ABOUT | PRESS | LECTURES & PRESENTATIONS

JOHN BROWN is the editor of theslowhome.com and the founder of the Slow Home Movement. He is a registered architect, real estate broker and Professor of Architecture at the University of Calgary.


The Slow Home Test is a quick and easy way to see how well your home adheres to the three Slow Home Principles of CLOSE, SIMPLE, and LIGHT. In these turbulent times we all need to make smarter decisions about how and where we live. Even if present circumstances limit our ability to do anything right away, it is essential to develop a game plan for the future. Use the Slow Home Test to help you to think like a designer and improve the quality of your domestic life and maximize your home's future value as an investment.

Spend a few minutes answering the sixty questions about your home and you will automatically receive your Slow Home Residential Profile. This personalized document interprets your test score and analyzes how close, simple, and light your home is. Your Profile also contains an initial risk assessment of how susceptible your home is to losing long term value in a market increasingly influenced by peak oil, climate change, and the credit crisis.

It is possible to live well in these turbulent times. To accomplish this, however, you need to start thinking like a designer rather than like a consumer. You can take control of your home and start creating the kind of future you want. Every choice you make, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, contributes to the design of this future. Slow Home helps you make these decisions about where and how you live according to the principles of close, simple and light.







We believe that our homes and neighborhoods should be healthy, vibrant places that uplift the spirit and gracefully fit our needs. We call for an end to poor construction, bad design, misleading marketing, unfair lending practices and environmental neglect in the housing industry. We acknowledge our collective responsibility to create CLOSE, SIMPLE, LIGHT places to live that leave a positive legacy for future generations.

provides design focused information that homeowners can use to improve the quality of how and where they live. It takes its name from the slow food movement which arose as a reaction to the processed food industry. The sprawl of cookie cutter housing that surrounds us is like fast food - standardized, homogenous, and wasteful. It contributes to a too fast life that is bad for us, our cities, and the environment. In the same way that slow food raises awareness of the food we eat and how these choices affect our lives, Slow Home empowers you to take more control of your home and improve the quality of how you live while reducing your environmental impact and futureproofing the long term investment value of your home.