The Martin Centre: Sustainable buildings and cities

The Martin Centre is a research centre in the Department of Architecture at the University of Cambridge. The Centre was founded byProfessor Sir Leslie Martin in 1967 as the Centre for Land Use and Built Form Studies, and formally became The Martin Centre in 1974.

For over fifty years the Martin Centre has been one of the leading architectural research units in Britain, renowned particularly for its ground-breaking data-driven quantitive research, with over five decades of successful research for government and industry, both nationally and internationally. The Centre was formed to undertake contract research. Martin Centre projects typically cross traditional research boundaries: transportation and buildings, sustainability, digital media design and communication, risk assessment and mitigation in the built environment, and territorial conflict in divided cities. It has been at the forefront of low-energy design and digital urban modelling for decades. A rich environment of collaboration exists, with other Departments within the University, and with other institutions within the UK, Europe, the U.S, China, Africa and the Middle East. Research contracts, mainly funded by research councils, within the Martin Centre currently amount to in excess of £10 million.