Ray Cole is a professor and Director of the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA), University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver. He has been teaching environmental issues in building design for more than thirty years and is the Academic Director of the Design Centre for Sustainability: the focus of sustainability-related research within the School.
Ray Cole is co-founder of the Green Building Challenge: an international collaborative effort to benchmark progress in green building performance and environmental assessment.
Ray Cole received his undergraduate degree in civil engineering from City University, London, and a PhD in architectural science from the University of Wales.
He has been an architecture professor with UBC since 1977, where his research, teaching and professional activities have focused on environmental responsibility and sustainability in architecture. He heads the Environmental Research Group in SALA and is an internationally-respected consultant.
Ray Cole has furthered the theory and practice of building environmental assessment and was instrumental in the adaptation of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system in Canada, the creation of the Residential Environmental Assessment Program at UBC, and the Green Building Challenge, an initiative to assess the progress in green building practices worldwide.
He was made an honorary member of the Architectural Institute of British Colombia (1997), and received the institute’s Barbara Dalrymple Memorial Award for Community Service for “exemplary service to the community of learners’ in the fields of architecture and green building practice” in 2003. He was also recipient of the US Green Building Council's Green Public Service Leadership Award.
[last updated 14-Aug-07]