Coleman Coker

Coleman Coker is an American architect and educator. He is the first Professor of Practice at the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture and the Director of the Gulf Coast DesignLab which he began in 2012.

The Gulf Coast DesignLab is the first long-running ecologically based program that fosters environmental activism within the field of design and for the public. Nested within our hands-on approach of civic engagement, the needs of coastal communities are addressed by GCDL students partnering with nonprofits whose missions are to bring about change through environmental education, particularly those in middle and high school. This Initiative to Support Environmental Education (I SEE) benefits coastal communities adapting to climate crisis by better understanding their local ecological conditions and developing stewardship practices. Gulf Coast DesignLab students work with these nonprofits designing and building places where teachers, biologists, ecologists and artists might engage the public in field-based environmental education work. Students of the Gulf Coast DesignLab have been recognized for their design excellence through numerous design awards and publications. Their work can be followed on Instagram at gulf.coast.designlab

Biography Prior to his Gulf Coast DesignLab program, in 1986 Coleman Coker began a thirteen-year partnership with Samuel Mockbee. In 1995 their work was collected into the book, Mockbee / Coker, Thought and Process, published by the Princeton Architectural Press in recognition of their important and unusual work during their partnership.

With Mockbee's death, Coker's partnership with Samuel Mockbee ended. Coker founded buildingstudio. 's self-described principal focus is on inventive and imaginative work.

In 1996 he was awarded the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, in 1994, he was a Loeb Fellow in Advanced Environmental Studies at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.