Johan Voordouw

Associate Professor
Johan Voordouw is an architect and design practitioner. He uses research creation methodologies to explore a diverse range of topics. Long-standing interests include architectural representation of domestic interiors, critical heritage, and the ongoing environmental crisis. These themes form the foundation of his creative, material, and digital design practice.
Voordouw is developing an idea around architecture as a complication in the landscape. He is interested in pursuing the resultant design implications for program, passive and active systems, and material assemblies.
In July 2025, he started his second sabbatical. During this time, he aims to complete a series of unfinished projects, including a book entitled New Image of Home. This work includes an ongoing project on world heritage, a project on Canadian domestic interiors, a series of digital etchings that spatially catalogue endangered species, and a series of speculative drawings and models exploring clouds — a longstanding technological and environmental interest.
Voordouw’s research has been published the The Plan Journal, and his creative work exhibited at the Magazin Gallery and the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna, the International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam, the Royal Academy Summer Show London, and the Venice Architecture Biennale. He completed an architecture residency at Art Omi in 2019.
He is a registered architect in the UK and has worked in professional practice in the U.K., Canada, and the Netherlands. His most notable professional experience was at Foster + Partners in London. Before joining Carleton, he taught at De Montfort University and London Southbank University.
Research
Johan Voordouw “Digital Line: Architecture’s Expanding Thread” in The Plan Journal, vol. 4, No. 1, (2019)
Johan Voordouw, “Cloud Formations: Operations of Ambiguity”, Playing with the Rules: ACSA Fall Conference,
Milwaukee, U.S.A. (2018)
Johan Voordouw, ‘No One is Home’. Chon, Jae-Sung. ed. House Us (Winnipeg: OCDI Press, 2018): 126-133
Johan Voordouw, ‘Re-Visiting Utopia: Digitality to Augment Moments of the Real’, AMPS Proceedings Series 12:
Critical Practice in an Age of Complexity (Architecture, Media Politics and Society) 2018, 202-209
Johan Voordouw, ‘Topology & Interiority: Folding Space Inside’. Marinic, Gregory, ed. The Interior Architecture Theory Reader (New York: Routledge, 2018): 318-326
Education
Master of Architecture – Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, London
Bachelor of Environmental Design – University of Manitoba
Recent Courses
ARCS 5500 – Thesis
ARCS 5032 – M.Arch 1 Studio II
ARCN 2106 – Introduction to Multimedia
ARCS 3105 – BAS Studio 4
ARCS 2106 – Studio 3