Nina Valerie Kolowratnik is an architect and researcher based in Vienna and New York. Her practice is situated in the context of forced migration and claims to land and property, and develops spatial notational systems that operate within legal and human rights debates. Since 2014 she has been teaching graduate courses focused on borderlands, migration and counter narratives at Columbia University GSAPP and TU Vienna. At GSAPP she initiated the seminar series Mapping Borderlands with Nora Akawi, a project that aims to visualize the dynamic and unstable processes of bordering and forced migration. At TU Vienna she started the research and teaching initiative Fluchtraum Österreich with Johannes Pointl, which critically investigates conditions of refuge and arrival in Austria.

Her work has been published in different books and journals. Kolowratnik has co-edited Promiscuous Encounters (GSAPP Books, 2014) and Fluchtraum Österreich, a guest edition of asyl aktuell magazine (Asylkoordination Österreich, 2015). In 2018, her long-term research on the dilemma of evidence-production within Native American land claims will be published by Sternberg Press. 

Recently her work has been shown at Stacion CCA Prishtina, the Venice Architecture Biennale and the Oslo Architecture Triennale. Her research has been supported by The Architectural League of New York and Columbia University among other. In 2016 Kolowratnik received the Outstanding Artist Award in Experimental Tendencies in Architecture by the Austrian Federal Chancellery. 

Kolowratnik holds a professional degree in architecture from TU Graz and a MS in Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture from Columbia University GSAPP.