The new garden at Nikkei Manor represents the yin and yang of months-long conversation among 91探花students in landscape architecture, their teachers Daniel Winterbottom and Iain Robertson, and residents of an assisted-living community in Seattles International District.

To design and build the garden, conflicting needs had to be reconciled with grace, efficiency and imagination.

“We wanted to bring back a significant space for residents who have limited mobility,鈥� said Winterbottom, an associate professor of landscape architecture who led 17 students in a senior-level design/build class.

Winterbottom and his group began with a long, narrow corridor, some 30 by 100 feet between Nikkei Manor, most of whose residents are Japanese-American, and a 14-foot high brick wall of a business immediately east on Maynard Street. At the rear of the property was a sinkhole, the result of crumbling debris left in the foundation of an old hotel. Additionally, the corridor doesnt get a whole lot of light and sometimes turns into a wind tunnel.

In focus groups, residents and their families said they needed both public and private space 鈥� room for drum concerts as well as quiet, intimate moments. They needed ways to navigate the garden with physical aids such as ramps and railings, but did not want aids obtrusive. They also wanted elements of Japanese gardens but nothing that would require the work of a Japanese master.

Winterbottom specializes in therapeutic gardens, inspired by time spent with his mother in a New Jersey garden when she was dying of cancer.

To begin the work at Nikkei Manor, a contractor filled in and stabilized the rear portion of the property where the sinkhole had been. Then, concrete was poured and scored with a student-created pattern resembling tatami mats.

As an entrance to the garden, Winterbottom and his students created a traditional Japanese gate, a series of long, narrow poles laced like a stand of bamboo. Circles of jade glass were inset along with three cranes representing youth, adulthood and old age. In Japanese tradition, cranes also represent both longevity and good fortune. Above the gate is an oblong chunk of driftwood inscribed “Ichigo Ichie,鈥� which translates as “Treasure the Moment.鈥�

In the front portion of the garden is open space for tables and gatherings. In the middle is a lotus fountain designed by the students. At the rear, in a covered corner, is a small meditation space anchored by a stone Buddha as well as evergreen and deciduous plantings. Railings allow residents to circumnavigate the entire garden, passing by shelves for potted plants at different levels. Amy Wagenfeld, an occupational therapist and visiting faculty member at the UW, helped make the design user-friendly.

Professors and students paid much attention to detail. The day before the June 7 dedication, students Myles Harvey and Talya ten Brink covered nail holes in the gate with putty the same terra cotta shade as the structure. Nearby, Michael Carey and Leanna Evatt smoothed sand into a narrow channel on the edge of the garden. For three years, said Evatt, “weve focused on design, but now weve had to think about whats practical, what we can actually build.鈥�

“The students have been so terrific.鈥� Said Nikkei manager Lisa Waisath. “Theyve been polite and professional 鈥� I can tell theyre passionate about what theyre doing.鈥�

The students contributed design and labor, many of them working 20 to 30 hours per week since March. All told, the garden cost $75,000, paid for by Nikkei Manor.

[slideshowpro slideshow album_id=”335896″ style=”default.xml” scale=”Downscale Only” transition=”Cross Fade” loading=”Beam” panZoom=”Off” navAppearance=””]

The award, which comes with $5,000, honors current or emeritus faculty whose achievements have had substantial impacts on their profession and perhaps society as a whole. In the fall, Friedman will deliver an all-university lecture about her work.

The range of Friedmans research is huge, iSchool Dean Harry Bruce said in his nominating letter: online privacy, technologically mediated relationships with nature, technology and homeless youth, and most recently, healing from genocide.

“In my many years in academia, I have known no one I find more deserving of such a stellar research, teaching, service award,鈥澨� iSchool Professor Eliza Dresang said in Bruces nominating letter.

Friedman could not be reached for comment, as she was on her way to Rwanda where she will conduct more research and outreach related to , the collection of interviews with judges, interpreters, defense counsel and others who have served the tribunal.

The court has considered cases of Rwandans accused of participating in the 1994 genocide, which resulted in the deaths of 800,000 people in less than 100 days.

Conducted by a team that included legal experts and a videographer, the interviews are believed to be the first with people serving on a war crimes tribunal. In designing Voices research, Friedman used multi-lifespan information system design, the research she pioneered to address problems that cannot be resolved in a single lifespan.

As part of her work in Rwanda, Friedman culled about a dozen of the 49 interviews, showing them to groups in the country as a way to help with healing.

A 91探花faculty member since 1999, Friedman holds appointments in the iSchool as well as the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering. She also directs the .

