John Folan, AIA, LEED AP, is the T. David Fitz-Gibbon Professor of Architecture,
Director of the Urban Design Build Studio (UDBS), track Chair of the
Masters of Urban Design (MUD) Program, and member of the Urban
Laboratory faculty at Carnegie Mellon University. He is a graduate of
the University of Illinois (Bachelor of Science in Architecture, High
Honors) and the University of Pennsylvania (Masters of Architecture)
where he was a Kahn Fellow and recipient of the Henry Adams Medal.
Registered as an Architect since 1995, John has focused his research on
the methodologies employed in the translation from drawing to building.
He investigates this in two ways: as pure developmental analysis and
in application through critical practice. The research embraces
methodology in the context of site condition, constructive logic, and
material technologies - both traditional and emergent. A fundamental
component of the research is the development of representational
techniques and analytical experiments that enable simultaneous study of
physical and phenomenological conditions. Experimentation with
representation and analytical testing is investigated as a means of
collapsing the multifaceted layers that separate conception and
construction, establishing an analogue between representation and
fabrication.
John's applied research in practice has included large-scale cultural
and institutional commissions in the United States, Japan, Africa, and
Europe. Executed within variable urban and rural landscapes, the
projects have consistently engaged construction as an inherently
centered, collaborative accomplishment predicated on broad
consideration, sensibility and ethics. Included in this body of work are
the Smithsonian Institution National Air and Space Museum Steven F.
Udvar-Hazy Center, the National Wildlife Federation Headquarters, and
the United States Embassy Compound in Nairobi, Kenya. John's work in
practice has been critically reviewed in more than fifty journal
articles, has been included in several published compendia, has been
documented in two building monographs, and has been recognized by more
than thirty national and international professional merit award
programs.
Prior to joining the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University in 2009, John
was a tenured Associate Professor at the University of Arizona. While
on the faculty at Arizona he was a founding member of the Emerging
Materials Technology (EMT) group. He also co-founded and served as an
executive board member of the Drachman Design Build Coalition (DDBC); a
university affiliated, non-profit, 501(c)3 corporation dedicated to the
design and construction of environmentally specific, energy efficient,
affordable housing prototypes. Projects with the DDBC in Tucson's Urban
Empowerment Zone have been recognized with three consecutive AIA Arizona
Honor Awards for Residence of The Year. Urban strategies employed in
the implementation of the DDBC work influenced the collaborative
development of the Drachman Institute’s legislative proposal that was
recognized with first place award in the 2008 National Urban Policy
Initiative Competition (NUPIC). The work executed with the DDBC, and
currently with the UDBS, has enabled John to collaborate with students
in finding sympathetic relationships between physical and cultural
conditions through construction - not as a physical operation, but as a
comprehensive unity informed by site, material, material behavior,
technology, methodology, and representation.
Recognizing society and popular culture's gravitation toward
specialization, John's teaching pedagogy focuses on the fundamental core
attributes of practice and education that rely on reasoning, logic and
ethic. His pedagogy has developed out of a desire to establish intellect
and maintain broad reaching consideration in the creative process by
engendering clear reasoning skills; reasoning skills that will defy the
restrictions of specialization and benefit the academy, profession and
society with generosity. His teaching was recognized at the University
of Arizona with six consecutive Robert C. Geibner Awards, the Daryl
Dobras Award, and the university's highest teaching honor, The Five Star
Faculty Award.
