In 1978, John helped a friend from architectural studies at Rice form a company and opened a small business, The Container Store. As the company grew, an increasing amount of John’s time and effort went into analyzing markets, identifying sites and designing new stores coast to coast. In 1991 it became a full-time job and John closed his architectural practice.

In 1967, while in the master’s program at Yale, Charles Moore was head of the School of Architecture. That year Yale launched its Design-Build program in which architecture students competed in the design of a small local project and built the winning design. Fifty years later, with the Yale project still going strong, John proposed and has now helped fund a similar design-build program at the UTA School of Architecture. This program reminds him of his initial project when he set up his architectural practice in Dallas in 1968. It was a 2,400 square foot home that was built for $24,000. It won a significant AIA Design Award for the decade of the 60s and launched his architectural career reinforcing his enthusiasm for modest, cost-efficient architecture. He believes a building should respect its neighbors, delight, inspire, efficiently serve and gracefully endure.

Joshua M. Nason is an Associate Professor in the College of Architecture, Planning, and Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Arlington as well as the Director of Iterative Studio, an experimental design research group. Professor Nason completed his Bachelor of Science in Architecture, Professional Masters Degree in Architecture, and an MBA at Texas Tech University before completing a Post-Professional Masters degree in Architectural Design and Discourse at Cornell University. He is the co-editor of Chasing the City: Models for Extra Urban Investigations. Joshua’s design work and research explore dynamic connections, relationships and reciprocities in architectural and urban projects. He teaches courses in architectural design, urbanism, theory, and mapping. Professor Nason initially joined the Parallel Construction team for the build semester of Casa Cortile in the spring of 2018 and has since continued teaching residential design within the program.