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Laura Kozak

Assistant Professor

Availability:

Education:

BFA
MASArch

Bio

Laura Kozak has published and presented papers at Participatory Design Conference, PIVOT: A World of Many Centers, Cumulus, The Association of Independent Colleges of Art & Design (AICAD) and the Service Design and Innovation Conference (ServDes). She is a past president of 221A Artist Run Centre Society and a recipient of ECU’s Ian Wallace Award for Teaching Excellence. She holds a Master of Advanced Studies in Architecture from UBC and a BFA from Emily Carr.

Websites:

Research Interests

Laura’s place-based research is focused on food practices and climate justice. She is a member of ECU’s DESIS Lab, and works to form durable, community-based relationships through interdisciplinary collaboration, field work and participatory action research. Getting outside is central to her work. In 2023, she co-led a Climate Justice Field School for sustainability planners and policy-makers at the City of Vancouver in collaboration with a renowned group of cultural and social justice practitioners. She is part of an interdisciplinary team working on Mapping swiya, which draws on shíshálh ways of knowing to re-surface stories of time and place, and is co-leading the Circular Food Innovation Lab in collaboration with numerous food businesses, food rescue organizations, local Nations, City of Vancouver Engineering Services and Solutions Lab.

Courses

Course Name Department Course Code Term
Foundation Studio Courses FNDT 181 27/SP

Description

This course provides an introduction to Industrial Design. Students will gain experience with the range of activities that comprise the design process, including generating, refining, and communicating 2D, 3D, and 4D ideas. This course will use lectures, discussions, and assignments to cover design processes, concepts and principles of experience creation, form, meaning and context in design, and visual, verbal, and written communication. Along with an introduction to materiality and hand skills, students will engage digital literacy skills in generating, developing, documenting, and presenting outcomes using relevant software.

Pre-requisites

No prerequisites.

Humanities HUMN 315 27/SP

Description

Foodways and Food Systems is an interdisciplinary course that focuses on place-based learning about food systems and practices. The course introduces art and design students to core concepts and readings from the field of Food Studies. It explores social justice topics of food security, food sovereignty, and agricultural labour and links food to ecological, climate and geopolitical issues. Through site visits, readings, guest visits and precedent studies drawn from art and design lineages and contemporary practices that intersect with food, students are exposed to a variety of perspectives on food and food movements. Research-based explorations will locate food in broader ecological, political, and social systems and build context to complement studio work. Students will engage in research, writing, presentations, creative work, and collaboration, collectively asking how creative practices can contribute to broader food movements.

Pre-requisites

No prerequisites.

Foundation Studio Courses FNDT 108 26/FA

Description

This course explores a range of creative processes to develop ways to connect thinking, making, and writing in an art and design context. Students will learn to contextualize projects in social, political, ecological and personal ways and engage in creative problem solving through iteration, experimentation, improvisation, and adapting to accidental discoveries as a generative part of the creative process. Through process-based learning and practice, students will experiment with interdisciplinary explorations framed by research skill development through collaborative projects, peer reviews, discussions, individual assignments, and critique-based studio sessions. Students will produce multiple versions of ideas from concept to content to creatively solve problems while determining new ways to view art + design practice overall.

Pre-requisites

No prerequisites.

Interaction Design INTD 300 26/FA

Description

This 6-credit core studio allows for an intensive project-based learning experience in interaction design. Students will be exposed to skills and theories that build on the knowledge from second year, expand their design capacities, and prepare them to work independently in fourth year.

Pre-requisites

No prerequisites.