Raphael Sperry, AIA, LEED AP, is president of Architects / Designers / Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR), a 32-year old independent non-profit organization. He is the first architect to receive a Soros Justice Fellowship from the Open Society Foundations, hosted jointly by the University of California at Berkeley College of Environmental Design and Berkeley Law School. He researches the intersection of architecture and planning with human rights with a special focus on prisons and jails, and advocates for design professionals to play a larger role in supporting human rights in the built environment. He was the inaugural winner of the AIA San Francisco chapter Young Architect Award in recognition of his “engagement with public policy issues ranging from sustainability to social justice to community engagement.” He is the founder and director of ADPSR’s “Alternatives to Incarceration / Prison Design Boycott Campaign,” and directs ADPSR’s human rights advocacy, including ADPSR’s petition urging the AIA to amend their Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct to address buildings that violate human rights. He has represented the campaign to various AIA chapters and in national and international media including print, radio, and television. He is an active member of the AIA Academy of Architecture for Justice and a leader of its subcommittee on sustainable justice ratings systems.
As an architect he has participated in the design of a range of buildings, from residential additions to schools and a winery. As a senior consultant at Simon & Associates, Green Building Consultants, he was the sustainable design consultant for a wide variety of private, institutional and commercial projects including complex infrastructure projects and many LEED Gold and some LEED Platinum projects. His clients have included San Francisco International Airport, U.C. Berkeley, and the California Academy of Sciences. He developed Simon & Associates’ LEED for Existing Buildings consulting practice, where he successfully completed the LEED Gold certification of six large commercial buildings within one year. In his previous design positions he completed the first permitted rainwater catchment system for a private home in California (Schulz Residence, Sausalito for 450 Architects) and led the design development of the largest straw-bale building in the United States (Ridge Winery, Healdsburg, CA for Freebairn-Smith & Crane Architects).
Raphael has taught courses on green architecture, building systems, and building energy use at Stanford University and California College of the Arts. He is also a frequent presenter of adult education programs on green building topics including human rights, LEED, and green building codes. He holds an M.Arch from the Yale School of Architecture and a BA Summa cum Laude from Harvard University.