Profile
Christof Spieler is a structural engineer and an urban planner. He has taught structures courses at the Rice University School of Architecture since 2008.
After working as a consulting structural engineer, Spieler joined Morris Architects as director of technology and innovation. He leads firm-wide initiatives in green buildings, project process, and Building Information Modeling (BIM). At Morris, Spieler has coordinated the planning effort on projects including the Galveston Livable Centers Study and the Downtown-EaDo Livable Centers, which looked at integrating transportation, land use, and the public realm in an area including the George R. Brown Convention Center, Toyota Center, Minute Maid Park, Shell Energy Stadium, and Discovery Green. His other planning work includes studies for the Washington Avenue corridor, the east side of Downtown Houston, Sugar Land, and Midtown Houston.
He has written and spoken extensively on transit and urban planning and has helped Houston neighborhoods shape transportation projects. His book, Trains, Buses, People: An Opinionated Atlas of US and Canadian Transit, is in its second edition. His articles have appeared in Cite (where he served on the editorial committee from 1998 to 2010), the Houston Chronicle, and Architecture Magazine; he also covered Houston transportation in his blog, Intermodality. In 2010, Houston mayor Annise Parker appointed Spieler to the board of Houston METRO, one of the largest transit agencies in the US.