Published in Slow Design Down Under | www.abitslow.com | gilo@abitslow.

com

Interview: John Brown, Slow Home Studio

By Gilo Holtzman, April 2011

One of the things that always led me through my various professional experiences
is the need to be versatile, versatile as means to gain more knowledge and control
of what I design and the services that I can provide to my clients. Going into
architecture, early on I realised that I want to do much more than what
traditionally architectural services, I wanted to equip myself with other skills that
will allow me to combine all my interests so I can support my business while
providing my clients all the services they need under one roof.

“if you don’t have to build it don’t, and if you do, then make it
beautiful, that it’s well made and it would last ” [ American Shakers Movement]
John Brown is a man of many hats which all leads to one thing the need to design
build and offers clients a better way to engage design professional resulting
improving the way we live. He is senior Professor of Architecture at Calgary
University, Canada, researching and teaching residential design, a registered
architect, a licensed real estate broker, and one of the founding partners of
Housebrand, a unique multi disciplinary practice & Slow Design Studio, the on line
educational design platform.

Q; what is slow for you?

Slow for me is about being attentive, careful, and thoughtful about what you do.
And quoting from the American shakers tradition “if you don’t have to build it
don’t, and if you do, then make it beautiful, that it’s well made and it would last”
and that is for me a slow idea. There is slow architecture and slow design but I think
that there is also the attitude of the client that you‟re working for, and that‟s what
I‟m really interested in, I think that the notion of a slow home is also based on the
person that‟s going to be living in it. If you think about slow food there is nothing
inherent in the food that is slow it‟s the fact that it is homemade, that it‟s carefully
made it‟s made for someone not mass produced and shipped all over the world. It
can be something very simple so it‟s really about the attitude of the consumer,
which turning him into a participant in the making of food and I think this is the
same thing with housing, you want the person who‟s buying the house to be a co-
creator of the house, sometimes that involves building the house, sometimes it‟s just
remodelling or just buying it. that‟s why our Slow Home Studio is about providing
people with knowledge, it empowers them to make those decisions and spend
more time finding the most suitable home for them, instead of looking at the price
and the house and say, well it feels like home so let‟s buy it. So if we can increase
awareness about architecture so people can make the right decisions similar to
slow food, when people know that most food are high in sugar, cholesterol and
fats, they will go to farmers markets to find healthier choices, 20years ago no body
new that they all thought the all foods are the same.

Q: How did Slow Home idea came about?

On the practical side we‟ve had an architecture practice for 15 years called
Housebrand, where we‟ve been doing just residential work designing, building,
renovating houses in the inner city of Calgary. We have created a unique situation
at least here in Canada, where I‟m a real estate agent a broker, we are architects,
interior designers, we do construction, we have a furniture store where we sell
furniture‟s and design products, so it‟s virtually an integrated idea about how to
help people live in the inner city, and it has been very popular. When I travel to
lecture, people ask me when are you going to open house brand stores but we
didn‟t want to turn it into something we are not which is a mass produce thing, so

we thought that what we are really doing is and talk about is education based, so
instead of going elsewhere design and build, we thought we could help facilitate
between clients and other architects and designers. Basically it‟s to educate
people that they should talk to architects, that there are other ways to proceeding
without building cookie-cutter house. That was when we decided to open a new
company, and the name Slow Home is obviously derived from the slow food
movement.

On the philosophical side of things I always thought there is a relationship between

architecture and food, and when my sister who is a chef described to me what
slow food was, I thought that that‟s what actually what architects do, we design
things which are inherently done in slow way oppose to the mass production
buildings which are fast. So Slow Home Studio is a social enterprise that runs
through our architecture firm, it doesn‟t make any money, it‟s not a profit making
platform just something that we want to do.

Slow food based on three ideas fresh produce, the care in which it prepared, and
as Carlo Padrini calls it, the culture of the table, you sit down and you enjoy the
meal as part of a cultural experience so from a slow home point of view

it‟s about where does the materials comes from, listening to the site and paying
attention that, to climate , it‟s about the care in which it designed and the
thoughtfulness in which it lived in, a place where you raise your family, spend time
and care about.

Q: so the 10 steps to Slow Home that you developed came to actually reinforce
the notion of enhancing that notion, like the importance of having a dining area?

Yes! That is exactly what it is.

‘I don’t think that sustainability is an option anymore, it is a

obligation ... if not it’s like re arranging the veranda on the
Titanic’.
Q: What is your intake on sustainability in the slow home context?

We distil it to two things; slow home should be simple to live in and light on the
environment. Simple to live in means that it should be function properly, beautiful.
And light on the environment is obviously sustainability, in our world there is many
ways to look at sustainability, the fast home industry may offer water fixtures,
bamboo flooring and low VOC paints to claim that it‟s a sustainable house, well it‟s
not sustainable at all.

We wanted to approach sustainability in a more fundamental way, So in setting up

our slow home principles we looked at location, how much driving you need to do
in order to get to your house, solar orientation, size, the notion of stewardship using
your recourses that has been invested and take care of them as you develop, so
we are trying to think more fundamentally offer practical choices that people
need to make about where and how they should live in a more sustainable way
without getting into the environmental blink of things.

Q: do you think that good design have to be sustainable?

Yes, I don‟t think that sustainability is an option anymore, it is a obligation everyone

should do that, all has to become sustainable, if not it‟s like re arranging the
veranda on the Titanic. At the same time it can‟t be just sustainable, because if it is
and a horrible place to live then it‟s also not right. It has to be both.

