Cooper Union

Katie Lau

Assistant Professor Adjunct

Katie Lau is an architect at ESKW/Architects, a practice focused on community shelter, education, and cultural projects. Her work is grounded in craftsmanship, labor and material cultures, and design-build practices which include her roles as a project manager at MADE Design/Build, a public design fellow at the Shade Institute, and a design-build fellow with the Yale School of Architecture Regenerative Building Lab.

Katie is an Assistant Professor Adjunct at the Cooper Union School of Architecture, where she teaches architectonics, formal analysis, and multifamily housing design studios. She has authored work in several publications, including Paprika!, Urban Omnibus, and Yale Constructs. Katie is also an organizer with The Architecture Lobby’s Green New Deal Working Group. She holds degrees from the Ohio State University and Yale University.

Katie'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.”
From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.
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.