Professor Emeritus
Architecture
tbartuska@wsu.edu
Tom is now a retired Architect and Professor Emeritus after teaching 40 years at WSU including five programs in London. He always stated the wonderful streets of London and UK’s historic cities were his favorite “classrooms.” He emphasized theory, design and planning with the natural and built environment, now commonly referred to as sustainable design and planning. He was awarded a Fulbright and taught at Kabul University, Afghanistan. He enjoyed team work, interdisciplinary studios and SBSE (Society of Building Science Educators). Tom achieved a B. Arch with honors, a scholarship to achieve a M. Arch from the University of Illinois, and did post-graduate work in England.
He helped create and coordinated a unique all-university, team taught course involving all the design and planning disciplines – The Built Environment (at times the enrollment exceeded 300). He feels it was an honor to have served such a large number of students. Based on this unique Built Environment course, he co-authored and edited two interdisciplinary books, The Built Environment: A Collaborative Inquiry into Design and Planning, numerous chapters in other books, served on the Boards of Pullman Main Street and Palouse-Clearwater Environmental Institute (helped plant 100s of trees), and Pullman and WSU planning commissions.
He collaborated with two other WSU colleagues, and was one of three internationally to be awarded a gold metal at the UN Habitat Conference for their work on Sustainable Development. The two other recipients were Foster Partners of London and Mirillo Architects from Argentina.
Tom and his wife Helen have been interested in round barns, reanimating rural buildings and communities for some 60 years. They finally summarized their findings in a book entitled Washington State’s Round Barns: Preserving a Vanishing Rural Heritage to be published by WSU Press in 2023.
Now they reside in the Pacific Northwest and both volunteer at IslandWood, an outdoor school with national recognition for its outdoor educational programs and contemporary sustainable design. As their son says, “their new careers are being volunteers.”