John Quale

M.Arch., University of Virginia;
B.A., American University

Assistant Professor

John Quale teaches architectural design studios, design / build studios, and building technology courses in the Department of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. He initiated and serves as Project Director for the ecoMOD project.

The ecoMOD Project is focused on creating highly energy-efficient and prefabricated homes for affordable housing organizations such as Habitat for Humanity and Piedmont Housing Alliance. The project has successfully created five occupied affordable housing units on three sites in Charlottesville, VA and Gautier, MS. The project has been funded by a variety of non–profits, companies and the U.S. Environmental Project Agency. ecoMOD is a finalist in the 2009 World Habitat Award, and the recipient of the U.S. Green Building Council’s 2008 Excellence in Green Building Curriculum Award. It has also been recognized by the American Institute of Architects Committee on the Environment (AIA COTE) as one of a few exemplary sustainable design curriculum initiatives in the country. The ecoMOD project received the 2007 NCARB Grand Prize For Creative Integration Of Practice And Education In The Academy, the 2007 AIA Education Honor Award and the 2007 ACSA Collaborative Practice Award — the first time an initiative has received all three of these major architectural education awards in the same year. John is also the recipient of the 2008 University of Virginia Alumni Board of Trustees Teaching Award.

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, 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 2010. 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.

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. He also received the 1992 RTKL Travel Fellowship, and used the opportunity to pursue research in Asia.

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 2001.