Staff Profile

John joined Newcastle University School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape in September 2019 as a Teaching Fellow in Architectural Technology.

In 2015 John founded John Kinsley Architects to work on the unique opportunity that the community led Bath Street project offered. John initiated the scheme and acted as both client and developer as well as architect on the project, which has garnered significant attention and won several awards including an RIAS Award and the Saltire Housing Award for Innovation following its completion in August 2017. The practice was awarded “Practice of the Year’ at the Scottish Design Awards in 2018.

John joined Aedas in September 2005 to facilitate the opening of a new Edinburgh office. Between 2005-15 John led Aedas teams on several key projects, including the design of a new fully integrated transport interchange at Haymarket railway station in Edinburgh, the design of a new railway station at Edinburgh Airport as part of the £610M Edinburgh Airport Rail Link (EARL) scheme, the design of a new £25M heavy/light rail interchange at Gogar in the west of Edinburgh, the refurbishment of the Glasgow Subway network and an urban design study surrounding the new London Crossrail Whitechapel Station.

Prior to joining Aedas, John was an Associate Architect with RMJM Scotland Ltd where he led a 40 strong Edinburgh based team in collaboration with EMBT Arquitectes Associats of Barcelona on the Scottish Parliament project. His duties on this extremely challenging £250M project included resource planning and design programming; chairing design team meetings; representing EMBT/RMJM at Project Manager (client), Construction Manager (contractor) and Progress Group (politicians) meetings; day to day management of the architectural team and working with the EMBT team in Barcelona. Considerable management and communication skills were required in dealing with these diverse and sometimes disparate groups. John oversaw the detail design and production of some 25000 architectural working drawings describing a quality of detail which was critically acclaimed in its contribution to the delivery of Enric Miralles’ original concept and the successful union of the EMBT/RMJM team was recognised in the award of the Stirling Prize in 2005.

John holds a Masters degree with distinction in Bioclimatic Architectural Design. A paper based on his Masters thesis was published in “Visualization and Intelligent Design in Engineering and Architecture 11’ in 1995. He has contributed to several award winning sustainable designs including the Scottish Public Pensions Agency building in Galashiels and the Aspire Centre at Lauder College in Dunfermline. He is a licensed BREEAM Assessor, a former committee member of the Scottish Ecological Design Association and former member of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland’s Sustainability Accreditation Task Force.