University of Calgary, Canada
John Brown is a registered architect, a founding Principal of the architectural firm Housebrand, and a co- founder of Slow Home, an international movement advocating for increased design quality in North America’s housing market. He is a recognized authority on residential practice and new models of architectural practice. In 2003 he received the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada Award of Excellence for Innovation for his development of housebrand, a vertically integrated practice that combines residential architecture, construction, interior design, and real estate services into a one-stop shop for homebuyers. In 2009 he received a Leadership Award from Residential Architect Magazine in recognition of his work to increase public awareness about the value of design.
In 2012 Prof. Brown expanded his research interests into home health and began a long-term collaboration with researchers in the Cumming School of Medicine to look at aging-in-place design strategies that incorporate mass customization and co-design opportunities. He recently completed a PhD on this topic entitled Going Home: Future Adaptive Building for Aging-in-Place through the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia. This research explores new forms of aging-in-place housing that combine mass customization and design democratization with digital monitoring/ sensing and next generation home-based medical support to create a new approach to aging-in-place design. These single and multi-family residences can easily adapt to meet changing levels of physical and cognitive ability, chronic disease, and critical illness while still maintaining their essential domestic character and the agency of the resident. In 2015, Mr. Brown’s aging in place research was recognized with a Mayor’s Urban Design Award in Housing Innovation for the development of the Aging-in-Place Laneway Housing Research Project.