Brent A. Brown, AIA

Founder

President/CEO, Trinity Park Conservancy

Founder, buildingcommunity WORKSHOP

Founding Director, Dallas City Design Studio

Brent A. Brown, AIA, is CEO and President of Trinity Park Conservancy, a nonprofit dedicated to fulfilling the promise of the Trinity River as the natural gathering place for Dallas.  Brent’s background as an architect, city planner and urban designer has uniquely qualified him for this role in working with Dallas citizens, governmental offices, and urban designers to bring to life the vision of the Trinity River as a public space that unites the city, creates economic development, provides access for people to nature, and inspires stewardship for the river ecosystem.  With a gift in October of 2106 of $50 million, Brent is working to build capacity in the organization and deliver the new 200-acre plus Harold Simmons Park as the first realization of this vision.

 In 2005, Brent founded the buildingcommunity WORKSHOP [bc], a Texas non-profit community design resource seeking to improve quality of communities in Dallas. Under his leadership [bc] has expanded across Texas and now works throughout the United States with offices in Dallas, the Rio Grande Valley, Houston and Washington DC. With projects ranging in scale from a modest sustainable single family home or neighborhood based cultural place-making activities to re-designing our national disaster recovery system, Brent repeatedly assembled diverse teams and invented situation specific processes to deliver innovative solutions making places better and improving people's lives. In Houston, his work with the city delivered more than $50 million dollars of new housing while engaging dozens of partners and hundreds of community residents in a nationally recognized multi neighborhood revitalization effort.  Brent now acts as Chairman of the Board for [bc] and continues his legacy of leadership with the organization.

From 2009 until February 2017, he also served as the Founding Director of the City of Dallas’ CityDesign Studio and Dallas’ Design Director stewarding the urban design vision for the city. His work directly impacted more than one billion dollars of new city building projects across the public and private sectors. This work led to his involvement in the Netherlands as a member of the International Advisory Board of Rotterdam, providing advice to the Mayor and the Municipal Executive on matters of economic development and other aspects of the urban development.

Brent’s ability to balance social, economic, and environmental issues through his creative lens and participatory methods re-visions how we live, work and play. Winner of dozens of local, national and international awards, he is especially proud to have been selected as a 2013 Rudy Bruner Award Silver Medalist, recognizing innovative thinking about the built environment and advancing conversation about making cities better and the Copper-Hewitt’s inclusion of his work in the recent exhibition, By the People: Designing a Better America.

 SHORT BIO

Brent A. Brown, AIA, is CEO and President of Trinity Park Conservancy, a nonprofit dedicated to the vision of the Trinity River as a public space that unites the city, creates economic development, provides access for people to nature, and inspires stewardship for the river ecosystem.  Building on his experience as an architect, city planner, and urban designer, Brent will guide the Trinity Park Conservancy in delivering the 200-acre plus Harold Simmons Park as the first realization of this vision.

 Brent also serves as Chairman of the Board for buildingcommunity WORKSHOP [bc], an organization he founded in 2005 to solve difficult problems and enhance livability for all citizens. He has also served as Founding Director of the City of Dallas’ CityDesign Studio and Dallas’ Design Director stewarding the urban design vision for the city as well as a member of the International Advisory Board of Rotterdam, providing advice on matters of economic development and other aspects of the urban development.

 Winner of dozens of local, national and international awards, he is especially proud to have been selected as a 2013 Rudy Bruner Award Silver Medalist, recognizing innovative thinking about the built environment and advancing conversation about making cities better and the Copper-Hewitt’s inclusion of his work in the recent exhibition, By the People: Designing a Better America.