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 age-in-community design. His research focuses on 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.”  

A recent partnership with a not-for-profit care provider is looking at scaling the Garden Loft project to remote and rural communities, which will bring 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.”  

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.”

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