Meet our speakers
At the Future of Design London 2025 conference, we will be hosting a lineup of distinguished speakers who are thought leaders in their respective fields. With their profound insights and groundbreaking contributions, these speakers will share their expertise, discussing the changes that are driving the evolution of design and shaping the future of our built environment.
Speakers:
Catherine Ramsden, 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.
Chris Wise, Expedition Engineering
Chris has a reputation for hands-on creativity and innovative engineering projects, as design lead and alongside some of the world’s leading architects. He co-founded Expedition in 1999 and the Useful Simple Trust in 2008. Prior to this, he worked for Ove Arup and Partners from 1979. Serving in the UK, Australia and USA, he became Arup’s youngest Director in 1992.
He has also been a long-time leader in sustainable and regenerative design, and has been involved in many stadia, long-span, cultural and adaptive reuse projects for over 30 years, including as engineering design lead for the London 2012 Velodrome.
As an engineering design educator, he was the first Professor of Creative Design at Imperial College. He is currently Visiting Professor at Cambridge and Bath specialising in architecture and regenerative design respectively. He has been industry chair of several ESG-focussed bodies including Meicon (Materials Efficiency in Construction) and the Engineering Professors’ Council Sustainability Toolkit launched in March 2024.
Martin Knight, Knight Architects
Martin Knight is one of the leading UK architects specialising in the design of bridges and transport infrastructure and is a Fellow of the RIBA and the Institution of Civil Engineers and an Honorary Fellow of IStructE.
He founded international bridge designers Knight Architects in 2006 and his award-winning practice has completed more than seventy bridges in the UK and internationally. Their approach to design has been hailed as exemplary by bodies including the National Infrastructure Commission and the Design Council in the UK and Baukultur Bundesstiftung in Germany.
Martin frequently serves as a client and industry advisor, including as member of the Design Review Panel of the Design Commission for Wales since 2006. He is a member of the National Highways’ Strategic Design Panel, was appointed a Design Council Ambassador in 2021 and is a judge for the BCIA Awards and the Structural Awards
Roger Ridsdill Smith, Foster + Partners
After graduating from Cambridge University, Roger started work in Paris, before moving to Arup in London where he became a Director in 2003.
Past projects include the London Millennium Bridge and Citibank tower at Canary Wharf. Recent and ongoing projects include towers in New York, Lusail, Budapest, Shenzhen and Manila, airports in Panama, Phnom Penh, and Warsaw, a medical school in Mumbai, and the new Ellison Institute Laboratories in Oxford.
Roger is an Honorary Senior Lecturer at Imperial College and member of the British Standards code committee for concrete.
Workshop Hosts:
Enea Latxague, Knight Architects
Enea is a bridge architect and design leader with over nine years of experience delivering people-focused, sustainable infrastructure and bridges. With degrees in both Architecture and Civil Engineering, she brings a unique blend of creative and technical insight to complex design challenges. She leads in her field with empathy, integrity, and creativity, overseeing projects from nationally significant infrastructure to community-scale infrastructures – always prioritising collaboration, user-focused approaches, site integration, and the quality of the places she helps create.
Ian Firth, COWI
Ian Firth is a globally respected structural engineer and bridge designer, celebrated for his work on some of the world’s most ambitious and elegant spans. A graduate of the University of Bristol and Imperial College
Firth spent most of his career at Flint & Neill (later COWI), where he became a partner and director. His portfolio includes the Stonecutters Bridge in Hong Kong, the Bridge of Aspiration in London, and advisory roles on the proposed Messina Strait Bridge in Italy
He served as President of the Institution of Structural Engineers in 2017 and is a Fellow of multiple engineering institutions. Now working as a consultant, he continues to advocate for beautiful, sustainable bridge design and supports humanitarian engineering through his role as Trustee of Bridges to Prosperity.
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