Personal Statement

John Quale is an Associate Professor of Architecture, and teaches architectural design studios, design / build studios, and building technology courses. He serves as Director of the Graduate Architecture Program. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Tokyo, Japan and the Thomas Jefferson Fellow at Downing College, Cambridge University, U.K. He initiated and serves as Project Director for the ecoMOD project, and its sister initiative, the ecoREMOD project.

ecoMOD is a multi-year research and design / build / evaluate project at the School of Architecture, in partnership with the UVA School of Engineering and Applied Science. Interdisciplinary ecoMOD teams create sustainable, prefabricated housing units for affordable housing organizations. Thus far, ecoMOD has created six affordable housing units for Habitat for Humanity and Piedmont Housing Alliance, and ecoREMOD has renovated three housing units for the City of Charlottesville, and Falmouth Heritage Renewal in Falmouth, Jamaica. Through a recent $2.45 million grant, ecoMOD is partnering with affordable housing organizations in Southside and Southwestern Virginia to create a total of four new high performance housing units for Southside Outreach and People Incorporated. The goal is to use the opportunity to support economic development by helping the Southside industrialized housing companies to gear up to provide ecoMOD and similar housing throughout the region. The Virginia Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission has provided the funding.

ecoMOD was a finalist for the 2009 U.N. World Habitat Award, and the recipient of the U.S. Green Building Council’s Excellence in Green Building Curriculum Award. It has also been recognized by the AIA Committee on the Environment (AIA COTE) as one of a few exemplary sustainable design curriculum initiatives in the country. In 2007 the ecoMOD project received the NCARB Grand Prize For Creative Integration Of Practice And Education In The Academy, the AIA Education Honor Award and the ACSA Collaborative Practice Award – the first time an initiative received all three in the same year. In 2010,

John was the University of Virginia nominee for the U.S. Professors of the Year award program sponsored by CASE and the Carnegie Foundation. He was the recipient of the 2008 UVA Alumni Board of Trustees Teaching Award and a Seven Society Teaching Award in 2002. The ecoMOD project has appeared on CNN’s “Global Challenges” show, Virginia Public Radio, and in various publications including Metropolis Magazine, Architectural Record, Environmental Building News, Sustain OSC Magazine (UK), and Hors Serie: Science et Vie (France). John is a LEED Accredited Professional of the U.S. Green Building Council, and his research interests include ecological and climate responsive design and environmental criteria. In 2007, he was elected to the Board of Directors for the Virginia Sustainable Building Network. He was spoken nationally and internationally at various venues, including the National Building Museum, the U.S. Green Building Council’s GreenBuild conference, Princeton, Cornell, the Architectural Association (U.K.), Oxford University, Cambridge University, University of Tokyo, University of Michigan and many other universities and conferences. He served on the jury of the 2007 AIA Top Ten Green Projects Award, and on the international jury for the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company’s Masdar Headquarters, a carbon neutral building to be located in the carbon neutral city of Masdar (master plan by Norman Foster) in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

John is the author of the forthcoming book "Sustainable, Affordable, Prefab: the ecoMOD Project" to be published by UVA Press in 2011. He also authored "Trojan Goat: A Self Sufficient House," distributed by UVA Press. The book is about his experience as the architecture advisor / coordinator for the 2002 UVA Solar Decathlon Team, a national design/build house competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. The UVA team won 1st Place in the Design & Livability (architecture) and Energy Balance events of the 2002 Decathlon, and 2nd Place overall. The project was published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Architectural Record, Architecture, Metropolis, and featured on HGTV, the DIY Network, and Tech TV. He has worked for several architecture firms in New York City. He spent four years as a project architect with Architecture Research Office (ARO), where he managed a variety of projects, including a house in Colorado, and the offices of Capital Z Partners. As an intern designer at Richard Meier & Partners, he worked on the J. Paul Getty Center in Los Angeles. He has also spent time in the offices of W.G. Clark Architects, William McDonough and Partners, and Perkins & Will, New York.

John’s MArch thesis project at the University of Virginia, a children’s summer camp sited on a landfill, won 1st Place in the 1993 ACSA/American Wood Council National Design Competition. As a photographer, he has mounted three solo exhibitions, and has been included in several group shows in New York City, Washington DC and Charlottesville, Virginia. He has taught photography workshops at the International Center of Photography in New York City, and the National Building Museum in Washington DC. John and his wife Sara Osborne, a landscape architect, established Q&O Design in 2000.