Dr Saul Golden RIBA, SFHEA, is a Lecturer in Architecture and Spatial Design at Ulster University’s Belfast School of Architecture and the Built Environment. He holds a BSc in Architecture from the University of Virginia and a MArch-Urban Design degree from University of Washington with his RIBA Part III from the Bartlett University College London. He has over 25 years international experience across architecture, interior, and urban design in the US, UK, Europe, and Africa, including with Perkins Eastman, NY, and as Associate of Gensler, London, prior to academic roles at Queen’s University Belfast and Ulster University. 

His 2016 PhD, Beyond Architecture: Other Influences on Approaches to Practice and Urban Space, uniquely examined the changing nature of architecture agency. In 2016, he established the Urban Research Lab, applying transdisciplinary and performative tactics to shape and co-construct meaning in shared urban spaces.  He was PI for a 2017 GCRF Pump-prime project Sustainable Design and Shared Space, investigating integrated architecture-water-energy approaches to basic survival needs and inequality in Ghana with collaborators from the Institute for Industrial Research, Mustard Architecture, Just Ghana, and The Cooper Union in New York. His professional and academic roles further overlap in his expertise in healthcare design and healthy-communities research, including as Project Architect (with Kennedy FitzGerald & Assocites, Belfast) for the Altnagelvin Laboratory and Pharaceutical Services Centre; as Consultant to Kennedy FitzGerald for the design stages of the Ulster Hospital, Belfast; as Consultant and Whitepaper author for Ideal Standard (Plc) and Armitage Shanks UK; and as PI for a 2021 funded healthy cities and planning partnership, Belfast-THRI(VES), with Belfast City Council.

Saul currently has four PhD supervision roles across architecture, urban design, intergenerational healthy communities, engineering, art-practice, graphic design and social sciences topics address health, design, and sustainability on projects in the UK, Europe, Central and South America, and China.

Saul enjoys a strong international professional network including recognition for his practice Gillespie-Golden Architects and peer-elected roles as RIBA and RSUA Council Trustee from 2016-19. He serves on the RIBA Research Grants Sub-Committee and is a visiting researcher with the Bamford Centre for Mental Health and Wellbeing, External Examiner for BA Design at Florence Institute for Design International, and Co-Chairs the Smart and Healthy Cities Cluster of the All-Island Ireland Center for Global Research.