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!

To me, the role of design is representation —the way the world is, was, or might be. 

Design research is a method, a way of using the sensibility and tools of design to understand the world (do research). 

The tools in my toolbox include drawing, mapping, photography, facilitation, archival research, video art, oral history, participatory methods, zine-making...
by Klara Kaufman, last updated June 2026