Chief Executive
Sophia joined The Glass-House as Chief Executive in 2005. She is an impassioned champion of design quality and enabler of design practices that empower people and organisations and that help communities thrive. She is also a leader in the field of research on community-led, participatory and co-design practices.
Sophia plays an active role in designing and delivering our support to communities and practitioners, our events and in co-designing research, innovation and resources. She is also an active spokesperson and enabler for our mission, contributing regularly to external events, panels and advisory groups and to policy responses.
Sophia has lived and worked in the UK, US and Italy. Her background is in architecture and urbanism, education, community and voluntary sector work and in multiculturalism.
Glass-House Enablers
Glass-House Enablers are a multi-disciplinary group of creative professionals who support our work by providing independent specialist support and guidance to our projects. Enablers provide a spectrum of skills and expertise in architecture, landscape design, urban design, planning, art, heritage and engagement, and share a commitment to our mission.
Board of Trustees
The Glass-House Board of Trustees provide support and guidance to The Glass-House team and oversee the organisation’s strategic development.
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Prue Chiles is an architect with a practice in Sheffield (Chiles, Evans+Care Architects – CE+CA) and is a Professor of Architectural Design Research at the University of Newcastle.
Prue has a long association with The Glass-House, as a collaborator on developing design training courses for communities, including ‘Buildings by Design’. Prue has worked extensively in neighbourhood and urban design, the design of schools, as well as in private commissions transforming people’s living environments, building houses and developing creative methods of participation and communication between clients, architects and builders.
Prue’s personal aim is to merge her research with practice with teaching: “in all my projects I try to use the skills of the design process to work with people and communities creatively and collaboratively, whether in community-led projects, council-funded research or in practice.”
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Susannah is a non-contentious construction and engineering lawyer. She has over 30 years’ experience in the legal profession and has been a partner at two city law firms where she advised on development agreements, construction contracts, professional appointments and other agreements for public and private sector clients on major schemes in London and nationwide. Susannah was named in the Legal 500 as an expert in her field.
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Robert Johnson has over 30 years experience working in the Housing and Regeneration field and has led projects involving masterplanning, procurement, decanting and rehousing, housing management, housing developments, governance issues, stock and land transfers, as well as resident empowerment and capacity building.As Project Director in the Regeneration & Growth Department of Brent Council for many years, Robert dealt with all the major regeneration projects in the borough including South Kilburn, Stonebridge, Sudbury, Chalkhill and Church End.Robert is now a Local Councillor in Brent – where he is the Vice-Chair of Planning. Robert is a Trustee for a range of organisations, including Advice for Renters, Faiths Forum for London and The South Kilburn Trust.
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Alex Sainsbury began working on non-profit art exhibitions in 1995, co-founding the arts charity Peer in 1997 and the project gallery 38 Langham Street in 2001, before opening Raven Row, an exhibition centre for visual art in Spitalfields, London, in 2009, where he is the director.
Alex established the grant-making charity Glass-House Trust in 1993, initiating various projects, including A Space, a support service for young people in Hackney, The Glass-House Community Led Design, and MayDay Rooms, a safe house for vulnerable archives and historical material linked to social movements and experimental culture.
