing the inhabitation and appropriation of the city, and fostering an appreciation of modern architecture, Chandigarh can develop a more localized understanding of heritage – yet one that can be appreciated worldwide.
The Pay Streak Spectacle: Representations of Race and Gender in the Amusement Quarters of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition
Author: Manish Chalana
Year: 2008
From: The Pacific Northwest Quarterly
Description:
Whole Community Resilience: An Asset-Based Approach to Enhancing Adaptive Capacity Before a Disruption
Author: Manish Chalana, Daniel Abramson, Robert Freitag, Maximilian Dixon
Year: 2014
From: Journal of the American Planning Association
Description: Problem, research strategy, and findings: Conventional hazard mitigation and pre-disaster recovery planning processes typically begin with hazard scenarios that illustrate probable events and analyze their impacts on the built environment. The processes conclude with responses to the hypothetical disruption that focus on “hardening” buildings or structures or removing them from threatened areas. These approaches understate the importance of natural and social sources of adaptive capacity. Three “proof-of-principle” exercises designed to strengthen the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)’s Risk MAP (Risk Mapping, Assessment, and Planning) process in Washington State suggest how better to conduct hazard mitigation and recovery planning. Each begins with workshops where stakeholders identify built, natural, and social assets that contribute to human wellbeing (HWB) before introducing earthquake scenarios that affect HWB. Participants then identify assets that could facilitate adaptation to changed circumstances (a “new normal”). Participants discuss how these assets would achieve the goals of comprehensive community planning as well as hazard mitigation and recovery from disaster. Neighborhood-scale social organization emerges as an important priority. Takeaway for practice: Asset-based approaches enable communities to better recover from disaster and adapt to a post-disaster “new normal.” By premising planning discussions on a more holistic set of assets, communities can balance physical recovery goals with qualities that help them to adapt to future change. Furthermore, thinking about recovering before an event actually occurs can enlarge the menu of mitigation strategies. Planning for adaptation can also help communities achieve many non-risk-related objectives.