Q: How do these principles are being manifested in type of projects that you take?

There are two sides of what we do, as architects we design slow homes and also
promote Slow Home Studio as an action, so we are always building on existing sites
, brown field sites, we try to reuse the existing structure as much as possible, we buy
and renovate according to solar orientation , we make sure that it‟s modestly sized
and then we rapidly use renewable recourses we use advanced technologies like
heat recovery ventilator and solar power water heater and we also build them
that they would last so they are good investment for the environment which they
go into and we also suggest client to use green power as part of the things that we
do. And we are now finishing our first „LEED‟ Gold house and we are doing a
„LEED Gold renovation.

Q: how valuable is the communication between clients and designers how we can
improve it, and how can we make ourselves more accessible to them not only in
the design process?

What I really promote is the idea of working with a designer rather than buying
something in stock, if you‟re working with a designer even if it‟s just choosing the
right house you can talk about how is this dining room works, what is this light,
where does the light comes in. We found out through 12 years of practice that
people get really engaged with this process, and they think about their homes in a
more fundamental way when they gone through that, so that‟s way we do the
design minutes and we talk about design is this accessible way, so in a way similar
to Jamie Oliver‟s approach, lets teach everyone to cook to get engaged a bit
more with their food, so if I can teach people a little bit about design so they will
get a little bit more involved with their houses so they will feel more comfortable
hiring and architect or designer to help them with these small decisions about their
house . So it is about social engagement.
Q: Do you think that by creating a multi-discipline business model, providing
services that are not usually provided by architects, we can gain more control over
the design process, control that we have gradually lost in the late 20 th century? Q:
How do you see the future role of Architectural Practice?

Yes definitely and that was the big advantage of our House Brand practice, and I
go and lecture about this business model because it has been very effective ,
because rather an architect being just the person who draws drawings and is one
little piece of a bigger pie, we do all of the things, so when someone comes to me
and say , well this is how much money I‟ve got and this is how I want to live, i want
to do these sorts of things... so what I do, I go and find the property then I help
them buy that and then I design the house and then we build it, we do the interior
design furnish it and do all of that, so it gives us control, it gives accountability to
the client, because there is one person looking after everything and it allows you
to do a proper trade off so you‟re not over spending on one area, there is an
overall consistency , and because we‟re designing and build it gets back to the
idea of craft rather then it being the drawing where the builder had built from it,
and it allows us to get much larger integration in design and construction right from
the early beginning. Another advantage from the business point of view is that you
are being payed from an early stage and not late into the design process. And
from the client point of view they know what they get, since we design and build,
we know how much things cost we know how to build it there are no unexpected
crossovers variation of costs and if there are we know how to balance them as
designers and not relay on the contractor to make these decisions of what to cut
out.

What we also need to think about what we are as professionals because a lot of
times people do not need that heroic house and what they need is some simple
advice to do simple things that can really transform their lives. So for me I find it
much more rewording to be able to help more people live in a more sustainable
way in better homes that they understand and nourish, rather than design houses
that will be featured on a cover of a magazine. So I like to help people who think
that they can‟t hire and architect, the people that are kind of average home
owners, and renters, and how do they make better and smarter decisions about
where they live, and give them some simple tools to do that. So I am interested in
helping move public opinion and that‟s the focus of slow home studio, but it does
not deny the other things and roles in various realm, we are one piece somewhere
in the middle.

Q: Besides the Slow Home philosophy, does a slow home take any recognisable
physical form or features?
I try not to have it become a style, because I think that as soon as it becomes a
style, it becomes a thing that can be packaged and sold and so it becomes fast,
so I‟d like to think that like slow food, in Italy slow food is pasta, in Spain is paia,
each culture and each climate has its own features, so each country, city has it‟s
own idea what a slow home is, ant can be varied from a small unit in one city to a
single family house as in Calgary. So it needs to be tuned to the climate, the
people living in it, and should be designed by someone who knows the area, and
then it can be all sorts of things without labelling it as modern contemporary etc‟.

So slow home physical attributes will make a bedroom a place that is comfortable
to sleep in the feel of the room, how much light comes in and can you block it , is it
quiet peaceful, too often particularly in the fast house industry these rooms are just
names on a plan a bathroom is just a room with pluming fixtures and not a space
to get ready in the morning, kitchens are just a space with appliances and not a
comfortable place to cock in.

Q: have you received any feedbacks from client or done some post occupancy
evaluation to see whether your design had an impact on their lives ?

Yes for sure, actually I found it in the process of working through the design and
construction with them and what‟s funny is that at the end of the project when
they take me to a tour in their house, they say “would you like to come and see
my house?” and that‟s for me the mark of success that they have such a sense of
ownership and connection that they failed to see that I had anything to do with it
which is to me ideal. And some not everybody really do change, they change their
diet, they change the way they live, start biking to work, they‟re suddenly become
aware of other things that they didn‟t think off. There is really profound impact and
much of it is because of their involvement and collaboration in the whole process.

Today there are a lot of people who are willing to engage and learn about living
more sustainably but they don‟t know how. And so the fast house industries take
advantage of that by selling green wash homes which misses most of the
fundamental attributes of sustainability.

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Quotes: http://housebrand.ca/wp-content/themes/housebrand/pdf/resArch.pdf

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Gilo Holtzman | Partner

B.Des.(Arch) | Mast. Architecture

Environmentally & Socially Sustainable Design

W: www.synthesisstudio.org | E: gilo@synthesisstudio.org | http://gahportfolio.blogspot.com/