Patty Heyda
Patty Heyda is a professor of urban design and architecture at Washington University in St. Louis. She researches the political economy of architecture alongside issues of power, race, public space, and typology in American cities. Her interdisciplinary approach blends mapping and spatial design thinking with policy and the humanistic social sciences to engage structural contradictions in the built environment, for critical reimagination. Prior to teaching, Heyda led widely published multi-scalar projects in the U.S. and abroad, with Pritzker Prize-winning Architects Jean Nouvel (Paris), Chan Krieger Associates (Boston) and others. She earned her Master of Architecture with Distinction from Harvard University, where she has also previously taught.
Heyda is the author of “Radical Atlas of Ferguson, USA,” shortlisted for the national On the Brinck Book Award; and “Rebuilding the American City” and “Rebuilding the American Town,” with D. Gamble (MIT). Her work has been published in Journal of Architectural Education, Journal of Urban Design, ACSA, MONU, Conditions, Planning Magazine, City Lab, the Conversation, Fast Company, Blavity and others; with chapters in Architecture is All Over, Material World of Modern Segregation, Urban Infill, St. Louis Currents and Mutations edited by Rem Koolhaas. She has been interviewed for NPR, St. Louis Public Radio, and in the documentary film The Kinloch Doc. Heyda is a contributing author of the St. Louis City Reparations Commission Report. In 2022, she received the American Planning Association-St. Louis Dwight F. Davis Award for Outstanding Planning Advocacy.
Select Articles, Chapters, and Publications
“Enslavements Continuing Effects on Neighborhoods and the Built Fabric,” Patty Heyda, et al, City of St. Louis Reparations Commission Report, 2024
“Food Desert: Feeding the Regional Economic Imaginary,” in Journal of Architectural Education: Deserts, 2023, v. 77, no. 2. Patty Heyda. Edited by Ersela Kripa, Francesco Marullo, and Stephen Mueller.
“The Façade of Redevelopment,” in Common Reader: Material World of Modern Segregation, 2022, vol. 6, no. 1. Patty Heyda. Edited by Iver Bernstein and Heidi Kolk.
“#ArchSoWhite,” in Journal of Architectural Education: Building Stories, 2021, v. 75, no. 2. Patty Heyda. Edited by Lisa Findley and Marc J Neveu.
“A dismantled post office destroys more than mail service,” in The Conversation, 2020. Patty Heyda.
“What About Typology? An Update for Late Capitalism,” in Journal of Architectural Education Online: Design as Scholarship, 2019. Patty Heyda. Edited by Marc Neveu.
“Erasure Urbanism,” in Architecture is All Over, 2017. Patty Heyda. Edited by Esther Choi and Marikka Trotter. Published by Columbia University Press, New York, Ny.
Select Exhibitions and Presentations
“Radical Atlas,” presented at Ferguson Municipal Library: Readings on Race and PROUD/ People Reaching out for Unity and Diversity, Ferguson, 2025.
“Telling the Story of Injustice,” presented at Mayor’s Institute on City Design, Harvard University Just City Mayoral Fellowship, 2025.
“Scales of Practice,” presented at MIT Department of Urban & Spatial Planning workshop, Boston, 2025.
“Radical Atlas,” Norman B. Leventhal Map & Exhibition Center, Boston Public Library, and Harvard University GSD, Boston, 2025.
“Mirror Images,” presented at AIA Baltimore with Maryland ASLA, Baltimore, 2025.
“Erasure Urbanisms,” in "Design Agendas” at Garen Gallery, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, 2024-25.
Select Awards and Grants
2025 — On the Brinck Book Award Shortlist, Radical Atlas
2024 — William H. Danforth St. Louis Confluence Award Finalist and Special Designation, Washington University in St. Louis
2022 — Dwight F. Davis Award for Outstanding Planning Advocate, American Planning Association St. Louis Metro Section
2021 — Divided City Mellon Foundation-funded Grant, Principal Investigator for “Mobilizing the Middle”
2021 — Scholar Grant, Center for Race, Ethnicity and Equity Scholar Grant, Principal Investigator.
2019 — Divided City Mellon Foundation-funded Grant, Project Team for “Laboratory for Suburbia”
2017 — Divided City Mellon Foundation-funded Grant, Co-Principal Investigator, “Inequality and the City”
