Dr. Laura Wainer sees architecture beyond just buildings, but as a political tool that reflects and influences how societies are governed.
As an assistant professor at City’s Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, she teaches students to see the built environment through the lenses of democracy, justice and urban policy.
Dr. Laura Wainer. Photo Credit: CCNY
“The relationship between politics and democracy, building and architecture is fascinating to me — architecture talks without words,” Wainer said in an interview with The RICC. “When you learn how to read the intentions of those who design — why to add a parking lot or not, why to put two-story apartments rather than three — those decisions are not random… they actually carry a lot of political content.”
Trained first as an architect in her native country of Argentina, Wainer soon found herself drawn to the social sciences.
Her career began working in construction sites in Argentina, where she faced frequent gender-based challenges. Despite the many women in architecture, leadership positions in the field are still dominated by men, she said.
“We’re not a minority in numbers, but we are in leadership and decision-making,” Wainer said.
That imbalance motivated her to pursue roles where she could influence policy and advocate for a more inclusive profession.
Wainer notes a recent shift, as more architecture programs and institutions re-engage with social issues, bringing more women into positions of influence. “That’s a change I’m excited about,” she said.
Her pursuit of deeper insight through the social sciences began with her degree in Architecture and Urbanism from Universidad de Buenos Aires, followed by a Master’s in International Affairs at The New School and a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning from MIT. Her professional work spans global institutions such as the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank, where she investigated how housing policies shape urban realities.
Wainer’s forthcoming book project, at least 13 years in the making, builds on her fieldwork in Argentina, Colombia and South Africa. It examines how governments use housing to influence social organization — and how residents push back, adapt and reconfigure these designs. She argues that the way people reshape their environments tells us a great deal about how democracy functions in practice, particularly in marginalized urban areas.
Wainer’s work largely focuses on what she calls the “informalization” of formal housing projects — the ways residents in the Global South repurpose top-down, state-backed housing initiatives to fit local needs. The informal transformations often subvert the original intent, but they are still, she found, powerful examples of grassroots agency.
One example of how such a formal development may inadvertently, or purposefully, bring down the democratic function of land is through the centralization of parcels.
When a single, large project occupies a unified plot controlled by a government agency or private developer, it consolidates decision-making power in the hands of a few. This setup reduces the number of individuals or families with a say over how the space evolves. In contrast, when land is subdivided among multiple owners, even informally, communities tend to have more agency, adaptability and ownership over their environments.
Wainer sees this bottom-up transformation as a critical, often overlooked, expression of democratic participation in urban space.
She studies them as adaptive responses to rigid systems, which tend to overlook the cultural, economic and spatial realities their users live in daily.
At Spitzer, Wainer teaches both undergraduate and graduate design studios, as well as research methods. She emphasizes the importance of scientific thinking in architectural research and challenges students to engage with policy and systemic issues.
Her recent collaborations with the advocacy group Make the Road New York resulted in a studio focused on housing solutions for immigrant communities, which culminated in a published booklet.
Wainer is also a Global Exchange Fellow with the Urban Design Forum, working with a cohort of city leaders to explore housing strategies for new immigrants in New York. The interdisciplinary nature of the fellowship reflects her commitment to bridging design with real-world impact, she said.
For some students considering architecture, Wainer has news.
“Design skill is not a quality given at birth; it’s something that you acquire,” she said.
All too often, students are dissuaded from architecture, saying they don’t know “how to draw” or “how to design,” but really, most of the best architects didn’t when they started, either, she said.
To current Spitzer students, she offers this reminder: the challenges of architecture school are real — but so is the joy of designing freely and thinking critically “without restraints,” something students may come to miss after starting their careers.
Wainer’s work, both in the classroom and in the field, continues to push architecture toward a more democratic, inclusive and responsive future.
Judah is a senior at CUNY Baruch College, pursuing a major in journalism and minors in computer science and environmental sustainability. He is also the business editor for Baruch’s independent student newspaper, The Ticker, and co-managing editor for the Baruch Journalism Department’s magazine Dollars & Sense.