Like at the corner of Brooklyn Avenue and Lincoln Way, where the new, three-story, 25,000-square-foot is going up.

A series of 6-by-12 panels screen the site, affording safety for people passing by and neatening the site while also telling whats going on, giving navigation instructions and celebrating the history and traditions of the center. The panels are part of the , which is based in the Office of Planning & Budgeting.

Rebecca Barnes, the universitys architect, came up with the idea for the overall program, and Kristine Kenney, the universitys landscape architect, led the design work.

“Theres so much activity on campus that to keep everyone safe, were constantly redirecting people and vehicles,鈥� Kenney said. She added that people want to know whats going on, so the panels both explain and make the site more interesting.

Kenneys group included faculty, staff and students who worked with Kristine Matthews, an assistant professor of visual communication design who also runs Studio Matthews, a Seattle-based graphic design firm.

“The concept was ‘Create History’,鈥� Matthews said. “We wanted to look both forward and back, so there is a nod to the history of each site and its relevance to UW, but also a look forward.鈥�

The panels include both generic and customizable options. Along with the purple “W,鈥� for example, the ECC graphics echo the groups 鈥� blacks, Chicanos, Asians, Native Americans 鈥� depicted in four murals in the original 1971 building. By the way, the murals have been preserved, and will be mounted in the new building.

The ECC panels, which cost $180-$220 apiece and were mounted in early December, are the first test of the program. They will be followed by panels at construction sites for Mercer Court Apartments, the student housing just below the northeast end of University Bridge; , the new 91探花medical research complex; and the , which will remake the area and include a Sound Transit station.

A new book, (Beacon Press, $26.95, hardcover with CD), brings together 16 of Kings speeches on economic justice, many of them buried in the King archives until now. , a former Southern civil rights organizer and the Haley Professor of Humanities at the 91探花 Tacoma, edited the speeches and wrote an introductory essay for the book.

Honey has done a great service in gathering the speeches, said Eric Foner, a professor of history at Columbia University.

“King’s dream called for nothing less than a radical restructuring of American economic life,鈥� he added. “This is a more complex King than we celebrate every January, forever frozen on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial delivering his ‘I Have a Dream Speech.’ King’s dream called for nothing less than a radical restructuring of American economic life.鈥�

“People forget that Dr. King was every bit as committed to economic justice as he was to ending racial segregation,鈥� Honey said. “As we struggle with massive unemployment, a staggering racial wealth gap and near collapse of our financial system, Kings prophetic writings and speeches underscore his relevance for today.鈥�

The first section of Honeys book covers highlights of the civil rights movement: the Montgomery bus boycott, the student sit-ins and freedom rides, the events leading up to the March on Washington in 1963.

The second section shows King broadening his agenda from civil rights to economic rights for all. He told listeners that “the evil of war, the evil of economic injustice and the evil of racial injustice鈥� are intertwined.

But relationships between organized labor and civil rights leaders were complicated. In his introductory essay, Honey points out that unions were key in establishing the Great Society and civil rights victories in the 1960s. However, one of the largest labor groups, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, in earlier years had expelled some of the strongest civil rights unions for following “the communist line.鈥�

In 1955, when the CIO merged with the American Federation of Labor to become the AFL-CIO, the more racially conservative AFL dominated. It meant that building unions and railroad workers in the AFL continued excluding or segregating women and racial minorities. Also, the National Labor Relations Board didnt require unions to ban discrimination.

King brought attention to these injustices, such as in the speech from which the name of the book comes. He spoke to Memphis sanitation workers, many of them African-American, in March 1968. They had walked away from their jobs after two fellow workers were crushed by a defective garbage truck. The city had refused to update its equipment, and workers families didnt receive either insurance or workers compensation.

It was part of institutionalized abuse. In “Going Down Jericho Road,鈥� another of Honeys books, he explains how the city, for example, routinely sent workers home without pay when it rained and required extra hours unpaid when it didnt. There were no toilets available to workers, and nowhere to clean up or change clothes.

“You are highlighting the economic issue,鈥� King told the sanitation workers in his speech. “You are going beyond purely civil rights to questions of human rights.鈥�

As the crowd loudly agreed, King spontaneously called for a general strike. All the workers, including teachers, students, housekeepers, commercial cleaners, factory and city employees would not show up for work on an appointed day. As it turned out, however, that day found Memphis shut down by a bizarre snowstorm.

The following day outside his motel room, King was assassinated.

