www.buildingsandcities.org/about/niklaus-kohler.html
Niklaus Kohler
Dr Niklaus Kohler is an architect and researcher. He worked in R&D in both the building industry and academe. His PhD was on Global Energy Consumption of Buildings during their Life Cycle. From 1978 to 1992 he directed research projects in the material science department (performance of materials) and the physics department (energy simulation) at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). He was member of the steering committee of three national technology transfer programs (Impulsprogramme).
He is an Emeritus Professor and past-Director of the Institute of Industrial Building Production (ifib) at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (formerly University of Karlsruhe). After retirement, he was a senior lecturer at ETH Zurich and a guest professor at Tianjin University, China. He was President of the Scientific Council of the CSTB (France) and member of steering committees of research programs and scientific institutions in Germany, France, Switzerland, UK, Sweden, Austria, China. His main research domains are:
- Life cycle analysis of buildings and building stocks
- Application of Information Technologies in comprehensive, distributed design
Latest Commentaries
Who is Responsible for Climate Change?
Ian Cooper (Eclipse Research) explores the questions of responsibility raised in the recent Buildings & Cities special issue ‘Climate Change Risk and Decision-Making’. Focusing here on carbon emissions and mitigation, global responses will require grounding in what can work locally. New responsibilities arise for the wide range of built environment decision-makers: clients, professionals and their institutions, central and local governments, product suppliers, financiers, insurers, etc. A framework is needed to manage the complexity of responsibilities especially for variety of actors, the time frames and spatial scales.
Professional Ethics in a Climate Crisis
The climate crisis has progressed into a dangerous phase with tragic consequences often counted in numbers of excess deaths, but also by powerful economic impacts of rising food prices, the increased costs of insurance and lending, costly damage to the built environment. Celia Davies, Director of Impact at the UK’s Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) and Hugh Ellis, Director of Policy at TCPA, consider the responsibilities of professionals in shaping a built environment which is fit not just for today's climate risks but for the dramatic increase in severe and unpredictable weather which is now locked into our climate systems.