Buildings and cities research within the energy initiative is carried out across a number of departments and research groups at the University of Cambridge.
Research includes:
Smart Buildings
- Innovative use of emerging technologies in sensor and data management.
- The design of technologies for new and retrofit low carbon buildings.
- Low-energy lighting, including new light conversion materials and next generation GaN LEDs for solid state lighting.
- The use of computation to reduce energy consumption at the building level.
Natural Building Materials
- Natural material design and research for large-scale buildings
- Efficient structures using natural materials
- Improved material properties through chemical and biochemical modification of plant-based materials
Infrastructure and Construction:
- Development of novel materials surface treatments, low carbon cements and concrete.
Sustainable Cities
- Energy demand reduction in the urban environment by integrating the design and development of novel technologies for energy efficient cities, with links to economic, policy and regulatory considerations.
- Embodied energy in buildings, building retrofits, and insulation.
Some key research centres and initiatives include:
- The Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction
- The Natural Materials and Structures group at The Martin Centre for Architectural and Urban Studies
- The Laing O'Rourke Centre for Construction Engineering and Technology
- The Energy Efficient Cities Initiative
- The Centre for Sustainable Development has an extensive built environment research programme, including research investigating Energy Efficiency in the Built Environment
- B.bem Project, the Bayesian building energy management portal, uses computer simulation of building energy consumption to help energy managers understand the risk associated with energy management decisions.
We collaborate with industrial partners and are also actively involved in increasing both energy awareness and public understanding of the opportunities and challenges in buildings and cities.
Please visit individual faculty profiles to learn more about their research in the Buildings and Cities theme. The lead for Buildings and Cities is Professor Koen Steemers.
People specializing in this area
Principal Investigators
- Low carbon magnesia cements
- Smart materials in construction
- Low energy and low carbon construction products
- Energy efficient land regeneration
- LCA in construction
- Energy related waste (nuclear and energy from waste) management and integration at city scale
- Planning Theory and Practice
- Governance and Regional Planning
- Development and planning regulation
My research interests are in the broad area of distributed systems.
I am currently interested in the privacy and security of mobile devices such as Android smartphones, iPads and laptops.
Building Technologies & Energy Supply
His research interests are in the general area of engineering design, particularly the development of design methodologies to address specific design issues, for example, process management, change management, healthcare design and inclusive design
Jonathan's research interests include whole energy systems, energy and material demand reduction and low-carbon energy technologies.
Energy Efficient Cities initiative www.eeci.cam.ac.uk - an integrated approach to energy efficient buildings, transport, and energy supply technologies in the urban environment
Development of cities
Urban drainage and water and wastewater treatment, including work on the asset maintenance of sewerage infrastructure, hydrodynamic separation, sensor arrays for monitoring sewage odour.
Development of energy efficient and sustainable buildings and hospitals infrastructure based on decentralised hydrogen loop
The first is concerned with the development of new communication and information technologies, and how research from the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences can be usefully brought to bear on the design of new technologies. The second focusses on the development of the creative and innovative abilities of students, and how this prepares them for their future careers.
Peter Guthrie's research includes decision making towards sustainable development in infrastructure, and energy efficiency in the built environment.
My research is broad and covers three main areas: gallium nitride materials and devices; advanced electron microscopy; and high-temperature aerospace materials.
City planning and design
Observational and modelling studies of atmospheric structure and photochemistry.
Chemistry of atmospheric aerosols and their effects on human health
My main research is in advanced electronic devices for very high speed operation, but one side-line is the development of a new class of low power consumption devices and circuits, suitable for short hall communications and for surveillance systems.
- Structural dynamics and vibro-acoustics
- The analysis of systems with uncertain properties
- Statistical energy analysis and related methods
- The dynamics of offshore structures
- The statistical analysis of electromagnetic systems
- Prestressing tendons for concrete: (especially in relation to offshore applications)
- Strengthening and repair of existing structures
- Glass fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP) pipelines
- Sustainable concrete
Natural ventilation, low energy buildings
First, the tangible and intangible benefits of a well-designed built environment, including its effect on social, economic and environmental outcomes and the different sorts of value that it delivers. The second area is concerned with technological innovations particularly to support low energy buildings, such as smart controls, ergonomic interfaces, renewable energy sources, intelligent facades, and combined heat and power systems. The third area is in improvements in the project process.
Underground Construction, Urban Infrastructure Renewal and Innovative Sensor Technologies for Infrastructure Monitoring.
Soil Mechanics and Structures Division.
Campbell Middleton leads the Bridge Research Group which aims to improve our understanding of the behaviour of concrete bridges under load and to develop new analysis techniques for assessing the strength and reliability of these structures.
Large area electronics for smart buildings
Working in the Cambridge GaN centre, my research focuses on the characterization and exploitation of nanoscale structures in GaN-based materials
Facade / Building Envelope Engineering
The use of state-of-the-art numerical models, run on supercomputers, to study the processes controlling the present state of the atmosphere and its evolution.
Structural and material efficiency, low-energy materials, novel engineered timber
Computing for the Future of the Planet is a research framework which we have been developing in the Computer Laboratory since 2006. The intention is to identify and motivate computer science research questions
Keith Seffen leads the Advanced Structures Group Laboratory, where analytical and experimental research is performed on novel lightweight structures, including seminal work on shape-changing, or "morphing"
Short’s research group develops passive and hybrid low-energy design strategies for non-domestic buildings in different climates, new-build and rebuild, projecting their future performance against current climate change predictions. As such, the focus is on cooling
Embodied energy and carbon of large infrastructure projects
Geothermal energy from building scale to city scale
Her research on environmental issues attempts to marry technical analysis with a broader cultural perspective. One line of this research has explored some of the environmental lessons of vernacular architecture, though the main focus is now on natural lighting strategies and is investigating the relationship between movement, space, light, and the deployment of material finishes, and how this affects perception of the visual environment.
The concept and aesthetics of sustainable architecture
Sustainable retrofit
the dynamics of explosive volcanic systems: both subsurface and atmospheric processes associated with such volcanism, and the related topic of two phase flow in pipelines
Visiting Researchers
Urban and cultural planning issues including sensible energy production and use on rooftops (such as solar power), in cities in the tropics and the developing world (e.g. The Bahamas, Sri Lanka, Cyprus).