Nirmal Kishnani is Chief Editor of FuturArc journal, which focuses on green architecture in Asia, and resident jury chair of the FuturArc Prize and the FuturArc Green Leadership Award that he helped to establish.

He is Visiting Professor at the University of Navarra, Spain and was Vice Dean, School of Design & Environment at NUS (2014-17).

His areas of interest are environmental psychology (perception and behaviour in the built environment); climate, comfort and consumption; and, sustainable buildings (processes and outcomes). His research interests include high-rise buildings in the tropics that strive to create indoor comfort via passive, active and mixed-mode strategies. He has been active in the field of performance-based architecture, applying principles and methodologies that are now known as “green” since the mid-1990s.

Nirmal Kishnani holds a Bachelor of Architecture (hons) from the NUS (1988), Master of Science in Environmental Psychology from the University of Surrey, UK (1992) and a PhD from the School of Built Environment at Curtin University of Technology, Australia (2001).

He established one of Asia’s first consultancies dedicated to “greening” in 2002. As interest grew, his team advised developers and project teams across Asia including landmark developments such as the Asian Development Bank Retrofit in Manila, Khoo Teck Puat Hospital in Singapore, the Islamabad Airport in Pakistan and the Gardens by the Bay in Singapore. He has also lectured and conducted workshops on green design processes in Australia, Asia and Europe.

He has been a member of several advisory panels in China, Singapore and Vietnam shaping policy guidelines that affect design practice. Collaborating with FuturArc and BCI Asia, he has created new platforms for reporting green projects and sustainability in Asia. He is author of Greening Asia: emerging principles for sustainable architecture (BCI Asia Construction Information, 2012), as well as “Beyond Green - Liveability as Precondition for Sustainable Cities of the Future” presented at the Congress on Energy & Environment: “Zero Emission Cities, 2014” held in Vienna, Austria (2014).

He presented public lectures and panel discussions on “Green and Sustainable ideas for Australia” at events organized by Holcim Australia and held at Melbourne University, the University of New South Wales, Queensland University of Technology, and Curtin University in 2014.

He provided the keynote address “Is ‘Green’ enough? Four Mindsets of Greening in Asia that are Becoming Barriers to Sustainability” at the LafargeHolcim Awards 2011 ceremony for region Asia Pacific, held in Singapore and participated in the Concluding Debate at the 4th International Forum “Economy of Sustainable Construction” in Mumbai (2013).

Nirmal Kishnani was a member of the Holcim Awards jury for region Asia Pacific in 2017, and was Head of the jury for region Asia Pacific in 2020.