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Located 12 miles south of Seattle, the city of Renton is undergoing rapid growth and is searching for ways to activate underutilized land in the Downtown Civic Core. This project analyzes one of these vacant parcels – a former Big 5 lot that is connected to Piazza Park and Gateway Park and has the potential to serve as a gateway to the city. In particular, I am interested in how civic engagement and participatory design can bring citizens together to form alliances and personal connections to their built environment. To explore these topics I researched place attachment, successful examples of temporary space activation, site information about the Big 5 lot, cultivated community relationships, and organized a series of design charrettes that involved Renton communities.
Having this series of open design charrettes gave the community the opportunity to get involved in the changes happening to their neighborhood. Participants envisioned designs for a pop-up park that will sit in an area of the built environment that they know best and in the process were able to connect with neighbors they may otherwise have never met. This is the beginnings of encouraging civic engagement and reinforcing a strong community foundation in Downtown Renton to begin the conversations for future developments to comes as the city works to align with the Civic Core Plan to revitalize Downtown Renton.
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Rapid urbanization is a tidal wave that is taking over many Seattle neighborhoods that we know and cherish. Identical large scale apartment buildings are tearing down culturally significant buildings and simultaneously tearing away at the identity of a neighborhood. A way to combat this unforeseen growth is urban art. On top of combatting this urban growth, urban art also has a lot to offer the business owners, residents, and visitors of an area. Urban art is beginning to be more widely accepted around the world and is seen as a way to beautify our streets while also combatting illegal graffiti. Business owners and community organizations are considering the benefits of introducing murals onto their businesses and communal areas. The purpose of this project is to work jointly with The Ballard Alliance, whose Business Improvement Plan includes a section highlighting the importance and goals of implementing urban art in the commercial core of Ballard, and create a mural on a wall within the Ballard Improvement Area. Working with a non-profit in such a unique and vibrant area of Seattle such as Ballard will provide an example to the greater community that murals are a great medium to showcase an area’s identity, combat urbanization, and a way to support the arts.
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Have you ever wondered what happens to old factories or industrial sites when they are no longer being put to use? This project explores the effects of different redevelopment sites around the country and some of the lessons learned from these projects. These lessons will then be looked at in the context of Bellingham, WA as the city looks completely redevelop an old paper mill into a brand-new waterfront.
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Motivational speakers choose to share their messages to attentive audiences in hopes of uplifting and inspiring listeners to make positive change. However, despite their encouraging spirits, motivational speakers can strive to be more inclusive by acknowledging how women of color encounter certain barriers such as cost, representation, and specificity in programs that may prevent them from feeling the empowerment that is supposed to come along with a speaker’s moving message. For my project, I looked at four categories that made up the larger themes of my research: background information on motivational speaking, improving accessibility, focusing on representation, and program specificity aimed for women of color. I analyzed various sources that provided background and additional context for my project question, and then organized that collective information in the form of a literature review. Next, I reached out to motivational speakers, and interviewed three Latina women who are active in the motivational speaking event community, in order to inquire about how cost, representation, and program specificity influences or incentivizes motivational speaking events. In evaluating current literature regarding the motivational business and the importance of representation, I’ve explored how speaker background, market, and advertising influences tickets cost; how representation in speakers lead to empowerment and affirmation; and how program specificity for women of color encourages inclusivity and encouragement. Lastly, I combined the knowledge gathered from my sources and interviews to demonstrate how I believe that it is important to change certain factors of the motivational business so that it can positively transform the impact of speakers on women of color.
In recent years, the University of Washington has promoted itself as a green leader in higher education and has made significant strides towards increasing sustainability efforts on campus. One area in which the University has not focused heavily on sustainability is in the curriculum. To address this gap, I developed a basic framework for implementing a new undergraduate sustainability graduation requirement. This framework and the founding of a student coalition to support a sustainability graduation requirement initiative will serve as the initial steps in what I anticipate to be a multi-year implementation process. To develop the framework, I have researched sustainability requirement policies at other universities; reviewed policies at the University of Washington which would support a sustainability graduation requirement; solicited feedback and support from UW faculty, staff, and students; and studied the University of Washington’s Diversity Credit as a case study for a student-led initiative to change University of Washington graduation requirement policy. Based on this research, I then created a series of recommendations detailing a recommended action plan for implementing a UW graduation requirement. To ensure this project continues after I graduate, I have also formed a new student coalition and registered student group to foster campus support for the requirement and work with university faculty and administration to pass the policy through the appropriate channels. If this new requirement is enacted it will not only help the University of Washington emerge as a true leader in sustainability higher education, but will also ensure that graduate of the University of Washington understand sustainability and its applicability to their lives and careers, making them more prepared to tackle emerging global challenges.