To offer the most accurate versions of the speeches, Honey painstakingly compared written versions to audio ones.

The CD that comes with the book contains Kings speech to the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union District 65 in 1962, when he talked of racism, poverty and war; it also contains his March 1968 speech in Memphis.

Its clear that as time went on, King saw his mission going beyond civil rights to the rights of all humans to live in decent peace. “Dr. King was a tireless champion of the working class. But 鈥楢ll Labor Has Dignity is not just a testament to his rhetorical legacy 鈥� it is a call to action,鈥� Richard L. Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, said in a written statement.

Honeys other books are “Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers鈥� (1993); “Black Workers Remember: An Oral History of Segregation, Unionism, and the Freedom Struggle鈥� (1999); and “Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther Kings Last Campaign鈥� (2007).

###

For more information, contact Honey at 253-692-4454 or mhoney@uw.edu. For a review copy of the book as well as a photograph of the cover, contact Caitlin Meyer at Beacon Press, cmeyer@beacon.org.

Some of the best examples of 91探花architecture student drawings from 1914 to 1947 are on display in two Allen Library locations until March 12.

The drawings come from a 1,100-item collection that includes works by students who became famous practitioners:

• Paul Thiry, one of the earliest modern architects in the Pacific Northwest;

• Minoru Yamasaki, who designed the World Trade Center and the Pacific Science Center;

• Victor Steinbrueck, whose commitment to historic preservation protected Seattle places such as Pioneer Square and Pike Place Market.

Begun as a teaching tool and a way to document the architecture curriculum, the collection starts with the School of Architecture founding and continues to the beginning of Bauhaus pedagogy in the late 1940s. (The complete archive includes more than 2,500 drawings, but most created after 1947 are on sturdy illustration board rather than watercolor paper so have not been transferred to Special Collections.) Individual pieces range from tiny sketches to full, 40-by-60-inch renderings.

The drawings came to 91探花Special Collections in 2006, shortly before renovation of Architecture Hall. They had been stored in the basement of the building and would not have been properly preserved if not moved to Special Collections, said Jeffrey Ochsner, who facilitated the move and helped raise money for preservation.

鈥淭his collection includes some of the most important architects in this region. It shows their roots, and how the Beaux Arts mode changed into Modernism,鈥� he said.

If you visit, start in Allen Library South, where some of the earliest drawings are in the glass cases outside Special Collections.

When the 91探花School of Architecture began, students were first taught to draw three-dimensional objects on two-dimensional surfaces, rendering them in water colors. Thereafter, students were assigned architectural problems that helped them learn neoclassical design as exemplified by Beaux-Arts buildings.

Completed assignments had to include certain elevations, sections of the design and specific details. In the case on the west side of the Special Collections anteroom, note an example of this kind of assignment: a grand dining room executed by Elizabeth Ayer, who became the first woman graduate of the 91探花architecture program and the first woman registered as an architect in Washington.

Later on, as Modernism took hold, more pragmatic and realistic problems replaced the Beaux- Arts style of teaching and drawing. Among other things, it meant students often used pen and ink to create their drawings.

On the balcony of the Allen Library North lobby, along with the work of five other well-known architects, theres Roland Terry’s drawing of a modern lighthouse. Sharp, high-contrast lines and cantilevering over water make the structure both intriguing and utilitarian.

Repairing, cleaning and cataloging the collection has taken almost five years, led by Kate Leonard, whos in charge of the 91探花Special Collections Mendery. Nicolette Bromberg, curator of visual materials in Special Collections, has been in charge of a guide which will eventually be online.

For more information

Go to the . Startz may be contacted at 206-616-1652 or startz@uw.edu

You want more great teachers, the kind that demonstrably raise student achievement, the kind students remember years after finishing school?

According to a new book by Dick Startz, Castor Professor of Economics at the 91探花, it will cost about $90 billion a year. But Startz says the return on investment would be $800 billion to $900 billion annually — and that doesn’t count civic advantages.

Startz has written “Profit of Education” (Praeger Publishers, $44.95), which says American students are losing ground to students in other countries because the most talented are not becoming teachers — instead, they are going where their work gets rewarded financially.

The book, which combines readable prose with quantitative data, is getting attention. “What ‘Freakonomics’ did in raising our collective economic literacy, this book does for the economics of schooling,” said Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality.

The son of a school board president and a school psychologist, Startz lays out a possible solution to the problem of teacher salaries:

If between kindergarten and high school graduation, a student is consistently taught by above-average teachers, that student would acquire what amounts to an extra year of education.

