Steve Randall spoke to Sophie Cole of Mikhail Riches next about retrofitting and achieving zero carbon housing at scale

Sophie Cole is a senior architect at Mikhail Riches. She specialises in housing design and her priority lies in sustainability. She believes that now clients are demanding a green agenda, and everyone is on the same page to achieve it.

Sophie is currently leading on two exciting residential projects for Hackney Council’s Housing Supply Programme. Both sites are located within existing estates, each presenting their own complex opportunities and constraints.

Sophie is enjoying managing an extended team of designers and sub-consultants through the challenging design process towards delivering high quality housing.

Since joining Mikhail Riches in 2017, Sophie has had the opportunity to build upon her experience of smaller residential projects within her previous practices.

At both Studio Bark and AY Architects she ran a number of private residential projects on site, one of which was shortlisted for the Stephen Lawrence prize and won a regional RIBA award. Sophie also has experience in Passivhaus and school design from her time at Architype.

Sophie studied at the Manchester School of Architecture and the University of Westminster, where she gained a first and a distinction respectively.

Interested in the relationship between architectural practice and academia, Sophie has enjoyed attending The Bartlett and The University of Westminster as a visiting critic and taken on a practice mentoring role at both the RCA and LSA.

Now our clients are asking us to do it, where before I think we felt that sometimes you had to push a green agenda.