Hi, my name is Klara Kaufman.*
I’m a design researcher, urbanist, and artist living and working in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, NY. I am from and have spent much of my working life in Massachusetts, “big hill place.”
I hold a graduate degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, a BA from Vassar College in Urban Studies, did a Swedish langauge fellowship at Stockholm University, and (my favorite) hold a certification from the DSNY Trash Academy.
My work is
concerned with the public things that connect me to my human and multispecies neighbors. I’m animated by infrastructure — both the built environment, and social infrastructures.
My work has been published in the RESISTANCE Journal of Environmental Humanities, Pairs, the Harvard Urban Review, and Open Letters.
Amongst other pursuits, I currently work with Field Meridians, an artist collective rooted in Crown Heights that develops tools for ecological resistance. I am also a new gardener at the Greenway Botanic Garden at the Naval Cemetery. With my friends and collaborators Karen Su and Nadia Wang, I co-facilitate the by heart collective, a design and youth participatory research (YPAR) group.
I don’t have any social media except for are.na and a LinkedIn page that I don’t check enough. This is my phone. You can reach me via email at klarakaufman [at] protonmail [dot] com. I’d love to meet you!
My graduate capstone project (”Open Project”) focused on the environmental history and multispecies entanglements of sewage infastructure in Boston. “What is Waste? Sensing Multispecies Relations at Deer Island” was awarded Distinction, and featured on the Harvard GSD “graduating students” page. A version of the essay portion was published through the RESISTANCE Journal of Environmental Humanities.