Zehra Kuz

Zehra Kuz is a registered architect (NYS, CT) and Adjunct Professor-CCE at the Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture. Influenced by how the changing climate and prevailing environmental pressures affect urban life, she focuses on the integration of natural and man-made, physical and social infrastructures within built-environments. Central to her work is the New York City’s vulnerable disinvested frontline communities and the City’s Significant Maritime Industrial Areas (SMIA); she explores implementing resilience in collaboration with local community activists and organizations. Aspects of participatory design, integrating local experience and innovative solutions, influences her research as well as design studio projects.

As one of two primary investigators for “Fluid Frontiers: Stormwater Management”, a multi-faceted research initiative in Brooklyn’s Red Hook Sewershed, Zehra focused on quantifying stormwater impact through CSOs on coastal waters, explored feasible strategies for public private partnerships and engaged local communities in the implementation of innovative solutions toward achieving the Clean Water Act.

Zehra also co-led a NYC Dept. of Design and Construction (DDC) task order, Design for Equity (Part1) and Evoking Equity (Part2) for DDC’s “Design and Construction Excellence 2.0, Guiding Principles as a way to make public facilities responsive to the communities where they are located.

At Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture, she co-led RAMP (Recover, Adapt, Mitigate and Plan) (2020-23), an interdisciplinary initiative that together with respective community leaders, explores design, policy and planning strategies for vulnerable waterfront neighborhoods in New York. As a charter academic partner, she contributed to the Resilient People Places and Projects (RP3) working group of Town + Gown.

Recently, as a team member of the Collective for Community Culture and Environment, a women owned business and professional network, together with RISE (Rockaway Initiative for Sustainability and Equity) she completed research for The Nature Conservancy’s project Community Visioning for Vacant Land following Managed Retreat in Edgemere, Queens.

In her own practice Oasis Design Lab, she focuses on small scale challenging waterfront projects.

Diplom Ingenieur, Universitaet Innsbruck, Fakultaet fuer Architektur und Bauingenieurwesen, Austria;

M.S.Arch. and Building Design, Columbia University.

WCFS2020 Proceedings of the Second World Conference on Floating Solutions, Rotterdam

Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering    published by Springer, 2021, ISSN 2366-2557

Editors: Lukasz Piatek, Soon Heng Lim, Chien Ming Wang, Rutger de Graaf-van Dinther

BLUECITY Lab: A Climate Adaptation Amphibious Lab . . . . . . . . . page 143-165

Gita Nandan, Zehra Kuz, and Tim Gilman-Ševčík

The Organic Approach to Architecture Editors: Deborah Gans, Zehra Kuz, Publisher: John Wiley and Sons/Academy Editions, International AIA Book Awards, Honorable Mention, 2003