Michael Louw

Michael Louw completed his BArch degree at the University of Pretoria in 1998. He worked as an architect in the United Kingdom for two years where he was involved with commercial projects before returning to South Africa. He has completed a large number of residential buildings, and a series of industrial adaptive re-use projects that include the Turbine Hotel & Spa on Thesen Islands. He attended the Glenn Murcutt Master Class in Australia in 2005 and he completed postgraduate BPhil and MPhil degrees in Sustainable Development Planning and Management at Stellenbosch University. Since joining UCT full-time in 2012, he has taught design and technology in the undergraduate programme, and design and theory in the postgraduate programme. He currently co-convenes the MArch(Prof) year and teaches an Aspects of History and Theory elective in the BAS(Honours) year.

He was the project leader for the school’s annual Imizamo Yethu design-build project from 2012 – 2017, and he was the architectural team leader for Team Mahali, the joint entry between Stellenbosch University and the University of Cape Town, which won 2nd place in the architecture contest at the Solar Decathlon Africa held in Morocco in 2019. He graduated with a PhD in Architecture at UCT in 2021 with the topic “The search for hybrid tectonics in contemporary African architecture: Encounters between the global and the local”. His research focuses on architectural technology, adaptive reuse, design-build practice, and contemporary architecture in Africa.