Kathryn Rogers Merlino is an Associate Professor of Architecture in the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington.  As co-founder and Director of the Center for Preservation and Adaptive Reuse,  Merlino’s research  focuses on adaptive reuse and historic preservation’s critical implications on sustainability, environmental justice, and social equity. Her book, Building Reuse: Sustainability, Preservation and The Value of Design (UW Press, 2018) argues that historic preservation and adaptive reuse of buildings is a critical component of sustainability.  It demonstrates how everyday ‘non- historic’ as well as ‘historic’ – should be valued as artifacts of embodied carbon, and must be part of our efforts toward combating climate change. Her work also calls for a re-positioning of adaptive reuse in architectural education, grounded in an ecological framework, so future designers of the built environment have a working knowledge of existing systems and how to adapt them through a critical design process.

Merlino has published in several publications such as The Public Historian: A Journal of Public History, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Places: Forum of Design for the Public Realm  as well as book chapters and several peer-reviewed conference proceedings.  She has presented at dozens of  architecture, architectural history, historic preservation academic and professional conferences, at universities, and for states and cities.  Merlino consults as an historian and historic preservation consultant in the Seattle region for design firms in both research and design.  She currently is on the Board of the Historic ASUW Shell House, and the current Scan Design Endowed Chair at the University of Washington. She has been on the Board of Directors for the Vernacular Architecture Forum and the King County Landmarks Commission, and the Washington State Advisory Council on Unreinforced Masonry Buildings.

Merlino teaches courses on architectural history, theories of preservation and building reuse, vernacular architecture and architectural design studios, and has taught in study abroad programs in Rome, Copenhagen and France. She is adjunct in the Department of Landscape Architecture,  and the Jackson School, and is currently the Scan Design Endowed Chair in the College of Built Environments.

After receiving an undergraduate degree in architecture from the University of Washington, Kathryn practiced in the Seattle area for several years and worked with Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects (now Olson Kundig), where she received several awards for projects designed with the firm. She received both a Master of Architecture and a Master of Architectural History from the University of Virginia.

I engage urban planning through the lenses of urban design, historic preservation, urban & planning history and equity & social justice. I have degrees in Architecture (B’Arch –Mangalore University; M’Arch from the School of Planning & Architecture, New Delhi), Landscape Architecture (M’Larch from Penn State) and Urban Planning (Ph.D. from University of Colorado). Besides my appointment in Urban Design & Planning at UW, I am adjunct in the Departments of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, and a member of the South Asia Program in the Jackson School of International Studies (JSIS). Before teaching at UW, I taught as a graduate student/ lecturer in the University of Colorado and Pennsylvania State University. I have worked in India with the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) and Housing and Urban Development Corporation of India (HUDCO). Additionally I consult on international projects mostly around historic preservation. I am one of the two founding directors of the Center for Preservation and Adaptive Reuse (CPAR), which strives to connect academia to practice of historic preservation. I am also affiliated with both the Graduate Certificates in Urban Design and Historic Preservation and both the PhD programs in our College; PhD in the Built Environment; and the Interdisciplinary PhD in Urban Planning.

I have offered a variety of courses ranging from study abroad; lectures; seminars and studios. I teach graduate seminars in American Urban History and Introduction to Historic Preservation. Additionally I teach Urban Form and Communication and Analysis in the MUP core curriculum; and the Race and Social Justice Seminar. My studios have typically been on urban design and historic preservation topics engaging sites in the Pacific Northwest. For my study abroad classes, I have brought students for a quarter long programs to Chandigarh, India (co-led with Prakash) and a month long exploration seminars to the Kumaon region in the upper Himalayas to study topics of urban design, planning and preservation. I have also co-taught study abroad classes in China and Japan along with my colleagues Dan Abramson and Bob Freitag on topics of hazard mitigation and cultural resilience, among others. My students have appreciated my teaching and I have been twice honored with the CBE’s Lionel Pries Distinguished Professor Award.

I am interested in topics of diversity and social justice in the context of historic preservation and urban planning. I engage these topics in my teaching and through my service. As a member of the Historic Preservation Advisory Committee (HPAC) of the 4Culture, Cultural Services Agency for King County I mentor the diversity intern who works on uncovering systemic biases in the listing of historic sites in King County to the exclusion of under-represented minority communities. I have served on the UW Diversity Council’s Campus Climate Committee, which encouraged me to start our own department’s Diversity Committee (with Branden Born) that has worked for the last 10 years toward creating a welcoming environment for the underrepresented minority students in the College of Built Environments. Additionally, I have volunteered to serve on a committee of the National Council of Preservation Educators (NCPE) to understand the diversity of students enrolled in preservation programs in the country to better understand the accessibility and openness of the programs to underrepresented minority students.

I publish on topics of urban design, planning history and preservation in a variety of journal including Future Anterior, Journal of Architectural Education, Journal of American Planning Association, Journal of Planning History and Planning Perspectives. I have co-edited a book on the topic of urbanism in Asia (along with Jeff Hou) – Messy Urbansim: understanding the “other” cities of Asia. I am currently working on another edited volume (along with Ashima Krishna) on the status of preservation practice in India due out in 2018.

David Strauss