John Folan
John Folan is head of the Department of Architecture and professor at the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas. He is also director of the Urban Design Build Studio (UDBS), which he founded in 2008 while appointed as the T. David Fitz-Gibbon Chair in Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University. Through the UDBS and other collaborative ventures, Folan has made a commitment to work with underrepresented communities on the development and implementation of catalytic projects through participatory design processes. His work prioritizes public interest, social justice and equity as a productive end.
In 2011, Folan founded and assumed responsibility as the executive director of PROJECT RE_ to expand the capacity of the UDBS in Western Pennsylvania through strategic partnerships with other non-profit entities in addressing problems of regional significance at scale. His leadership in the realization of PROJECT RE_ has straddled transactional and physical dimensions of purpose in the promotion of entrepreneurial opportunities for under-represented populations, provision of job skill development, and demonstration of innovative design-centered construction; supporting simultaneous aspirations of community restoration, resident empowerment, and material resource advocacy.
Folan’s work with the UDBS and community partners has been published widely and exhibited internationally with dedicated installations at the 2016 XX Pan American Bienal de Arquitectura Quito, Ecuador, and the 2014 Hong Kong/Shenzhen (UABB) Biennale. The work has also been recognized with numerous American Institute of Architect (AIA) Design Excellence Awards, AIA/ACSA Collaborative Practice Awards, AIA/ACSA Housing Design Education Awards, and three Design Corps SEED Awards for excellence in Public Interest Design. In 2018, the Urban Design Build Studio (UDBS) was named the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Impact Practice for sustained ability to span a wide range of design disciplines that are tied together by a common goal to design and create a better world through innovative, scale-able and measurable solutions.
Folan’s work in Pittsburgh represents an extension of efforts in university-affiliated, community-based design and construction initiated while he was a tenured faculty member at the University of Arizona. In Tucson, Arizona, Folan co-founded, co-directed and served as an executive board member of the Drachman Design Build Coalition (DDBC), a university-affiliated, non-profit corporation dedicated to the design and construction of environmentally specific, energy-efficient, affordable housing prototypes. Projects completed by Folan in collaboration with the DDBC implemented in Tucson’s Urban Empowerment Zone have been recognized with three consecutive AIA Arizona Awards for Residence of The Year, the 2011 AIA/ACSA Collaborative Practice Award and the 2016 Design Corps SEED Award for Excellence in Public Interest Design. Urban strategies employed in the implementation of the DDBC work influenced the collaborative development of the Drachman Institute’s legislative proposal for regionally specific sustainability guidelines. The work was recognized with first-place award in the 2008 National Urban Policy Initiative Competition (NUPIC).
Folan’s work in the public interest arena that focuses on regionally specific, appropriate, replicable design solutions predicated on community vested entrepreneurial opportunities for residents is informed by work in private practice. Registered as an architect since 1995 and a LEED Accredited Professional since 2008, Folan’s applied research in practice has included net-zero residential, cultural and institutional commissions in the United States, Japan, Africa and Europe. 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.
The fundamental thread in his research and creative practice across the span of his career has been understanding of material, productive process, and people in the translation from drawing to building.
He did his graduate study at the University of Pennsylvania where he was awarded the Henry Adams Medal, and his undergraduate work at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, graduating with high honors.