WALKING TOUR
A Campus Landscape That Inspires the Mind With Opportunities for Discovery and Reflection

Presenters: Vinita Sidhu, Site Workshop, PLA ASLA, Principal; Matthew Wood, Site Workshop, Principal

LA CES Credits: 1

The Hans Rosling Center for Population Health shows a bold vision for a modern campus landscape within an urban context. It aims –through the design of a landscape that is inviting, immersive and restorative– to improve mental and physical health and foster interdisciplinary collaboration on the path to solving global health crises. The site extends to and around Architecture Hall, Physics/Astronomy, and Guthrie Hall, providing an ideal place to foster connection and improved health and wellbeing in a large-scale educational and workplace environment. Layered, lush plantings with seasonal interest provide immersive experiences alongside sinuous pathways. Three courtyards create a modern forum for scholars from the initiative and neighboring programs to come together. Comfortable furnishings at a variety of scales are embedded within landscape, sited with consideration for prospect and refuge, and providing for a range of outdoor experiences from quiet study and contemplation to social gatherings and events. The tour will talk to how the project fits into the larger campus context, the collaborative process between the design-build team and the University, and the horticultural approach.

WALKING TOUR
Braiding Knowledge in Landscape Stewardship: Learning from the Burke Meadow

Presenters: Ken Yocum, Dean, College of Built Environments, U of W-Seattle Campus; Polly Olsen, Tribal Relations Director, The Nature Conservancy; Jazzmyn Wittrell, Landscape Designer, Department of Landscape Architecture; Kaydance Levesque, Student, School of Marine and Environmental Affairs; Jessica Perea, Associate Professor, Department of American and Indigenous Studies; Julie Larson, Assistant Professor, School of Environmental and Forestry Sciences

LA CES Credits: 1

This tour meets at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture on the University of Washington campus and explores the Burke Yard, a landscape designed by the acclaimed firm GGN and brought to life through the ongoing stewardship of an interdisciplinary team of UW faculty, staff, and students.The tour centers on the Burke Meadow — a designed and actively maintained "living exhibit" that showcases one of the Puget Lowlands' most threatened yet culturally significant habitat types. Visitors will learn how the meadow functions not simply as a designed landscape, but as a dynamic site of ecological and cultural practice — one that requires sustained care, observation, and adaptation over time .Faculty and students will share how they apply a braided knowledge approach to landscape stewardship: a practice that weaves together ecological science, Indigenous knowledge, design expertise, and experiential learning to guide how the meadow is tended and understood. The conversation will explore what it means to care for a landscape collaboratively, across disciplines and knowledge systems, and why that approach matters for both the health of the habitat and the education of the people who steward it. The Burke Meadow serves as a model for the learning landscape, a place where stewardship, scholarship, and teaching are inseparable. This tour offers a rare opportunity to engage directly with the people and practices behind that model.

WALKING TOUR
Wetlandish Wanderland

Presenters: Alicia Bramble, Landscape Architect, Professional Wetland Scientist

LA CES Credits: 1

Experience watersheds! Discover a native landscape buffer with contributing basin to a wetland. Alicia Bramble’s walking tour show cases Landscape Architecture in natural built environments that provide functions and values beneficial to society.

Walking Tour
Rainier Vista - Past and Present

Presenters: Hannah Vondrak, GGN, PLA, Senior Associate; Troy Britt, GGN, PLA SITES AP, Associate

LA CES Credits: 1

WALKING TOUR
Title: Stress As a Management Tool: How Mineral Mulches Can Minimize Maintenance and Promote Biodiversity

Presenters: Matthew Wood, Site Workshop, Principal; Vinita Sidhu, Site Workshop, PLA ASLA, Principal

