Laura Kurgan Design is an interdisciplinary design practice in New York City, blending academic architectural research with design, information, communication, advocacy and public work. We enjoy working in those spaces where the pressing questions of politics and ethics (public school reform, criminal justice reform, international human rights, conflict mapping and memorials) demand the most innnovative design strategies. Our process is one of engagement; through teaching, consulting, and participatory design. We work frequently with larger partners, often as knowledge-based consultants for not-for-profit organizations whose advocacy work involves them in architecture. .
Laura Kurgan teaches architecture at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where she is Director of Visual Studies and the Director of the Spatial Information Design Lab (SIDL). SIDL is currently collaborating with the Justice Mapping Center on a project called “Graphical Innovations in Justice Mapping” in selected states—Arizona, Kansas, Los Angeles County, Louisiana, New York, and Rhode Island. She has followed the declassification of satellite imagery and GPS technology in a series of research projects across the significant political events of the last decade. This work, which has been exhibited internationally, is collected in You Are Here: Post-Military Technology and the New Landscape of Satellite Images, forthcoming from Zone Books.