Ian Cooper BSc BArch PhD

Ian Cooper is a partner in Eclipse Research Consultants, founded in 1984 and based in Cambridge, England. Unusually for an architect, he has spent his working life not as a practitioner, but as a researcher - first in academia and for the last 22 years in the private sector as an independent research consultant. As he is the first to acknowledge, "I am strongly driven by curiosity. I always want to know What? closely followed by Why? I am perpetually intrigued by what is coming over the horizon, by what people in the construction industry are going to be expected to cope with next. I spend much of my time scanning outside construction, looking for new developments before they break over or inside the sector." He has kept a watching brief on the unfolding of sustainable development, particularly as it has impacted on the construction industry, since 1987.

Over the past thirty years, he has developed expertise in the design, management, monitoring and impact assessment of research projects, especially those relating to the built environment and sustainable development issues. He has worked extensively on information and technology transfer and change management issues within the construction industry and beyond. Over the past ten years, he has been employed as a workshop designer and facilitator, for strategic forward planning, envisioning and stakeholder dialogue exercises, and as a set advisor for action learning. His clients include EU Directorates, UK government departments, national, regional and local government agencies, business support organisations, construction sector think tanks, professional institutions, consumer organisations and charities, research councils, universities and other types of research organisations..

Ian was a founding co-director of SURF - the University of Salford's cross-disciplinary Centre for Sustainable Urban and Regional Futures. He continues to work closely with the University's School of Construction and Property Management on its EU-funded research on sustainable urban development. Last year, he completed, on behalf of CABE and the RIBA under their Building Futures strategic alliance, a case study of urban regeneration and neighbourhood renewal in the north and south of England. This resulted a card-based game for involving stakeholders in Urban Futures simultaneously launched at CABE Urban Design Summer School 2005 and the RIBA's 2005 Annual Conference.

During 2005-2006 he undertook workshop design, facilitation and analysis for the Construction Industry’s Sustainability Forum and the UK’s Department of Trade and Industry as part of the Department’s consultation process for the review of the UK Sustainable Development Strategy.

In 2006 he completed a survey for the East of England Sustainable Construction Task Group and Constructing Excellence, jointly sponsored by the Sustainable Development Round Table and the Sustainability Forum, of the ‘readiness’ of the construction industry in the East of England to help make the region more sustainable. And he has just completed a third party review, requested by the London School of Economics, of their research project on the contribution of ‘sustainable construction’, through development control in local planning authorities, to sustainable urban development in London.

Contact details: Ian Cooper, Eclipse Research Consultants, 121 Arbury Road, Cambridge CB4 2JD telephone 01223 500847 fax 01223 500852 email: icooper@dircon.co.uk