According to economists’ calculations, each additional year of schooling raises lifetime earnings an average of 10 percent. So if students received the equivalent of an extra year of school, it would enhance gross domestic product by about $900 billion annually.

Think of it this way, Startz says: “Taxes from the increase in productivity will not only pay for the program, in the long run, they’ll pay about half the national debt.”

Startz points to multiple studies of student achievement showing that teachers are the key variable in student performance. Startz figures if average teachers, those in the 50th percentile, could be moved to above average, the 70th percentile, student achievement would rise by the equivalent of an extra year of schooling.

He makes clear, however, that additional quality requires financial incentives that significantly change teachers’ income. Offering enough incentives that the average teacher’s salary increases by 40 percent would cost about $90 billion annually, according to Startz’s calculation. It’s somewhat less than the Obama stimulus package devotes to education and two-thirds the annual cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Startz arrives at 40 percent several different ways. One is that a 40 percent raise would move the average teacher from earning at the 37th percentile of the college-educated work force to the 57th percentile — a bit above average, which is commensurate with results expected of good teachers.

Teachers need a 31 percent raise, Startz says, to simply catch up with people who have similar academic training, experience and job complexity. In the last 50 to 60 years, teaching has lost salary ground compared with similar professions, and Startz shows that this drop hurts in recruiting the most able college graduates.

“In any business, over the long haul,” he says, “you get a great team by paying appropriate salaries, and then rewarding people financially for being really good at their work.”

Also, Startz says, “Teacher evaluation makes sense only when linked to meaningful financial rewards,” but most performance-based compensation programs haven’t really delivered. The more important thing, he believes, is to pay well enough to draw above-average brains to the profession and then offer bonuses for exceptional performance.

Figuring out what above-average and stellar teachers do makes a lot of sense, he says, especially if those behaviors could be communicated to lesser-achieving colleagues. Startz says incentives could be offered groups of teachers within a school, such that they’d have reasons to help colleagues and weed out those who don’t perform. To encourage this, Startz proposes that a portion of future salary increases be tied to group achievement.

With the efficiency of an economist, Startz includes a checklist for a differential pay system and talking points for conversations with government representatives, school district administrators and nonprofits interested in education reform.

He also offers an attitude for the future: “We have to start treating teaching as a profession, not an act of sainthood.”

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) has announced that 91探花听researchers, with the architectural firm NBBJ,听will receive a $1.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to extend nationally a model that reduces hospital energy use by 60 percent.

The work of the 91探花team reflects a fundamental game change. Once upon a time, it was enough to create a building that was energy efficient. Now the goal is net zero: the structure creates as much energy as it uses.

“Hospitals and health facilities are second only to fast-food restaurants in energy consumption. They consume approximately 4 percent of all energy used in the U.S., so lowering the amount is very important,” said Joel Loveland, a professor of architecture who directs the Integrated Design Lab at the university. He and Heather Burpee, a 91探花research associate in architecture, lead Target 100, which is named for an energy use index and reflects the goal of significantly increasing energy efficiency.

Together with experts who aided the initial research, Loveland and Burpee will model energy strategies for hospitals in Seattle; Miami; Phoenix; San Francisco; Atlanta; Washington, D.C.; Chicago and Minneapolis.

The 91探花team’s initial strategies were included by NBBJ in the new听Montlake Tower听under construction at the 91探花Medical Center. Also,听ZGF听Architects is considering more extensive use of these strategies for the patient tower addition to Seattle Children’s Hospital. Mahlum听Architects is considering them for its Living Building hospital for Peace Island Medical Center in Friday Harbor.

The work addresses the 2030 Challenge instituted by Architecture 2030, an environmental advocacy group. Architects, engineers and building owners are adopting the goal, which targets a greater reduction in energy use every five years. Buildings constructed by 2030 are to be net-zero energy consumers. For buildings that will begin operating between 2010 and 2015, the goal is a 60 percent reduction from standard operational use.

The 91探花team’s research so far demonstrates that there is little additional cost — about 2 percent — for their strategies.

Part of the group’s work is based on contemporary Scandinavian hospital designs that consistently use one quarter to one half the energy of their American counterparts. Along with energy efficiency, Scandinavian strategies include abundant use of daylight from windows that open and close.

The 91探花researchers found heating the biggest target for energy reduction. In the U.S., more than 50 percent of hospital energy is used to heat space or water. It’s ironic, says the researchers’ report, because study of a 225-bed hospital in the Puget Sound region found that “hospitals generate enough heat from internal mechanical or electrical sources to need no additional heat until the outside temperature drops below 20 degrees.” And in the Seattle region, that kind of cold rarely happens.