LA CES Credits: 1

Public clients often resist floristically diverse landscapes, assuming that the maintenance burden will exceed their limited resources. They routinely direct designers to reduce planting areas, decrease plant diversity, and give them more lawn. At the same time, urban landscapes need to increase diversity if they are to address urgent challenges related to biodiversity, climate resilience, water use, community health, and personal wellbeing. One approach to minimizing maintenance needs while maintaining a high level of diversity involves reducing soil productivity with mineral mulches. This tour will explore two recent UW projects that used sand to support meadow plantings. The first site is the Benton Lane bike shelter, installed in fall 2024, where UW grounds welcomed the use of a sand mulch as a landscape trial. The second site is Anderson Hall, installed in winter 2025, with native meadow species installed in both a sand mulch and a conventional bark mulch. The tour will focus on the interrelationship between soil and plant specification, as well as the implications for maintenance and durability of the designed plant community.

WALKING TOUR
Founders Hall: Performance-Based Landscape Case Study

Presenters: Tess Schiavone, Principal, GGN; Brian Davis, Project Manager, UW Outside Zone; Robert Smith, Associate Partner, LMN Architects; Robin Thaler, President + Principal Engineer, Mayfly Engineering; Bob Vincent, Project Manager, Hoffman Construction Company; Doug Christian, President, Out West Landscape & Irrigation; Hector Briseno, Vice President, Out West Landscape & Irrigation

LA CES Credits: 1

Founders Hall expands the Foster School of Business while redefining the edge of Denny Yard, the oldest portion of the university campus. For the landscape surrounding LMN Architects’ cross-laminated building, the ecological heritage of the site is celebrated through new campus connections that prioritize walking, biking, and transit. The design reveres Denny Yard’s remnant hill topography with stepped café terraces that overlook the sloped Yard, integrating a restored George Tsutakawa fountain into an accessible entry. In a nod to the building’s structure, Douglas firs and madrones frame views around its columns, while native meadow and understory plantings evoke the site’s original conditions and anticipate what a larger meadow might feel like for Denny Yard. This guided tour explores the landscape as a case study in performance-based design, highlighting 100% native plantings, stormwater systems, and a collaborative process that supports long-term stewardship. The project serves as a pilot for resilient, site-specific campus landscapes that enhance biodiversity, reduce maintenance, and create a distinct “only at UW” identity.

WALKING TOUR
Around the UW Farm

Presenters: Sasha Crawford, U of W MLA Graduate, UW Farm Operations Manager

LA CES Credits: 1

WALKING TOUR
Projects on the Periphery

Presenters: Lara Rose, Principal, Walker Macy; Brian Bishop, Principal, Walker Macy; Calder Gillin, Senior Associate, Walker Macy

LA CES Credits: 2

Double Header!  This tour will feature two recently opened projects at the periphery of the UW Campus: the UW ICA Basketball Training Facility and the UW Montlake Medical Center Arrival.  Serving the athletic district and hospital respectively, both projects were designed to instill a sense of place in areas that have traditionally been treated as functional and secondary to the campus experience.  We will examine the ways that two very different site designs help welcome the public, create identity, support complex vehicular and pedestrian access, and provide creative design solutions to universal accessibility. We will also spend time discussing the fun stuff at each site: intuitive wayfinding, planting selections and the creation of contemplative garden spaces, the use of topography and grade change to define space, and the factors that led to unique material choices and detailing (particularly at UWMC, where stone and topography take center stage).    Because both projects were progressive design-build, we will also touch on the benefits, challenges, and lessons learned working with builders on these large, fast-paced projects.

WALKING TOUR
UW Haring Center Outdoor Play

Presenters: Christian Runge, Principal at Mithun 

LA CES Credits: 1-2

WALKING TOUR
Making Space: Expanding the Public Realm in the U District

Presenters: Janet Lee, AICP, Urban Vitality Manager for the U District Partnership; Aaron Hoard, UW Director of Regional & Community Relations; Don Blakeney, Executive Director of the U District Partnership; Marcus Johnson, Director of Clean & Safe for the U District Partnership

LA CES Credits: 1-2