Ms Kate Cheyne
Kate Cheyne is Head of Westminster School of Architecture and Cities. She was previously Head of the Leicester School of Art, Design & Architecture at De Montfort University and prior to that, DHoS of Brighton’s School of Architecture and Design. Educated at the Glasgow School of Art and the Bartlett, UCL, she worked in architectural practices in London, Israel and Sri Lanka, predominantly focussing on healthcare and housing projects, before co-founding and jointly directing the female-led, award-winning practice, Architects in Residence (AiR). At AiR, Kate led on innovative off-site construction and novel material investigations with timber and textiles. In 2010 Kate worked with Development Workshop France in Haiti, as consultants to Save the Children USA, designing transitional schools that incorporated safer construction methods. She successfully moved her practice knowledge into research and studio-based education, where she uses situated practice and architectural fieldwork to investigate the collective self to untangle the complexities of place-making. The work explores cultural landscapes, natural materials, rural industries, community networks, traditions, customs and folklore. A particular focus has been with an inter-disciplinary research group evaluating the textile industry and the potential for novel woven materials within the built environment to sense strain.
Kate is an experienced leader in Higher Education with a demonstrated history of forming and leading architecture, art & design schools through periods of significant change. She has led on curriculum transformation, developing and revalidating whole School programmes, including transnational education partnerships. She used these projects to embed ethical and regenerative understanding to underpin a contemporary practice of thinking through doing. She retains external practice-based links through her work on Planning Design Review Panels and Architecture Award Panels, including the 2022 RIBA Honours Committee. She is a member of the Standing Conference of Schools of Architecture (SCOSA), chairs RIBA Validation Boards for UK based and international visits. She is an invited external examiner in a number of institutions ensuring she remains ahead of academic trends within the subject of Architecture, and is currently chairing the update and rewrite of the QAA Subject Benchmark Statement for Architecture.
Kate’s research interests have developed out of her fifteen years in architectural practice leading on the use of prefabricated building systems combined with spatial and material innovation. Having worked in a diverse multi-disciplinary studio, from fashion designers to structural engineers and furniture makers to steel fabricators, she learnt the value of interdisciplinary thinking to evolving new design processes that can lead to alternative social and architectural propositions.
Kate's research continues to explores novel materials alongside place and cultural landscapes. She has published on smart woven textiles for structural health monitoring systems. Her interests in place-making and the collective self, support small town traditions like the World Pea Throwing Championship at the Lewes Arms Pub, where she is on the Games Committee.
Much of her design research has dealt with the possibilities of textiles as a viable building material (Tresses, 2009, Fabrikate, 2010, Seismic Shifts, 2011-2017, Strung Out, 2016). Within her teaching she embeds her research that addresses Cultural Landscapes, in particular, the relationship between local materials, growth of rural manufacture and vibrant rural communities (Haiti, 2010, ‘The Isle of Slingers’ 2013, ‘Ducks-a-dabbling’, 2014, ‘Village Factory’ 2014, ‘Blueprints for Future Factories’, 2017, ‘The Makers’ Nursery’, 2018). Kate’s material investigations, in collaboration with Glenn Longden-Thurgood, have tested as full scale prototype structures, through students’ End of Year Show (Rammed Chalk, 2011, Bent Coppiced Beams, 2012, Reciprocating Grid Structures, 2013, Bundled & Lashed Joints, 2017).