Associate Professor and Associate Dean, Architecture

Jason Johnson is an Associate Professor and the Associate Dean of Architecture in SAPL, whose work exemplifies the intersection of digital innovation and social justice in architectural education. With a career path marked by international experiences and a focus on integrating technology with community-oriented design, Johnson’s work pushes the boundaries of how architecture can serve both the discipline and society at large. He is a founding partner of the Laboratory for Integrative Design at the University of Calgary, where he exhibits research work related to responsive architecture, generative design, digital fabrication and integrated techniques.

Rather than treating digital tools as isolated or specialized components, Johnson works to embed them throughout the entire educational experience, making digital literacy an integral part of architectural training. He believes that digital tools should empower students to explore their own ideas, experiment with different approaches, and ultimately, produce work that is both innovative and culturally relevant, exemplifying Johnson’s belief that design can and should play a role in addressing societal challenges, creating spaces that are not only functional but also inclusive and welcoming. 

He is forthright about the challenges faced by academics, especially the ambiguity within the design research culture. He sees most of his work as applied research, where there are challenges to evaluating the public impacts. “We’re looking for ways to hand that part of the research off the people who are actually good at doing that research... Trying to find ways for those feedback loops to come back into what we’re doing, I think, is one of the future challenges that we’re looking at.”

Jason S. Johnson CV

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