This new kind of hospital integrates goal setting, energy modeling, and the means to verify performance from initial conception to building operation. It also targets three key systems with a number of strategies:

Architecture:

鈥� Increase use of daylighting.

鈥� Use solar heating when possible.

鈥� Balance heat loss and environmental comfort with high-performance equipment.

Building systems:

鈥� Separate tempering of air temperature from ventilation air.

鈥� Optimize heat recovery from interior spaces and large internal equipment.

鈥� Turn off equipment not in use.

Plant systems:

鈥� Use advanced heat recovery at the central plant with heat pumping or enhanced heat recovery chillers and highly efficient boilers.听Also听use ground-sourced heat exchange.

Researchers emphasize that their strategies work in concert: to get that 60 percent increase in energy efficiency, the means must be bundled.

The 91探花award builds on health design research at the College of Built Environments’ Integrated Design Lab for Puget Sound.听 Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, through its BetterBricks initiative, has supported the lab’s work the last four years.

The energy department grant is one of 58 totaling more than $76 million funneled from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The goal is more energy-efficient buildings and training for technicians who maintain commercial buildings.

Along with Loveland and Burpee, the research team includes Solarc Architecture and Engineering Inc., NBBJ, TBD Consultants Inc., Cameron MacAllister Group, Mahlum, and Mortenson Construction. Substantial matching support comes from the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance BetterBricks program.

To read “Targeting 100,” go to

###

For more information, contact Loveland at 206-616-6566 or loveland@uw.edu; Burpee at 206-616-6566 or burpeeh@uw.edu.

Income in the 13 western states didn’t decline as steeply in 2008 as elsewhere in the country, but poverty went up more, according to a researcher at the West Coast Poverty Center at the 91探花.

Jennifer Romich, an associate professor of social work who analyzed data released Thursday morning by the U.S. Census Bureau, determined that real median income in the West declined by 2 percent to $55,085, compared with a nationwide decline of 3.6 percent.

But poverty in the West went from 12 percent to 13.5 percent, slightly higher than the 13.2 percent national figure.

“More than one out of every eight Americans was below the official poverty line, and the new numbers show poverty is growing faster in the West as the recession is felt here,” said Romich, who analyzed “Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2008.”

Nationwide, more people were without health insurance but the overall rate was statistically unchanged, with 15.4 percent uninsured. In the West, however, the percentage of people without health insurance rose from 16.9 percent in 2007 to 17.4 percent in 2008.

The full Census report is at: .

###

For additional information, contact Romich at romich@uw.edu .

WHAT: “Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2008” will be released this week by the U.S. Census Bureau.

WHO: Several 91探花 professors with the 91探花West Coast Poverty Center are available to discuss the report:

Robert D. Plotnick
Professor, Evans School of Public Affairs
206-685-2055 (o)
206-930-5111 (cell)
plotnick@u.washington.edu

Marcia Meyers
Associate professor, School of Social Work and Evans School of Public Affairs
206-616-4409 (o)
mkm36@u.washington.edu

Jennifer Romich
Assistant professor, School of Social Work
romich@u.washington.edu

Diana Pearce
Senior lecturer and Director, Center for Women’s Welfare, School of Social Work
pearce@u.washington.edu

WHEN: Find the report online Thursday, 7 a.m., at . Click on the “Income, Poverty and Health Insurance” icon at the top left corner of the home page.

Note: Local data for income, poverty and health insurance coverage will be available Sept. 22, when the Census Bureau releases new housing, demographic and socioeconomic data.

DETAILS: The 91探花researchers say the poverty rate in the U.S. for 2008 could have been 13 percent, and may have been as high as 15 percent. Between 1980 and 1982, when the country experienced a recession similar to the recent one, the national poverty rate rose from 13 percent to 15 percent.

Because Washington entered the recession later than the rest of the country, its poverty rate will likely be lower but still significant, say Plotnick and Romich. A single percentage point increase means an additional 63,000 Washington residents in poverty, including 19,500 children. Under federal poverty guidelines, a family of four earning less than $21,834 in 2008 was considered poor.

Official poverty figures for 2009 are not yet available, but from January to July national unemployment continued to rise, reaching 9.7 percent in August.

###

For more information, contact Rachel Lodge, program director at the West Coast Poverty Center, 206-616-2858 (o) or 206-293-1960 (cell) or rlodge@u.washington.edu.