Designing the 21st Century Urban Neighborhood: Ecodistricts

Jill Sterrett (University of Washington)

In a world increasingly affected by climate change and depleting natural resources, we must find ways to conserve energy and protect natural resources. We cannot simply build our way out of the problem with new construction. We need to look at innovative ways to think about our existing built environment. This is particularly true in much beloved neighborhoods such as Surrey Downs. The Surrey Downs neighborhood in Bellevue, WA provides an excellent setting for study with some 40 homes designed by highly regarded local architects in the early 1950 and larger neighborhood including a mix of housing styles from the 1950s-60s. Called by architectural historians “some of the best and most representative of postwar small tract housing,” this area has also attracted theattention of contemporary periodicals focused on that era. Also, the ongoing construction of light rail lines adjacent to this neighborhood brings a host of transportation and land use pressures and issues to the fore.

To tackle the problem, an Interdisciplinary Studio was designed as a project- based course where students from Architecture, Construction Management, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Design and Planning work in teams in a collaborative environment to develop and deliver design proposals for the near- term in 2025 and a grand scheme envisioning a high-performance neighborhood for 2050. Project analysis and proposals take place at multiple scales with EcoDistrict neighborhood design, Passive House building design and energy modeling, and Life-cycle Assessment detailing to foster:

1. Interdisciplinary collaboration, working on teams integrating different disciplines and addressing problems that require synthesis of multiple scales.
   
2. Use methods to evaluate multiple (sometimes conflicting) criteria to inform decisions.
   
3. Use environmental, energy use, and life-cycle data to inform design and planning decisions.
   
4. Understand the trade-offs between environmental impacts, low energy buildings, pro-environmental behavior, and historic preservation of existing building stock.