Laura Britton, AIA is an architect, author, and frequent lecturer on the subject of mass timber. As an Associate at Shigeru Ban Architects, Laura has led and contributed to a diverse range of projects, including Kentucky Owl Park, a bourbon distillery campus; Terrace House, a hybrid mass timber residential tower; and Cast Iron House, an adaptive reuse of a landmarked 19th-century commercial building. Prior to joining SBA, she worked in the offices of Sou Fujimoto Architects, Atelier Bow-Wow, LTL Architects, and Pickard Chilton Architects.

Laura is the author-editor of Shigeru Ban: Timber in Architecture (Rizzoli, 2022). The book traces the evolution of 45 wood projects from concept through construction, demonstrating the challenges and merits of wood buildings through essays, technical drawings, and photographs.

As an advocate for environmentally responsible approaches to mass timber, Laura has lectured widely on decarbonization and the benefits of interdisciplinary approaches to design and construction. Most recently, she presented at the AIA International Spring Conference, AIA Colorado Practice + Design Conference, the Center for Architecture, the Skyscraper Museum, and Telluride Art + Architecture. She currently serves on the Steering Committee for the International Mass Timber Conference and is a member of the Colorado Mass Timber Coalition.

Laura holds a Bachelor of Arts from Yale University with Distinction in Architecture and a Master of Architecture from Princeton University School of Architecture, where she was a recipient of the Howard Crosby Butler Traveling Fellowship and the Henry Adams AIA Medal.

Laura's CV is available here. 

Yuri Masnyj was born in Washington D.C. in 1976. He graduated with a BFA from Cooper Union School for the Advancement of Science and Art in 1998, and has taught drawing at Cooper Union since 2007. Masnyj lives and works in New York City.

Masnyj makes drawings, sculptures, and sculptural installations that depict austere architectural spaces populated by a personal iconography of objects and symbols. His recent work is composed as inventories of architectural fragments, everyday objects, and abstract forms. Masnyj is interested ways architectural space, can serve as a stage or platform for human experience, and how that experience can be articulated through the placement and arrangement of objects.

Masnyj's work has been shown throughout the United States and Europe in solo and group exhibitions including "In Practice: Material Deviance" (w. Lauren Bakst), The Sculpture Center, New York 2017; “Name it by Trying to Name It” and “Open Sessions 5,” The Drawing Center, New York, 2015;  “Living Room Index & Pool” (w. Lauren Bakst), Pioneer Works, New York, 2015; “X” (solo exhibition), Travesia Cuatro, Madrid, 2012; “The Night's Still Young” (solo exhibition), Metro Pictures, New York, 2007; “Whitney Biennial 2006,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2006, and “Greater New York,” P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY, 2005. Masnyj's work was included in Vitamin D: New Perspectives in Drawing published by Phaidon Press. Masnyj’s work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Whitney Museum in New York, The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and the Contemporary Museum in Honolulu.

Lauren Kogod is partner at Kogod Smiley Architects. She earned a B.F.A. and B.Arch at Rhode Island School of Design, an M.S. in Architecture and Building Design at Columbia University, and is a PhD candidate in Architectural History and Theory at Harvard University. Prior to Cooper Union Kogod was Lecturer in Architectural History and Theory at Yale University School of Architecture. Her articles and essays have been published in Assemblage, Harvard Design Magazine, Architecture + Urbanism,  Adrian Luchini (CWA), Enric Miralles (AD Monograph) and Architecture and Capitalism, 1850 to the Present (Routledge).  

View Lauren Kogod's CV here.