The 2025 IABSE Annual Lecture will be given by Catherine Ramsden of Useful Studio.

Through the redline

By consistently looking through and beyond the narrow remit of the redline, a binding project boundary, we can reach indirect, and even unknown, benefits and outcomes while better responding to critical aspects that disregard edges such as light, air and time.

Catherine Ramsden (Founding Director, Useful Studio)

Catherine founded Useful Studio in 2013 and directs the practice while also having served as Deputy Chair on the Board for the wider Useful Simple Trust. The Studio is an award-winning B Corp and Social Enterprise with Catherine being actively involved in both, serving as Co-Chair of the B Corp Built Environment Group. With significant experience across architecture, urbanism and in public realm including footbridges, her lean design approach and social purpose is fuelled by a passion for efficiency and positive impact.

The early years of her career focussed on planning and urban design working in California on significant environmental projects including strategic masterplans for Mission Bay and Balboa Park in San Diego as well as a townscape scheme for Santa Cruz. During a decade at Foster + Partners, as Associate Partner, Catherine’s key projects included Albion Riverside affordable housing with the Peabody Trust, the Millennium Bridge and the Thomas Deacon Academy.

Her first degree in Environmental Design was at the University of Colorado, Boulder and she has a Masters of Architecture, Magna cum Laude from the University of Pennsylvania. Her education also included a year in Copenhagen.

Catherine is an external examiner and lectures regularly in schools and universities. She is a member of the National Highways Strategic Design Panel.

Tickets available here: https://buytickets.at/internationalassociationofbridgeandstructuralengineering/1663597