Oz Ozburn

Education

BSArch, University of Virginia
MArch, Yale University

Biography

Before merging with o p e n studio, Oz Ozburn independently ran two offices, AOA, a residential architecture firm based in Chicago, and Ladder Up, a women-owned social enterprise, training and equipping all-female teams to provide an in-demand construction service. Oz also founded Design Ecology, a collaborative that strives to find holistic solutions to issues involving urbanism, physical place-making, and gaps in the rural fabric caused by social inequalities while working with the Goldin Institute, a non-profit focused on global grassroots leadership development. Through these entities, she enjoyed collaborating with local stakeholders around community-driven social change and violence prevention, specifically in the South and West sides of Chicago. Oz previously had worked for Studio Gang as Project Architect, leading teams on projects including the University of Chicago Campus North Residential Commons, a net-zero campus for the Academy of Global Citizenship, and Spelman College’s Art and Innovation Center, among others. 

Oz earned her BSArch from University of Virginia and her Master’s of Architecture from Yale University. She was awarded the 2012 Residential Architecture Award and the David M. Schwarz Travel Grant, which allowed her to research the architectural consequences of urban warfare in the Middle East. This work resulted in a publication titled "Architecture After Crisis" which documented cultural forms of post-traumatic reconstruction and how to design for risk.