Kathryn Firth is an architect and urban designer with over 30 years of international experience. Most recently she was a Director in Cities Planning and Design at Arup.  Prior to joining Arup, Kathryn was Urban Design Director at several practices in the UK and the US. She was the Chief of Design at the London Legacy Development Corporation, where she directed teams of architects, landscape architects, planners, and engineers to realise the Olympic Legacy. She leads masterplanning and urban regeneration projects, including schemes on former industrial sites in complex urban environments, transit-oriented communities and district plans, as well as projects enabling the creation of high-quality public realm.  Kathryn has also led projects evaluating and challenging existing policy and its impact on the physical context, and manuals/toolkits focused on best practice in urban design.

Kathryn is committed to a productive exchange between the practice of urban design and academic research and is a proponent of a multi-disciplinary approach that ensures collaboration across design, development and socio-economic disciplines. She has ongoing involvement in topical research such as the intensification of industrial parks toward housing provision, the impact of AI on the pedagogy and practice of urban design, and food and masterplanning.

Kathryn is Chair of the Ealing Design Review Panel, Design Council Expert, Trustee of The London Society, co-chair of the Urban Land Institute Urban Development and Infrastructure Product Council, London Mayor’s Design Advocate alum, and active in Architects Declare. She has always taught simultaneous to practice – she taught at Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Architectural Association and is currently teaching at The Bartlett, UCL and Central Saint Martin’s, UAL.

Clients include architectural practices and the public and private development sector.

Please email Kathryn for a copy of her CV.