Varun Kohli

New York, New York USA

For more than two decades, Varun has served as a leader in integrating environmental analytics and sustainable design into the practice of architecture. From urban scale resiliency and decarbonization to major commercial, education, aviation, and mixed-use development projects, he has served an educator for the future of the practice and a leader on banner projects both domestically and internationally. Passionate about ecology within the built environment, Varun challenges architects to move closer to net-zero.  “Over the past several decades we have let go of meaningful connection between natural and built ecologies – which means that when we design buildings or cities, we must be aware of the environmental context around them – architecture should harmonize the relationship between people and the environment,” Varun explains, “When you take that approach the ecology naturally progresses toward energy efficiency and sustainability as the environments all start to synchronize.”

As the Director of Sustainability at Corgan, Varun provides leadership for high-performance projects and strives to maximize environmental sustainability and social equity while addressing climate change adaptation and resiliency at the building and urban scale. With a focus on integrating environmental sensitivities in design, Varun has collaborated with Yale Center for Ecosystems + Architecture (CEA) researchers on novel pedagogical models for environmental design and has taught courses at Harvard GSD and RPI (CASE). He is a frequent critic at Princeton School of Architecture and U-Penn Design, contributes to books and peer-reviewed journals, and speaks at many conferences and forums, and affiliated organizations. He recently authored a chapter in Energy Modeling in Architecture; A practice guide, published by RIBA and currently serves on the board of ‘Pokhrama Foundation,’ working to build a net-zero school to provide K-12 education in a remote region of northern India.

Born in India and raised in Nepal, Varun came to the U.S. as an exchange student in a small town in Nebraska with a population of 800. Studying architecture in London and New York, he became fascinated with sustainable environmental design and is considered a professional architect and academic in green building. In his spare time Varun explores the outdoors in destinations around the world and believes that “We need to learn to dance with nature—not fight it.”