John Owen, MA(RCA), BA (Hons), Cert ED.

Short Biography

John Owen studied sculpture at the Royal College of Art where his interest in three-dimensional form and its representation was first explored; later to be expanded in research areas such as spatial understanding and methods of teaching and learning in design education.

He has contributed to developing the renowned Automotive, Product and Transport Design course array at Coventry since 1990; concentrating on introducing structured approaches to teaching free-form clay modeling and three-dimensional computing. He spent eight years in the final year tutor role, shepherding through some notable automotive and product designers.
He has traveled extensively in Asia and other regions, recruiting and presenting work from Coventry at specialist institutions and professional design houses.

He was a lead contributor in bidding for Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning status and provided leadership as the first Director of the Centre of Excellence in Product and Automotive Design (CEPAD). He is currently Head of Industrial Design at Coventry University. He was named as a key driver of change in the citation when the department was awarded the Sir Misha Black award for Innovation in Design Education in 2006. The Industrial Design Department was also awarded the Queen’s Anniversary Prize in 2007.