Chris Butters

Centre for Development and the Environment (SUM), University of Oslo, Norway


Chris Butters has worked with green architecture, energy and sustainable planning for 40 years, as practising architect, researcher, author, lecturer and consultant. Formerly director of Norwegian Architects for Sustainable Development and senior consultant at the Ideas Bank Foundation, Oslo, he has been guest professor at the Oslo School of Architecture and at St. John’s University, Minnesota, USA. He was then researcher on an international EPSRC-funded program about sustainable cities at Warwick University, UK. 
For nearly 40 years Chris also led a postgraduate program on Energy and Sustainable Development at the Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo (SUM), and was a guest researcher there on energy and sustainable consumption. 

He is currently an independent consultant working in South Africa. Chris has worked in countries including France, Norway, UK, Taiwan, Spain, China and Bhutan and is a co-founder of the GAIA group in Norway (1982) and GAIA International (1992), a pioneering network for sustainable building and “deep green” solutions. He is the author of peer reviewed articles and many books on Green architecture, sustainable cities etc. He is also the creator of the evaluation tool, the Sustainability Value Map.