Cathy Hawley
- Associate Lecturer
- Architecture MA Architecture (ARB/RIBA Part 2)
Cathy Hawley is an award-winning architect of housing and urban space; her research is concerned with motherhood and the complexities of housing the nuclear family.
Cathy Hawley is a practicing architect and long-term associate with muf architecture/art. She was a founding partner at Riches Hawley Mikhail, four times Housing Design Award Winners, their Clay Field project received an RIBA Award. Goldsmith Street, a social housing development in Norwich, was awarded the 2019 Stirling Prize (Mikhail Riches with Cathy Hawley). Cathy has been the recipient of the RIBA Rome Scholarship in Architecture and was subsequently a member of the British School at Rome Fine Arts Steering Committee. She has taught at London Metropolitan University, the Architectural Association and the University of Kingston and convened workshops in Olso, Copenhagen and Vienna. www.cathyhawley.co.uk
Cathy also teaches ADS1 with Matthew Blunderfield, the design studio considers collective life in the context of the ‘New Town’ as a means to imagine alternative models of community making, from the rural village to the urban commune. Through the seminar series Lives in Common the studio hosts a series of conversations about the multiple ways that we live together.
Key details
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Research interests
Her research, currently developing through a practice-based PhD, is concerned with housing design and with ad-hoc practices of making homes and building communities interrogated through the diverse lived experiences of motherhood. She looks at the evolution of informal and temporal practices of mothers and families making scarce space and resources work. Cathy is concerned with homemaking through practices of activism arising from need and housing scarcity.
Practice
Cathy is an architect and long-term collaborator with Muf architecture/art. She was a founding partner at Riches Hawley Mikhail whose Goldsmith Street social housing was awarded the 2019 Stirling Prize (Mikhail Riches with Cathy Hawley). Her professional practice includes the design and delivery of social and affordable housing as well as public space and urban strategy. Cathy teaches at the Royal College of Art and is undertaking a PhD by Practice.
Research funding
UCA Vice Chancellor Scholarship Award for PhD by Practice 2023–26
Awards
With Mikhail Riches
RIBA Neave Brown Award for Housing, Stirling Prize: Goldsmith Street 2019
As Riches Hawley Mikhail
RIBA Award for Brentford Lock West 2017
Housing Design Awards 2009/2011
Housing Design ‘Future Proof’ Award for Clay Field 2009
Mid-listed for the Stirling Prize in 2009 for Clay Field Housing
RIBA Award Clay Field Housing
Shortlisted for ‘Young Architect of the Year’ 2007
2001 RIBA Rome Scholarship in Architecture and Urbanism, The British School at Rome
Current and recent projects
PhD by Practice ‘Mothers Making Space’