Laura Mark is an award-winning architecture critic, curator, educator and filmmaker based in Sheffield.
Laura is currently undertaking a PhD at Newcastle University which looks at our experience of domestic spaces and the museumification of the home through an autoethnographic study of Walmer Yard. She is the former Keeper of Walmer Yard and she also previously ran the Baylight Foundation, where she curated a number of cultural programmes and projects which explored how we experience architecture.
She is the currently co-lead for the first year undergraduate course at Sheffield School of Architecture and has previously taught at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University of Greenwich and the Birmingham School of Architecture and Design. She also runs a unit at the annual summer programme – Studio in the Woods. At the beginning of lockdown, Laura launched a series of events titled the Virtual Unit, designed to support students who were now completing their studies at home. Laura has been a guest critic at numerous schools of architecture including Sweden’s UMEA University, Sheffield School of Architecture, Reading School of Architecture, Bartlett School of Architecture, Central St Martins, and the Royal College of Art.
Trained as an architect, Laura spent five years in architectural practice before joining the editorial team of the Architects’ Journal. She went on to become the magazine’s Digital Editor, where she oversaw a comprehensive redesign of its digital offering. Later she became the magazine’s Architecture Editor, looking after every aspect of its coverage. During her time at the magazine, Laura won numerous awards for her work including IBP’s Multi-Media Journalist of the Year in both 2015 and 2016. Laura now writes freelance for a number of publications including RIBA Journal, Dezeen, Icon, The Developer and the Architectural Review. She has also edited books and website texts for practices including Robin Lee Architecture, Feilden Fowles, Gort Scott and ZCD Architects.
She has directed a number of films including the documentary Zaha: An Architecture Legacy (2017) which has been shown at festivals in London, Milan, New York and Miami. Laura is currently working on a new series of films entitled Practice, which follow the studio culture of architects from Piers Taylor and Sam Jacob to Mary Duggan and O’Donnell and Tuomey. The first episode, which was released in February 2020, has been shown at the Dezeen Virtual Design Festival, Palm Springs Architecture, Design, and Art Film Festival and New York Architecture Design Film Festival.
In 2020, Laura was named by the London Festival of Architecture and the Design Museum as one of ‘an emerging generation of voices in architecture who are expanding the parameters of what architecture can be, who London is for and what its future holds’.