Laura Kozak (she/her) is a design researcher and community organizer. A core interest in place-based design and systems of reciprocity, exchange and locality inform her research and teaching practice. This includes how we show up for and contribute to relationships with our communities, land, water and more-than-human neighbours, and has led to collaborations with organizers, activists and social workers; Indigenous artists and ethno-botanists; gardeners and waste remediators; front-line workers in housing and housing advocacy; advocates for cultural labour; and artists engaged with land and material.

She holds a Master of Advanced Studies in Architecture from UBC (2012) and a BFA from Emily Carr (2005). She teaches design in the Jake Kerr Faculty of Graduate Studies and is a Research Associate of the DESIS Lab and Shumka Centre (2019 – 2023) at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. She is the past President of 221A Artist Run Centre Society and in 2021 was honoured to receive the Ian Wallace Teaching Award. With relatives from the Ukraine and other parts of Europe, she lives together with her kids, Ida and Walter, on unceded Coast Salish territory.

Recent Publications

Place-Based Responsibility, Laura Kozak and Jean Chisholm, Emily Carr DESIS Lab, 2021

Satellite x DESIS: Report and Archive, Laura Kozak and Jean Chisholm, Shumka Centre and Emily Carr DESIS Lab, 2020

Micro-Care: Small Acts of Resilience for Living Within the Earth’s Carrying Capacity, Jean Chisholm, Avi Farber, Julie Van Oyen and Laura Kozak, 2020, presented at AICAD 2020 and Cumulus Roma 2020 (forthcoming)

Sticks, Ropes, Land: Confronting Colonial Practices in Public Space Design, Jean Chisholm, Charlotte Falk and Laura Kozak, 2020, presented at Participatory Design Conference 2020 and PIVOT 2020

Superimpositions: Mountain Embassy as Marker, SFU Galleries, 2019