Cultures, Communities and Design

Dr Graham Cairns is an academic and author in the field of architecture who has written extensively on film, advertising and political communication. He has held Visiting Professor positions at universities in Spain, the UK, Mexico, the Gambia, South Africa and the US. He has led academic departments in the UK and the US. He has worked in architectural studios in London and Hong Kong and previously founded and ran a performing arts organisation, Hybrid Artworks, specialised in video installation and performance writing. He is author and editor of multiple books and articles on architecture as both a form of visual culture and a socio-political construct. He is currently director of the academic research organisation AMPS (Architecture, Media, Politics, Society), and Executive Editor of its associated journal Architecture_MPS.

Dr. Fabian Neuhaus, PhD, received his doctorate in urban planning from University College London, the Bartlett. His research interest are temporal aspects of the urban environment. His research focuses on the topics of Habitus, Type and Ornament in the sense of Activity, Technology and Memory. He has been a guest critic at the Bartlett School of Architecture, Architecture Association AA, University of Arts London, London Metropolitan University at the Faculty of Architecture and Spatial Design, the University of Plymouth at the School of Architecture. For his Masters of Science in Urban Design at the Bartlett School of Architecture, he was awarded a distinction. He has worked with architecture and urban design practices in the UK and Switzerland as well as on research projects at universities in Switzerland, Germany and the UK.

John Brown is a registered architect and a founding principal of both Housebrand Construction and FABhome. He is a recognized authority on residential practice, new models of architectural practice, and age-in-community design. 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, Professor Brown began a collaboration with researchers in the Cumming School of Medicine to look at age-in-community design strategies. He completed a PhD entitled Going Home: Future Adaptive Building for Aging-in-Place in 2016 through the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia. This research explored new forms of age-in-place housing that combines mass customization and design democratization with digital monitoring/sensing and next generation home-based medical support to create a new approach to housing our older adult population and keep them out of structured care facilities for as long as possible. The PhD led to the Age-in-Place Laneway House Research Project which received a Mayor’s Urban Design Award in Housing Innovation. In 2018, Professor Brown began commercialization of this research through the Social Enterprise Incubator Program run by Innovate Calgary and micro-voucher funding from Alberta Innovates. FABhome launched in 2020 to deliver this innovative age-in-community architectural initiative to seniors across Canada.