Professor Ostwald’s research uses computational methods to analyse, optimise or understand architectural and urban space. His research typically involves modelling or examining the complex relationships between design and human behaviour and cognition.

Michael has a doctorate (PhD) in architectural history and critical theory and a higher doctorate (DSc) in design computing and mathematics. Under the auspices of the Byera Hadley international fellowship he completed postdoctoral research programs at the CCA (Montreal, Canada associated with McGill University), the Loeb (Harvard, USA) and UCLA (Los Angeles, USA).

Michael is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Nexus Network Journal: Architecture and Mathematics (Springer) and on the editorial boards of ARQ (Cambridge) and Architectural Theory Review (Taylor and Francis). He has authored more than 400 scholarly publications, including 34 books. Some of his recent 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, 2020), co-authored with Ju Hyun Lee; and Design Thinking: Creativity, Collaboration and Culture (Springer 2020), co-authored with Ju Hyun Lee and Ning Gu; Computational Design: Technology, Cognition and Environments (CRC, Taylor and Francis, 2021), with Rongrong Yu and Ning Gu. Michael’s two-volume work with Kim Williams, Architecture and Mathematics from Antiquity to the Future (Springer, 2015), has sold over 200,000 copies. Since 2018 Michael has been Series Editor of Birkhäuser’s Mathematics and the Built Environment (a research monograph series) and Topic-Editor for Springer-Nature’s Mathematics in Art, Architecture and Design. His practice-based, non-traditional research outputs (NTROs) include over 100 published, exhibited and executed design works.