Chrisna du Plessis

Chrisna du Plessis is Professor of Regenerative Futures at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, where until June 2024 she was also Chair of the School for the Built Environment and Head of the Department of Architecture. She holds graduate and post-graduate degrees in architecture from the University of Pretoria, a PhD from the University of Salford and an honorary doctorate from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. With more than 25 years’ experience in sustainable human settlement development, both as practitioner and as researcher as the CSIR and, since 2011, at UP, she focuses on developing the principles and guiding frameworks for the practices of sustainable construction and human settlement development in a body of work that spanned the fields of housing, construction industry performance, urban/human settlement development and infrastructure design. Prof du Plessis led the Priority Theme Sustainable Construction of the International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction (CIB) for almost two decades, and served two terms on the CIB Board, one as Chair of the Programme Committee. She has further served as juror for the LafargeHolcim Foundation Sustainable Building Competition, the European Solar Decathlon, and the FutureArc Sustainable Design Prize. Her current research concentrates on resilience and regenerative development and she published some of her thinking in the award-winning book Designing for Hope: Pathways to regenerative sustainability.