Billie Faircloth, FAIA, is a design leader who has transformed practice-based research and earned a national and international reputation for demonstrating its value, methods, and outcomes. As partner and research director at the Philadelphia-based architectural practice KieranTimberlake from 2008–24, Faircloth led the firm's Research Group, a transdisciplinary team recognized for applying research, design, and problem-solving processes from fields as diverse as environmental management, industrial ecology, chemical physics, materials science, and sculpture. Her central message: inquiry is a new-found form of professional agency and a driver for practice transformation.
Architectural Record celebrated Faircloth's relentless pioneering of integrated, transdisciplinary research in practice when it selected her as its 2017 Women in Architecture Innovator Award winner. Faircloth is currently an Adjunct Professor of Architecture at the Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania. She has taught at several institutes including Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Royal Danish Academy, and The University of Texas at Austin. Faircloth served on the AIA Committee on the Environment (AIA COTE) from 2020–24 and was chair of the committee in 2022. Her present work focuses on socio-technical interactions between building culture and the environment and architecture's outcomes as critical grounds for innovation.