Leah Meisterlin

Associate Professor Adjunct

Leah Meisterlin is a cartographer and geospatial methodologist. Trained as an architect and urban planner, Leah’s work engages the relationship between mapping technologies, representation, and spatial justice, in cities and across regions.

Her articles and essays have appeared in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Planning Perspectives, the Avery Review, and ARPA Journal. Among others, her work has been shown in exhibition at the Oslo Architecture Triennial and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She is also one of the co-PIs on the public spatial history projects Mapping Historical New York: A Digital Atlas and Envisioning Seneca Village.

She has taught at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Barnard College, the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s College of Architecture and Design, and New York University. She was an Adjunct Associate Research Scholar at Columbia's Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture and a Research Scientist at New York University's Center for Latino Adolescent and Family Health.

Professionally, she has contributed to several experimental and exploratory practices in 21st-century urbanism. Among those, she cofounded Office: MG; served as Director of Research at Special Project Office; and cofounded PRE-Office, a design and research studio that investigated the organizational structures behind design processes in the wake of the US foreclosure crisis.

Today, Leah leads a geospatial consultancy and spatial research practice Meisterlin Projects. 

Leah's CV is available here

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

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  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.