Professor Michael Ostwald
Professor
DSc, PhD, BArch (Hons 1), BSc — AIA (Architecture), PIA (Urban Design)
Arts, Design & Architecture (ADA)
School of Built Environment
Dr Michael J. Ostwald is Distinguished Scientia Professor of Architectural Analytics at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, Australia, and an Adjunct Professor at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU), China, and the University of Liverpool, UK. He has consistently ranked among the world's top 10 researchers in architecture, first in Australasia, and has been recognised among the top 2% of researchers globally across all disciplines (Elsevier, 2019–2026).
Professor Ostwald's qualifications, professional training and industry experience span architecture, urban design and statutory planning assessment. He has worked on architectural projects across Australia, the USA, Singapore and the UK, including projects in the community, healthcare and commercial sectors. In 2003, the NSW Premier's Department appointed him as a senior assessor of state-significant developments and an adviser on design quality and regulatory compliance. Since then, he has served on planning, design and assessment committees and boards for state, national and international organisations.
For almost three decades, Professor Ostwald has held senior leadership positions across universities, industry and professional organisations. His appointments have included Dean, Associate Dean, Head of School, and interim or acting Pro Vice-Chancellor at multiple institutions. He was previously Professor of Architecture and Dean at the University of Newcastle, Australia; Professorial Fellow at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand; and Professorial Fellow at the Università di Pisa, Italy. He has also been an Adjunct Professor at RMIT University, a visiting fellow at the Australian National University (ANU), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He has also been awarded the title of EU Distinguished Professor.
E-mail
Location
UNSW Built Environment
Red Centre West Wing
UNSW Sydney
NSW 2052 Australia
- Publications
- Media
- Grants
- Awards
- Research Activities
- Engagement
- Teaching and Supervision
Professor Ostwald has been a Chief Investigator on more than 50 competitive research grants, attracting over A$27 million in funding (approx. A$5 million apportioned). These include grants from the Australian Research Council (ARC), Carrick Institute, Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT) and Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC), as well as the Graham and Getty foundations in the USA and European Union funding programs.
He has also completed more than 30 industry-funded research contracts, valued at over A$1.8 million, for major organisations including Stockland Group, BHP Billiton, Lend Lease, Civil and Civic and GEO Group. He has also received multiple grants from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).
Professor Ostwald has been awarded 19 ARC grants, including an ARC International Doctoral Placement and an ARC Future Fellowship. In 2022, he was the second Key Chief Investigator on the successful A$8.5 million ARC Industrial Transformation Training Centre (ITTC) for Next-Gen Architectural Manufacturing (2022–2028). In 2026, he led the successful A$8.5 million ARC ITTC application for the ARC Training Centre for Digital Architectural Translation: Accelerating Circularity Adoption (DATA-CA).
Professor Ostwald is a nationally recognised and award-winning educator, receiving teaching awards and commendations including CAUT (1996/97) and TIETE (1997).
In 2016, the Australian Institute of Architects (AIA) awarded him the Neville Quarry Medallion, the highest honour the Australian architectural profession bestows on an academic. The award recognised his "exceptional international leadership in architectural research and education".
Since 1995, he has received nine international research prizes or commendations, more than 20 best paper awards, and three national citations for design research. He has also given more than 80 keynote and invited presentations.
Professor Ostwald's research applies computational, mathematical and analytical methods to understand, model and optimise architectural and urban environments. A central focus of his work is the complex relationship between architectural design, spatial form, human behaviour and cognition. His research spans design computing, architectural mathematics, spatial analysis, design cognition and the application of emerging digital technologies to architectural practice. He holds a PhD in architectural history and theory and a higher doctorate (DSc) in design computing and mathematics. Supported by the Byera Hadley International Scholarship, he undertook postdoctoral research programs at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), Montreal, associated with McGill University; the Loeb Fellowship program at Harvard University; and UCLA.
Professor Ostwald is Editor-in-Chief of the Nexus Network Journal: Architecture and Mathematics (Springer) and serves on the editorial boards of arq: Architectural Research Quarterly (Cambridge University Press) and Architectural Theory Review (Taylor & Francis). Since 2018, he has been Series Editor of Birkhäuser's Mathematics and the Built Environment research monograph series and Topic Editor for Springer Nature's Mathematics in Art, Architecture and Design.
He has authored or co-authored more than 500 scholarly publications, including 35 books, making substantial contributions to research in architecture, mathematics, computational design and design cognition.
Selected books include:
- The Fractal Dimension of Architecture (Birkhäuser, 2016), co-authored with Josephine Vaughan.
- The Mathematics of the Modernist Villa (Birkhäuser, 2018), co-authored with Michael J. Dawes.
- Grammatical and Syntactical Approaches in Architecture (IGI Global, 2020), co-authored with Ju Hyun Lee.
- Design Thinking: Creativity, Collaboration and Culture (Springer, 2020), co-authored with Ju Hyun Lee and Ning Gu.
- Computational Design: Technology, Cognition and Environments (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, 2021), with Rongrong Yu and Ning Gu.
- Mathematical Thinking and Properties in Architecture (Springer, 2025), with Ju Hyun Lee and Michael J. Dawes.