Dr Katie Heywood

Biography

Dr Katie Heywood is an architectural designer and researcher whose work explores how digital fabrication and robotics can turn sustainability theory into architectural practice. Drawing on vernacular building traditions and new technologies, she investigates how architects can design and build with local and hybrid materials, moving away from extractive material specifications towards earthen, waste-based and bio-based systems. Her research treats carbon, circularity and regenerative design as design discourses shaped by context, climate and culture, rather than as metrics applied once a design is complete. She also looks critically at the role of the machine itself, asking how human-robot collaboration and the imperfections of fabrication at architectural scale can open up new design languages, and how to translate these processes to beaccessible to architects without specialist programming expertise.

Katie’s research is grounded in practice. She worked as an architectural assistant at Denton Corker Marshall and Andrea Caputo SRL before completing an industrial PhD with Henning Larsen, where her research was embedded in live projects from competition stage through to construction. Her doctoral work proposed an “expanded sustainabilities” framework that brings embodied carbon, circularity and performance together as early-stage design drivers for 3D concrete printing. It produced a digital design workflow, new evaluation models for circularity and carbon, and modular building elements fabricated at full scale. Using a research-through-design approach, she has published in Architectural Intelligence and presented at international conferences including CAADRIA, RobArch and RILEM Digital Concrete, alongside industry exhibitions such as Formnext. She works with industry partners in construction and manufacturing, and with collaborators in Europe, the United States and Asia, to test her research beyond the lab.

Katie holds a BA (Hons) in Architecture from the Belfast School of Architecture, a Master of Architecture from Lund University, and a PhD in Architecture from the Royal Danish Academy, completed in 2025. At QUT, Katie is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Architecture and Built Environment, working within the Construction and Architectural Robotics Lab (CARL) and the Centre for Environment and Society. She founded and convenes the CARL Talk Series, which brings academics, early career researchers and industry together with students, practitioners and government. She is an active member of Australian Architects Declare, Product Aware and Parlour collectives.