Jonathan Bean

Associate Professor of Architecture, Sustainable Built Environments and Marketing
Faculty Advisor, Master of Science in Architecture Sustainable Market Transformation Concentration
CUES Distinguished Fellow

Programs

  • Architecture
  • Master of Science in Architecture
  • School of Architecture
  • School of Landscape Architecture and Planning
  • Sustainable Built Environments
Jonathan Bean

CAPLA 208

520-626-0013
jonathanyb@arizona.edu

Areas of Expertise

  • Building science and market transformation
  • Home and Homebuilding
  • Social Science
  • Taste and consumer culture theory

Degrees

  • PhD, University of California at Berkeley, 2011
  • MS, University of California at Berkeley, 2008
  • BA, University of California at Berkeley, 2002

Links

LinkedIn

Biography

  • Affiliated Faculty, Department of Marketing, Eller College of Management
  • Affiliated Faculty, Civil and Architectural Engineering and Mechanics, College of Engineering

Jonathan Bean, PhD, understands processes of market transformation in the building industry through an immersive study of high performance building. His TEDx talk Demand Less describes the potential of high-performance building to reduce carbon emissions. Bean served as the faculty lead for one finalist team in the 2018 Race to Zero Student Design Challenge. He led three finalist teams in the 2019 Solar Decathlon Design Competition, which helped develop the innovative SunBlock distributed district energy system concept.

Bean is a PHIUS Certified Passive House Consultant and serves on the board of the Passive House Alliance US. Bean is also the scholarship chair for the Society of Building Science Educators.

A second stream of Bean's research spans the fields of consumer research, human-computer interaction, architecture, and design with a focus on taste and consumption. Bean has received grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the National Institute for Transportation and Communities, and others. Bean writes the Consuming Tech column for ACM Interactions magazine and his work on IKEA hacking was featured on an episode of the 99% Invisible podcast. 

In 2013, Bean and Concordia University Montréal marketing professor Zeynep Arsel, Ph.D. published a Journal of Consumer Research article that built on theories of practice to develop the concept of the taste regime, which is defined as "a discursively constructed normative system that orchestrates practice in an aesthetically oriented culture of consumption." The article has been cited over 400 times and has established taste as a key area of inquiry in Consumer Culture Theory. Bean and Arsel co-edited the 2018 Routledge book Taste, Consumption and Markets.

News, Research and Projects

Assistant Professor Jonathan Bean Named 2021 CUES Distinguished Fellow for ‘Climate Heroes’ Curriculum

Architecture and Sustainable Built Environments Assistant Professor Jonathan Bean has been named one of four 2021 CUES Distinguished Fellows by UArizona’s Center for University Education Scholarship. His project, Climate Heroes: Transforming the Built Environment, addresses the fundamental challenge of our time: climate change.

Solar panels in city

Sustainable Design Expert: The Building You're Sitting in is the Elephant in the Room

Assistant Professor of Architecture, Sustainable Built Environments and Marketing Jonathan Bean says buildings are the No. 1 pathway to achieving the Biden administration's new carbon emissions goals. He's training the next generation of architects, and with the College of Engineering creating the Climate-Positive Building Lab, to make climate-positive buildings the new normal.