Michael Louw

Short CV

Michael Louw is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Cape Town’s School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics. He completed his Architecture 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 large commercial projects before returning to South Africa to join the team of CMAI Architects where he became a Director in 2006. Michael was Design and Project Architect for more than seventy houses in the southern Cape and he fulfilled the same role for a number of commercial buildings in the area, including the adaptive re-use of the Parking Shed, the Sawtooth Building, the Monorail bridges and the Turbine Hotel & Spa on Thesen Islands. He was part of the design and implementation teams for a number of large mixed-use developments, including Thesen Islands, Pezula Private Estate and Crossways Farm Village.

He attended the Glenn Murcutt Master Class in Australia in 2005 and he also completed a postgraduate MPhil degree in Sustainable Development Planning and Management at the University of Stellenbosch. His research interests include architectural history and temporality, technology and design-build practices. Michael teaches in the Masters of Architecture course, the third year Design and Theory course and the second year Technology course in the Bachelor of Architectural Studies (BAS) programme. He is also the project leader for the school’s annual design-build project, which is known as the Imizamo Yethu water platforms.