She won the Holcim Foundation Awards 2014 Next Generation 3rd prize for Machinarium: Regenerative urban catalyst and textile production and the Holcim Foundation Awards 2017 Next Generation 1st prize for Brick-Works in South Africa: Brick kiln and incremental development project. She participated in the Holcim Foundation Awards Labs in New York (2015) and Mexico City (2018).

Her research is focused on regenerative- and African urbanism, industrial ecology and systemic architecture within the post-industrial condition. She also practices as a registered professional architect and has worked for the award-winning firm studioMAS, where built work focuses on adaptive re-use, “nature as architecture” and multi-disciplinary creative collaboration.

Heidi Boulanger also lectures part-time at the University of Cape Town and has previously written as a theoretical columnist for ArchitectureSA, the journal of South African Architecture.

She studied architecture at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, receiving a National Research Foundation (NRF) Bursary in Regenerative Urbanism. Her Master thesis, Machinarium, investigated the use of industrial ecology (or ‘waste-to-resource’ systems) to establish post-industrial textile industries which utilize urban wastewater as a sustainable source of water and energy.

She won the South African National Corobrik Architectural student of the year award with her thesis (2014). She received the SACAP Medal (2013), the SAIA Award (2013), the PIA Prize (2013), the Regional Corobrik Student Award (2013), selected as representative in the Hunter Douglas Awards (2013), the HolmJordaan prize for Architecture (2012), the PIA Prize (2012), and winner of the Tshwane Leadership Foundation’s “Rebranding Homelessness” competition (with J Oyomno & K Steynberg).