Selçuk AvcıSelcuk Avci was born in 1961 and is an Architect and Senior Director / founder of AVCI ARCHITECTS and co founder of URBANISTA INTERNATIONAL, a development company based in London and Istanbul. He founded his first private practice AVCI JURCA ARCHITECTS in 1989 and has grown it to a multidisciplinary design lead studio, based in London’s Hoxton and now in Istanbul, Budapest, and Belgrade. He has a wide range of personal experience in the design and management of a great variety of programmes in the residential, and commercial sector, offices, retail, the arts, sports and leisure, airport design, healthcare, and higher education.He has a keen interest in ecological design and energy efficient architecture and has developed pioneering work in this field. He has taught architecture at many universities and institutions including the Architectural Association in London, Bath University, the Technical University in Delft, the Bartlett in London and has acted as a Visiting Professor of Architecture at the University of Ljubljana running a seminars on “eco-sensitive” design. Currently he holds the post of Studio Master at Bilgi University and ITU School of Architecture in Istanbul and teaches a studio on Eco Design.The practices he has lead have won numerous awards, and prizes both international and national and published works in numerous journals. Most notable was the inclusion of his practice AVCI ARCHITECTS in the book “A Guide to 50 Best Young Practices of the UK”. As design director of AVCI he won first prize in the European Union Competition on Energy Efficient Architecture in 1989 and as design director of ECD Architects his projects were awarded an RIBA Regional Award, in 1998 and a Civic Trust Award in 1999 which established him as an expert in the design of eco sensitive buildings, both in the UK and abroad. More recently in 2014 the practice he leads won the UK Best International Building award organised by Building Magazine.