The population of multiracial and multicultural individuals in the United States has steadily risen, but few public spaces have been designed to represent them or express their identities. Individuals in this group can find themselves feeling isolated from spaces because they feel like “imposters” or that they have to choose only one part of their identity to belong. How can we create public spaces that encourage people to express all parts of their multiracial or multicultural identity in a way that is inclusive, educational, and encourages cultural exchange? Through research of existing design methods and practices, this project addresses how public spaces can be created to include multiracial and multicultural individuals. I provide design methods and practices in four categories: cultural exchange; cultural education; safety and inclusion; and expression. These methods are compiled into a set of guidelines and best practices to guide designers through the creation of multiracial and multicultural spaces. These guidelines fill a gap between white and other mono-cultural spaces to create public spaces where multiracial and multicultural individuals can find belonging in. As a product created for designers, these guidelines bring the multiracial and multicultural identities into conversations and processes that they would not normally be a part of. This project reflects my own desire to see my multiracial and multicultural identity and others like me reflected in public spaces and serves as an example of why spaces like this are important and why representation matters.
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This project assessed how plant-based meat substitutes can most effectively replace animal-based meat. I focus specifically on chicken, the most widely produced animal in the meat industry. 9,000,000,000 chickens are killed for meat every year in the United States, dwarfing the number of all other animals used for meat combined. Chicken production is a threat to global health,
because it heavily contributes to the emissions of greenhouse gases. An environmental justice issue arises as low-income communities with little political power live near chicken farms and slaughterhouses, which means they experience polluted waterways and local environments from the animal waste. One of the most promising solutions to end the factory farming practices of chickens is plant-based meat that is similar in texture and taste. The scope of the chicken industry demands that this solution account for scale of implementation and for the socioeconomic implications of thenah shrinking poultry industry.
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The itinerant hawkers and street food in Hong Kong (HK) are disappearing in just a few generations, HK’s mobile hawkers and street food are such an important characteristic of HK, but they keep losing value! Therefore, my project would like to investigate this issue and see how the street food culture can be explored and passed down. There are three deliverables in my project. First, I have created an academic written report which includes literature review, the findings from my survey and interviews, and my analysis. Second, I have developed a pop-up scrapbook which includes two parts. The first part introduces the unique traditional street food in Hong Kong’s mobile food trucks. Based on the survey I sent to residents who lived in HK in the 1920s – 1980s, I realized that Hongkongers are in love with the mobile food trucks and street food. They strongly hope both will pass on to future generations. The second part of my scrapbook includes traditional street food recipes. These recipes not only provide a comprehensive description of traditional street food, but also provides an opportunity to pass down the recipes by themselves. Additionally, there is a pattern book which includes paper patterns of street food which can cut out and fold into 3D shapes. Let anyone who is interested in 3D form of street food can make it themselves. I believe my project and deliverables can help the others to be in touch with the disappearing cultural heritage of street food and mobile stalls in HK.
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Seattle is a hub for sustainability. One important aspect of obtaining a sustainable society is to divert material from local landfills to alternatives such as recycling and composting. However, despite efforts to educate people about these choices, many people remain confused when confronted with a series of bins for depositing their trash. That being said, which bin offers the most sustainable path for a specific piece of waste? In order to answer this question, I have created my own posters that illustrate the path that items follow after being deposited in a compost, recycling, or landfill bin at the University of Washington. To create the posters, I contacted composting and recycling processing experts, visited local waste management facilities, analyzed current bin signage, and researched the role that ordinary people play in the success and failure of waste diversion. My hope is that these posters will produce a more well-informed community that cares to take the time to properly dispose of their waste, promoting a more sustainable future.
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This project seeks to successfully integrate Evidence-Based Design strategies with J.Todd Robinson’s Hierarchy of Needs Supporting Human Health in the theoretical redesign of a standard impatient unit at Virginia Mason Medical Center’s Capitol Hill campus in Seattle, Washington. Specifically, it hypothesizes that the strategic placement of Evidence Based Design (EBD) findings on the topics of noise, way-finding, lighting, connections to nature, surfaces, ventilation, circulation, ergonomics, privacy, and social support into corresponding tiers of J. Todd Robinson’s Hierarchy of Needs Supporting Hierarchy of Needs Supporting Human-Centered Design will serve to create a stronger, more holistic design framework that is both scale-able for different institutions based upon individual resources and needs, and ensures that the design and construction of new and updated impatient unit floors successfully implements design solutions from all areas identified as contributing to patient well-being to their greatest capacity.
The project was carried out in three phases compromised of a research phase, a design phase, and a report phase. The first of which was further broken down into the subsections of literature review, site analysis, and professional engagement. Following the completion of the latter portion of the research phase, the design and report phase were carried out simultaneously based upon the results of the project’s research phase. The conceptual designs and design recommendations detailed within the final report are intended to serve as a resource for the healthcare architecture community from which architects can carry the ideas presented in this project over into the design of future healthcare facilities.