Michael Ramage is Professor of Architecture and Engineering and Director of the Centre for Natural Material Innovation (CNMI) and its laboratory. CNMI advances regenerative design with materials we can grow, radically reducing the embodied carbon and energy of buildings and improving their contribution to communities worldwide. As Principal Investigator he leads research programmes on timber, bamboo, hemp and earth, from materials science to buildings and neighbourhoods. His Growing the Future programme links forest management, materials, construction and communities to realise nature-based neighbourhoods. CNMI’s work has been supported by the Laudes Foundation and informed the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee report Building to net zero. He supported the set-up of Built by Nature and co-founded Cambridge Transformation Labs to carry the work into practice.
He studied geology and archaeology at Carleton College, then architecture at MIT, and holds a PhD in Structural Engineering from the University of Cambridge. He is a chartered structural engineer.
His built work includes compression-only soil-cement tile vaults for seismic and low-resource settings: the Mapungubwe Interpretive Centre, South Africa (2009, World Building of the Year, with Peter Rich Architects and John Ochsendorf), and, as a founding partner of Light Earth Designs, the Rwanda Cricket Stadium pavilion (2017). His Super Tall Timber and engineered bamboo research set out technical bases for tall timber buildings and structural bamboo.
CNMI co-leads the GlobalABC Materials Hub working group on bio-based and earth-based materials, and Michael is a Fellow of LUT University’s System Earth Collegium.
Teaching
Michael welcomes PhD applications on building with materials we can grow, covering structural timber, bamboo and earth masonry, their embodied carbon and energy, and the agricultural and supply limits on meeting demand.