Anna Koosmann
AIA, NCARB
Anna grew up in the St. Croix River Valley of Western Wisconsin and has lived in culturally diverse places in the U.S. and around the globe. Connecting with the land and people in each place has brought her much joy and adventure. She currently resides in Minneapolis and enjoys sunrise walks along the Mississippi. Anna uses she/her pronouns and loves being outdoors, traveling via bicycle, and creative hobbies including street and nature photography, painting, and art installations.
Anna is an activist architect, with over fifteen years of award-winning experience working at architecture firms and universities. She believes architecture and art can positively impact communities through small interventions and place-making. She is invested in the places she serves, collaborating with the people that will truly benefit. She instigates projects through a co-creative process and deep listening and follows up to learn, reflect, and improve the process. In addition to architecture, she has exhibited artworks internationally in the Philippines and domestically in Seattle and the Midwest.
Anna is also an educator, and Fulbright scholar who collaborated with the culturally diverse communities including: Tribal Nations, tent City Groups, and disaster relief survivors in the U.S. and abroad. As a visiting design-build instructor in the Philippines, she helped establish the first, design-build university program, leading Filipino students on innovative bamboo structures for marginalized communities. Her Fulbright research for the post-occupancy evaluations of the Fulbright design-build program, earned a national EDRA Core Award.
As an assistant Professor at the University of Arizona, she co-taught design-build studios focusing on energy efficient and affordable university faculty housing. She also led a student outreach initiative, teaching Ethics and Practice, collaborating with non-profit community organizations in Tucson that resulted in design options and construction cost estimates for marketing and financing projects. She has published and spoken at conferences on these topics. Recently, she co-authored six study guidebooks for the Architecture Licensing Exam, ARE 5.0.