Urban Renaissance Institute :: Regeneration Research, Training & Consultancy

• Our History
• Our Team
• Our Associates
• Advisory Board

Our team

Director : Louise Thomas
Architect/Urban Designer

Trained as an architect and urban designer at Edinburgh College of Art, Heriot Watt University and Oxford Brookes University. Louise is also Director of TDRC (Thomas Design Regeneration & Consultation Ltd) in Oxford, and has extensive private sector consultancy experience on urban regeneration and development strategies. She is an External Examiner at Birmingham City University and co-edits Urban Design journal, for the Urban Design Group.

Head of Research : Lora Nicolaou
Architect/Strategic Design Consultant

Trained as an architect at the National Technical University of Athens, before taking an MSc in Advanced Architectural Studies at the Bartlett, UCL, and later MA in Urban Design at Oxford Brookes University. As Director of Urban Strategies at DEGW she has a strong track record in urban design and development planning and has contributed to city strategies across Europe, including Cambridge, Rotterdam, and Utrecht.

Founder of URI : Richard Hayward

Richard is Professor of Architecture & Urban Design at the University of Greenwich and Head of the School of Architecture and Construction. He is an an architect, urban designer, teacher and researcher. He has practiced for more than thirty years in the UK, Germany, North and South America and Australia. As a partner in BHMS in the 1980s he was one of the principal designers of the award winning regeneration Fobney Street housing scheme in central Reading and has also spent time as an Area Team Architect and a Housing Programme Analyst at the Housing Corporation.

Duncan Berntsen : Associate

URI Associate and Programme leader for MA in Urban Design at the University of Greenwich. 25 years’ experience in public, private and academic interdisciplinary roles in service of the built environment having studied Architecture and Urban Design, Construction, Property Development & Planning, Value & Risk Management and Business Administration in the UK and USA. He leads research, consultancy and design practice within the UK and abroad.