John Brennan profile picture

Job title:

Personal Chair of Sustainable Architecture

Role:

Programme Director MSc Advanced Sustainable Design

Office:

Room 4.12, Minto House

Biography

John is Professor of Sustainable Architecture and is programme director for MSc Advanced Sustainable Design. He is a practicing architect and collaborated on a range of buildings in Scotland that establish what we now call ecological design. John is a Fellow of the Edinburgh Futures Institute and co-director of the forthcoming multidisciplinary programme MSc Sustainable Lands and Cities.

John's research centres on the relationship of architecture to community and the theory and practice of rural design. He is author of the recently published monograph Scotland's Rural Home that defines the field of contemporary design in the countryside. He is a national lead for the AHRC Four Nations project Community Consultation and Quality of Life.

John is a partner in Brennan and Wilson Architects. His work on Culorrin House tested and validates his theoretical work and won the Scottish Design Awards Northern Exposure Prize and gaining a Saltire Award for Housing.

Adaptability and long term resilience is a key aspect of emerging sustainability discourses. John discusses this in the book Aesthetics of Sustainable Architecture. These ideas were at the heart of his practice’s entry for Scotland’s Housing Expo. The WholeLife House asks the research question, how to we embed resilience in the suburban home? The completed building won the Scottish Design Awards House of the Year Prize. 

John has been Convenor of the Saltire Society Housing Design Awards and is an advisory group member for Learning Places Scotland. He has been a member of programme validation boards across the UK and has acted as external examiner at the Universities of Nottingham and Sheffield as well as the Centre for Alternative Technology. John was head of the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture from 2012-2015.

Teaching

John established MSc Advanced Sustainable Design in 2011 and continues as its programme director. The programme instigated living lab projects in sustainable design over a sustained period in Edinburgh and the Borders that aligned student assignments with community and expert stakeholders. 

John is an Edinburgh Futures Institute fellow and is co-director of the forthcoming interdisciplinary MSc Sustainable Lands and Cities. He collaborates with colleagues in the Edinburgh Business School, Global Academy of Agriculture and Food Security, and the School of Geosciences.

John contributes to teaching in sustainability and environmental design on the BA/MA programme. He supervises PhD students and has supervised over 10 students to successful completion.

John welcomes potential PhD students interested in sustainable design, rural architecture and community engagement.

Research

John's research focuses on rural and sustainable housing along with exploring how communities can be empowered in the design process.  He is author of monograph Scotland’s Rural Home [2021] which is acknowledged to define the field for contemporary rural design through focusing on social and economic contexts of design practice. He has written about rural design in peer reviewed book chapters Qualitative and Quantitative Traditions in Sustainable Design [2011], Architecture, Aesthetics and Making a working countryside [2013], Pulling away from the polite: new architecture in old landscapes [2013].

John has a portfolio of practice led research designing Culorrin House [2006] [Saltire Housing Design Award, Northern Exposure Prize].  He collaborated with Artist James Turrell on the Rannoch Skyspace [2004-6]. John explored more theoretical underpinning of ruralism with the Architectural Research European Network, that lead to AlterRurality: Architecture of the Rural Gaze: Redefining building in rural Scotland. He also explored long term adaptability in the WholeLife House built for Scotland’s Housing Expo and collaborated on the East Lothian PassiveHouse, a built prototype validating the delivery of net zero carbon homes in mainstream contexts. It was winner of a Saltire Society Housing Design Award and the Chartered Institute of Building Award for Sustainable Building.

John has a background in community architecture and has explored this through research on diaspora communities. He is currently Scottish lead on the AHRC funded Community Consultation and Quality of Life project with a recently completed pilot project Our Edinburgh Neighbourhood; we look at both barriers and opportunities to meaningful community engagement in the planning process.

PhD Supervision Topics

  • Sustainable design
  • Rural architecture
  • Design and plannning

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