Catherine is an award-winning Master’s graduate of the University of Strathclyde and is presently a Part 2 Architectural Assistant with Ryder Architecture in Glasgow.
Her Master’s thesis Geo-escharotomy: The Catalytic Healing Process for Post-Industrial Landscapes explores healing scarred land, anthropogenic eschar, across the Scottish Central Belt caused by deindustrialisation. The thesis investigates the power of environmental stewardship within communities to foster a symbiotic relationship and journey of healing for both the community and the environment. Catalysts for environmental stewardship are seeded within three land scars across the Central Belt. This ignites a continuous, catalytic healing process to create responsive landscapes through a learning progression of time-based actions. The stewards document their incremental land interactions within the one-year process to explore their catalytic experiences and their future relationship with the land. This results in the anthropogenic eschar becoming an asset to the community, creating continuous narratives of healing which grow organically, in symbiosis with the land.
In 2023, Geo-escharotomy was nominated for the RIBA President’s Silver Medal and the Architects’ Journal Student Prize and Sustainability Prize and received a high commendation for the RIAS Rowand Anderson Silver Medal for Best 5th Year Student.
