Introducing our incredible Head of Design, Katie Oldknow. Katie joined our team just over 18 months ago as a senior interior designer and quickly became the head of the department. We decided to sit down with Katie to find out more about her career, what led her to Cambridge and COEL, her favourite thing about working here and much more.

Can you tell us a little bit about your professional background?

I’ve had quite a long and varied background. I first started working in Australia in Newcastle, a small coastal city- this is a very different Newcastle to the one in UK.

I worked at a multidisciplinary architectural firm on a huge range of projects, from education, to hospitality, to healthcare and more. This was great, as it provided me with vast experience, then in my mid 20s I kind of got itchy feet and moved to the UK for what was going to be six months -more than 15 years later I’m still here.

I was living and working in London for quite a while, having a really lovely time working my way up at a number of companies there, again focusing on multidisciplinary; and then COVID-19 hit, unfortunately. But fortunately, because it is what led me to Cambridge. We decided as a family, that we needed a bit of a change and we certainly needed some more grass under our feet. That’s when I first came across COEL where I started as a Senior Designer and quite quickly became the head of the design team.

Why did you move to the UK?

This is a question that I probably get asked on a monthly basis actually! I miss Australia terribly, I miss the weather very, very much, but we’re in the UK, we’re so close to Europe, to other cultures, to other environments, we have so many different foods that are available here; all things that we just don’t get as exposed to in Australia.

Naturally, I wish that the UK was a bit closer to Australia so I could see my family more frequently but here I am.

What are the main design differences you’ve seen between the UK and Australia?

The main difference that I’ve seen working across two different continents is the use of colour. In Australia, we’re generally very restrained and we use a muted colour palette -I think that’s in large part because we have so much vibrancy right outside of our door, whereas, in the UK we inject a lot of  colours into our spaces because outside can be a little bit grey sometimes.

What does a typical day look like?

It is quite hard for me to capture what a typical day for me looks like because it’s so varied. It’s one of the things that I really love about my job, no two days are the same, the days can include:

• Being on a local site
• Driving to our other sites, such as Oxford
• Various catch-ups with the team
• Client meetings
• Internal meetings

I can’t say what a typical day looks like, but I tell you what an ideal day looks like for me. An ideal day for me would be:

• Getting my children off to school without any dramas
• Cycling my bike through the common here in Cambridge which is just lovely on a beautiful morning
• Coming into the office
• Having a catch-up with all of the team members and hearing that everything is on track and all good to go and that everyone’s plans for the day are set
• Being able to spend quality time with people I love
• Then, as the project unfolds, seeing how they are being delivered and how everything is staying on track
• Hearing about people’s design ideas and concepts for projects

I have to say that we have an incredible team here in the office and a team that I genuinely enjoy seeing on a daily basis.

Did you always want to work in interior design?

No, I actually thought I wanted to be a police officer when I was younger, but then I got to about 14 or 15 years old in Australia, I realised how underpaid and undervalued their work is so I swiftly changed to wanting to be an interior designer without quite knowing what it was at the time.

What advice would you give to anyone thinking of going into Interior Design?

I would highly recommend that anyone thinking about studying interior design get some hands on experience through volunteer work or freelance work somewhere that they aspire to work;

whether that’s at a purely design-led environment or a design and architecture company or a design and build company as we do here at COEL. I think the most relevant thing to do would be to get in there and see what a day in the life is

What has been the biggest challenge you’ve had to overcome in your role?

Coming from a design and architectural background  has been quite challenging as the differences between design and build and traditional are quite great in some areas.

However, one of the benefits of working at COEL with a multidisciplinary team has been having a wealth of knowledge within the office that I can just call on. This has been incredibly valuable- everybody has been really, really genuinely helpful on this journey and made the transition to design and build really enjoyable.

You moved from the traditional design to the design and build industry, how has this change been?

When I told some friends and former colleagues that I was moving to design and build they were quite aghast – you’ve gone to the dark side – and I had to reassure them that I had done my homework and I didn’t think that I was coming to the dark side. Certainly my experience over the last year and a half has proven that design and build is is not the nasty place that some people believe it to be.

The design and build industry has been an incredible opportunity with a huge learning curve, but it has also been a fantastic means to be on site as often as I need to be and as often as I want to be to gain better insight into the construction process.

One of the big misconceptions is that we cut a lot of corners or that perhaps we don’t consider things in such an in depth way as we would in a traditional environment and I can wholeheartedly say after my experience here that just isn’t the case. In fact, we make sure that we spend quite a lot of time getting under the skin of a client and really understanding their brief, what their desired outcome is and what their needs within their space are. We work together with the clients very intensely and, I guess, because our programs are a little more condensed, we actually spend a lot more time upfront with the client than perhaps we would in a traditional environment.

What is your favourite thing about COEL?

The people, I truly love coming into the office. I’m actually a little bit of a rarity as I come in five days a week just because I like it.

What do you like to do outside work?

I love to have a quiet household and do some cooking – it doesn’t happen very often, but I really enjoy it when it does. When I’m not doing that I can be found on a bike cycling around Cambridge with my family.

I’m also training for the Cambridge Half Marathon at the moment so watch this space.