Dean, Professor

John Brown is the current Dean of the SAPL faculty. He is a registered architect and a founding principal of both Housebrand and Garden Loft. He has received numerous awards for his innovative housing design and practice and is a recognized authority on residential design, innovative architectural practice, and age-in-community design. His research focuses on innovative methods of creating accessible and affordable housing that combines mass customization and design democratization with digital monitoring/sensing and next generation home-based medical support. Brown emphasizes the importance of looking beyond design and research, towards real-world effectiveness. “My research lab is grounded in professional practice… I’m interested in developing an idea within an academic context and then applying it in the real world. I want to demonstrate to students as well as to the profession that there are different ways of doing things… It’s about innovative forms of practice and entrepreneurialism within design.”  

Brown address social justice issues at the residential level by designing innovative ways for buildings to support equitable living experiences. He feels there is a gap in housing options between unassisted living in a normative house and institutionalized care that is not currently being met by either the private market or public services. In personal and family experiences, Brown noticed that conventional residences are poorly equipped to support people with differing abilities and medical needs, while institutionalization is often undesirable because of how it disconnects people from their loved ones and communities. Brown’s Garden Loft design addresses the gap between these options by providing supported independent living. By living in a Garden Loft, seniors can enjoy their autonomy for as long as possible in their own homes because of safety features such as grab-rails, adjustable height counters, fall-safe compliant floors, and digital support systems. But it isn’t just about providing safety and support feature. Brown feels that too often these medical requirements change can change the feeling of home into more of a hospital, which he believes isn’t fair to the residents. To counteract this, Brown used the metaphor of eyeglasses to guide the design of Garden Loft. “Eyeglasses are medical devices, but we don’t think of as such. Rather, we select our glasses to be expressions of our sense of self, of how we project out to the world and how we see ourselves. The fact that there’s a certain medical correction in the glass is completely transparent to everybody in the room. We approach accessible design in the same way. In Garden Loft, the safety and support features are as ‘invisible’ as the lenses in your eyeglasses.” Brown believes that Garden Lofts also improve equity by allowing seniors and people with special needs to be a part of their communities without feeling alienated, while still receiving the supports they need to enjoy a high quality of life. “Everyone deserves to have an equivalency of experience. Everyone should have a space that enables you to lead a full and rich independent life.”  

Brown emphasizes that successful implementation is imperative in achieving the social justice dimension of design. “For me, it’s about the implementation of the thing… how do we do something that can really have a much broader impact for the silent voices, the people that are forgotten, that deserve to have an equivalency of experience.” After working with the Cumming School of Medicine to test the effectiveness of early Garden Loft design strategies, Brown shifted his focus to implementation. He soon became frustrated with the limitations of conventional consultation practice and switched to an entrepreneurial startup model. So far, 5 units have been built, and the Garden Loft team is currently working with clients on a series of multi-unit villages in Southern Alberta and British Columbia. A recent partnership with a not-for-profit care provider is looking at scaling the project to remote and rural communities. “We’re hoping this year to be able to build our first demonstration village and then scale up to several hundred units by year three. Ultimately, we want to grow across the country and even into the US.” This level of success will come with additional research opportunities. “We hope to reconnect with the School of Medicine to do a long-term horizontal study of health impacts and compare that with traditional forms of housing. I think that’s going to be really interesting.”  

John Brown’s research has led to exciting innovations in accessible and equitable home design. His work takes these outcomes a step further, ensuring they come to fruition where they can have tangible impacts for the people who need them. Brown also brings this entrepreneurial thinking into the classroom. “Our Doctor of Design program is designed to help other established practitioners do the same thing I have done. We don’t have to wait for enlightened clients. We can take control of our own destinies and develop new forms of practice models that empower us, as professionals, to make the positive changes we believe in.” Thank you to John Brown for sharing your work with us and bringing it out into the wider world. 

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