News

On December 2025 and January 2026, DrIrit Katz, together withDr Gabriel Karubanga and a team from Makerere University, organised two workshops In the districts of Hoima and Kasese in Uganda to investigate and respond to growing climate-related vulnerabilities in refugee-hosting districts, where environmental degradation, rapid population growth, di…

This is a first-of-its-kind global sociotechnical review of the changing relationship between rapidly growing AI data centre and the burdens on the energy and the environment. This research identifies institutional constraints, technology gaps, and resistance to behavioral change are major barriers. Nine future research agendas are identified to de…

The full piece entitled Field Notes: Objects and Media of the Homecan be read here:https://journal.eahn.org/article/id/18874/Beke is a Harding Distinguished Scholar in the first year of her PhD in the Department, and is supervised by Dr Fiona Smyth. The highly prestigious Harding Distinguished Postgraduate Scholars Programmeare given to the most ta…

This program will take place from July 11 to 31, 2026, in Cali, Valle del Cauca, Colombia, and has been jointly developed by the Universidad del Valle, the University of Cambridge, and the Universidad del Rosario, offering a high-level academic experience.You can apply to the Summer School here: Summer School 2026: Alternative Housing for Periphera…

The keynote speech will be delivered by the Guest of Honour, the President of the of UN-Habitat Assembly Nga Kor Ming.

At only 4m x 2.5m it was the smallest garden entered into the competition, presenting design challenges which Kamal enthusiastically confronted with innovative planting and multi-tiered beds. Giving directly onto a public canal towpath, the garden became simultaneously a private and public space. Plenty of complimentary passers-by!To find out more …

Katie is currently co-leading the Fourth and Fifth Years in the M.Arch Design Studio unit Down to Earth (with Giles Smith, Assemble). Read more about The Root, an adapt and extend holiday house, as featured in the article, moving away from the local concrete industry and based on prefabrication and land-preservation values.Photo credit: Jim Stephen…

In this latest piece for RIBAJ, our architecture alum Marta Saniewska explores how environmental psychology is reshaping the way we design healthcare environments. From landmark studies showing that patients with views of nature recover faster, to contemporary research underpinning biophilic design, the evidence is clear: daylight, greenery and nat…

Maoran Sun is a final year PhD student working at the Sustainable Design Groupunder supervision of Professor Ronita Bardhan. His research uses multimodal urban big data to understand energy efficiency. This research is done in collaboration with University of Glasgow, UK.

Calling all scholars from architecture, urban studies, and the humanities and the social sciences more broadly! We are excited to announce an upcoming Conference on Situated Imagination and Imaginaries for Urban Futures, to be held on July 17, 2026 at the Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge.This conference will aim to collectively e…

The Inclusive Design Canvas, developed through years of research at the University of Cambridge, was recently showcased at the Davos Neurodiversity Summit, held alongside the World Economic Forum. The tool was presented as a practical, evidence-based framework for translating inclusive values into concrete design action.Matteo Zallio led a hands-on…

The department congratulates Cuicheng Zhang (MAUS, 23) on publishing her MPhil dissertation research in the prestigious Energy Policy Journal. Her research used machine learning to investigate the relationship between sociodemographic factors, building characteristics, energy efficiency and environmental impact in London's residential stock (2011–2…

The prize is awarded by the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain to encourage new and unpublished entrants to the field of architectural history, the Society's Essay Medal is awarded annually to the author of the best essay submitted in competition and is open to British and international graduate students as well as postdocs. Nicho…

On 9 December, Professor Minna Sunikka-Blank and Dr Irit Katz, together with Dr Nkatha Gichyua and Musau Kimeu from the University of Nairobi, hosted a policy workshop on Urban Rental Housing and Climate Resilience. The event had contributions from UN-Habitat and the Architectural Association of Kenya (AAK), bringing together key stakeholders to di…

Congratulations to Dr. Ramit Debnath, Assistant Professor, for his role in the award-winning AI design research paper “Personality Illusion: Revealing Dissociation Between Self-Reports & Behavior in LLMs” presented at NeurIPS 2025. The study highlights a critical gap in LLM evaluations: personality questionnaires and prompts can create misleading p…