Ron Kellett

Ron was Director of SALA from 2015 to 2023. He has practiced architecture in British Columbia and taught architecture at the University of Oregon until 2004, when he joined UBC. At SALA, he teaches design studios and a lecture course in environment and urban form, and supervises graduate students in related topics. From 2010–12, he was a University Sustainability Initiative Teaching and Learning Fellow and received a Killam Teaching Prize in 2011. His work focuses on issues of environmental quality and urban form and the development of form-based tools for urban design.

Ron is Co-Director with Cynthia Girling of the elementslab located in the Centre for Interactive Research for Sustainability. The lab creates sustainability-oriented urban design tools, plans, codes, standards, guidelines and prototypes. The results of this work have informed urban planning and design in several Canadian and US cities and been recognized by awards from the American Planning Association, the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects, the US National Association of Home Builders, and the US National Urban and Community Forest Advisory Council.

Education

M.Arch, University of Oregon
BES, University of Manitoba

Select publications

Czekajlo, A., Alva, J., Szeto, J., Girling, C., & Kellett, R. (2023). “Impact of 2050 tree shading strategies on building cooling demands”. Buildings and Cities, 4 (1) pp. 817-837. https://journal-buildingscities.org/articles/10.5334/bc.353

Lu, Y., Girling, C., Martino, N., Kim, J., Kellett, R., & Salter, J. (2023). Climate action at the neighbourhood scale: Comparing municipal future scenarios. Buildings and Cities, 4(1), pp. 83–102. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/bc.275

Lu, Y., Scott, A., Kim, J., Curi, C. B., McCarty, J., Pardy, A., Rysanek, A., Girling, C & Kellett, R. (2021). Integration of an energy–economy model with an urban energy model. Buildings and Cities, 2(1), pp. 114–133. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/bc.71 

Jonathan Salter, Yuhao Lu, Ju Chan Kim, Ronald Kellett, Cynthia Girling, Fausto Inomata, Alix Krahn. 2020. Iterative ‘what-if’ neighborhood simulation: energy and emissions impacts. Buildings and Cities, published online https://doi.org/10.5334/bc.51