 
New book edition!
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Who we are
AfC's founders, Stephen Choi & Sofie Pelsmakers, are environmental architects with over a decade experience in the building industry and in teaching environmental architecture.
Stephen Choi is a UK-qualified Project Architect and Australian-qualified Project Manager. He has been a long-time ambassador for the Living Future Institute in Australia, and helped deliver the world’s first Living Building Challenge Petal-Certified retail centre at Burwood Brickworks. Stephen’s work has included the development of global environmental assessment methods, designing and managing building projects, embedding sustainable development into educational curriculum. In 2011, Stephen’s work in embedding sustainable development into the curriculum for landmark development, SusCon helped the project win the regional European Social Fund Sustainable Development Award. In 2014, Stephen was presented with a DARCH Horse Award from EmAGN, celebrating his outstanding contributions as a consultant made in the pursuit of a high-quality built environment. In 2018, he was named a Living Building Hero. In 2020, Stephen was awarded the AIA’s Leadership in Sustainability prize. Whilst Stephen is described as a strategic player when dealing with the corporate world, he prefers to be quietly in the background, getting on with the much-needed work to help those with unmet needs, and finding ways to communicate with those often ignored by the property industry at large. Sofie Pelsmakers is currently a PhD doctoral researcher at UCL's Energy Institute and as part of the UCL/Loughborough Centre for Doctoral Research in energy demand. Sofie taught environmental design at the University of East London for almost 10 years, where she also lead the MA Architecture: Sustainability & Design programme from January 2009 to the end of July 2011. In 2015, Sofie took up a part-time lectureship at the renowned Sheffield School of Architecture to lead an MSc in Sustainable architecture. Sofie has developed environmental design strategies for both new build and retrofit housing schemes alongside her academic pursuit, including Passivhaus. She is also (part-time) Head of Research at ECD Architects. Sofie has written the RIBA publication 'The Environmental Design Pocketbook', which combines her theoretical and practical expertise with AfC's passion and commitment to help achieve best practice in the building industry. The Environmental Design Pocketbook has received commendation for the 2012 RIBA President's Award for outstanding practice-located research! (December 2012) and its author, Sofie Pelsmakers has been listed among 20 'Women influencing Sustainable Architecture' by AJ Footprint (January 2013 and Feb 2013) and as 1 of 100 top Twitter influencers in sustainable construction, design and the built environment (Ecobuild) and in the top 10 of BDtwitter100 and BD's top ten sustainability tweeters.Sofie was highly commended for the UKGBC/PRP 2013 inaugural Rising Star award (March 2013) and was listed as 1 of 13 Stars of Building Science in Building 4 Change's Virtual Academy of Excellence (Sept 2013). Sofie's blog can be found here and for a fully up to date profile and other publications, please see here. AfC regularly work with freelance environmental consultants who think outside the box and who believe in and support the work we do, and are or have included:
Wilf Meynell - founder of Studio Bark Cristina Blanco Lion Chloe Rayfield Georgia Laganakou Loreana Padron now at ECD Architects |
