Known for its innovative approach to educational institution design, international architecture firm ThomsonAdsett has appointed Chad Brown as group director for education.

As a senior architect with over 20 years’ experience, Brown has received several major awards for his design expertise across a range of education and community projects. 

Looking forward to building on what he calls the firm’s ‘rigorous approach’ to collaboration and design, Brown says that his “design philosophy has always had people at the centre of design thinking”. 

“Designing spaces for people is at the core of what we do.”

“As education designers, we need to be engaging with the educators and students who are actually using each space,” he says. 

“It’s important that as designers, we enable many voices to be heard, and effectively synthesise these voices to create enriched spaces for people. This can’t be done in isolation and can no longer be done through traditional models of engagement.”

“We can’t design for people without engaging with them. This is not new to architecture, but as a profession, we need to identify different ways to integrate the users of a space in the design process,” notes Brown.

While the education and community sector is extremely competitive, Brown says that it's rewarding to be involved in designing spaces that directly benefit society – whether it’s a learning environment, or community gathering space.

“Australian states are investing in education as important community infrastructure. They are also actively benchmarking against the private sector. This will only result in efficiencies and the advancement of public education spaces,” he says.