About
Elsa MH Mäki is a designer/teacher/writer in Brooklyn who comes from Finnish, Armenian, and Anishinaabek family. Her practice includes cartography, model-making, immersive theater, and architectural design. Elsa's drawing and writing have been featured in the Avery Review, The Funambulist, Disc Journal, and volumes including Non-Extractive Architecture (2021), Architecture of Migration: The Dadaab Refugee Camps and Humanitarian Settlement (Siddiqi, 2023), Architectures of Care: From the Intimate to the Common (2024), and Material Acts: Experimentation in Architecture and Design (2024). She has degrees in architecture from Columbia University – where she received the Marcia Mead Design Award – and Harvard GSD. Elsa is an editor with Avery Review and has held design and teaching positions in Minnesota, Massachusetts, and New York. She is Assistant Director of the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia GSAPP.
Exhibitions
2025
"Dadaab Commons" with AbdulFatah Adam, Cave Bureau, Deqa Abshir, James Muriuki, Peterson Kamwathi, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Elsa MH Mäki, and Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi. Nairobi, Kenya. Curated by Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi. GoDown Art Center Residency, Nairobi, Kenya. On view March 2025.
2023
"Post-Mortem: Queer Material Afterlives" with Aggie Fielding, Areti Kotsoni, Cory Page, Elsa MH Mäki (curators and exhibitors). Inaugural Kirkland Gallery Artist Residency, Cambridge, MA. On view March-April 2023.
2022-2023
"Ten Thousand Recollections" architectural sculpture commissioned for Ruines retrospective by artists Gerard & Kelly. Carré d'Art, Nîmes, France. On view October 2022-March 2023.
2019
"The Night Library" at Northern Spark Arts Festival with Marlena Myles, Tamara Aupaumut, Dawí, James D. Autio, Jess Grams, Andrea Fairbanks, Hope Flanagan. Minneapolis, MN. On view June 2019.
2018-2022
"#Roadside Marker Series," an interview with Dr. Alyssa Mt. Pleasant on her long-term photography project, featured in traveling exhibition Now What?! Advocacy, Activism, and Alliances in American Architecture Since 1968.
Speaking
2023
- In conversation with Sara Zewde for inaugural Norma Merrick Sklarek lecture at Barnard-Columbia Architecture, New York.
- Guest lecture for Ana María León's seminar "The Architect as Producer" at Harvard GSD, Cambridge.
2022
- In conversation with Andrew Holder on exhibition and dance event series "Art of a Movement: Disability, Dance, and Dynamism in Artistic Practice" at Harvard Dance Center, Cambridge.
- Guest lecture for Seb Choe's seminar "Noncompliance: Activist Design Approaches" at Kent State College of Architecture and Environmental Design.
- Guest critic for final review: "Storybuilding: Inclusive Design and Public Health," taught by Joel Sanders and Neal Baer, Yale SoA/Yale Public Health, New Haven.
- Guest critic for final review: "Architecture's Global Territories" taught by Ignacio G. Galán, Barnard-Columbia Architecture, New York.
- Guest critic for review: "Conscious Skins Studio" taught by Abeer Seikaly and Gabrielle Prinz, Yale SoA, New Haven.
- Guest lecture for Virginia Black's "Design Futures" seminar at Barnard-Columbia Architecture, New York.
2021
- "Building Solidarities: Building Historical Consciousness" roundtable with Nick Estes, Chris Cornelius, Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi at Barnard-Columbia Architecture, New York. Featured on the Red Nation Podcast.
- "The Petro-Biennial Complex" roundtable at the Chicago Architecture Biennial, convened by the Settler Colonial City Project.
- Presenting with Virginia Black at the Interiors without Architecture Symposium, Pratt Institute, New York.
2020
2019
2018
- "Under the Border" mapping workshop at the Abolition Convergence, Minneapolis, MN.
*please request Elsa's CV for a full exhibition/publication/speaking list*