Bio
Kurt Kohlstedt was born in Upstate New York, grew up in the Twin Cities of Minnesota (with brief periods living in Germany and Australia) and resided for a number of years in semi-sunless Seattle. He calls Minneapolis ‘home’ for the moment but is essentially a full-time digital nomad, enjoying the mixed bag of hardships and benefits that come from being an independent writer, publisher and entrepreneur with a small network of authors and coders that spans the globe. Recent live/work trips have taken him from Chicago to New York City, with Amsterdam and Berlin on the horizon as well.
Kurt attended Carleton College and received a BA in Philosophy before spending a few years of working in and around the home design and construction fields. This brief stint of ‘regular job’ employment started with a small local architecture firm, followed by a graphic and industrial design agency in Germany and concluded with freelance construction and carpentry in Seattle. He ultimately began and completed a graduate degree at the University of Washington in sustainable architecture and urban design, with a focus on nomadic urbanism, adaptive reuse and portable housing.
Upon completion (or, more accurately: during procrastination) of his final thesis project for the MArch program in Seattle, Kurt started to write online content about urban art, design and visual culture. Before long, WebUrbanist became a full-time (pre)occupation and was followed by the eventual creation of WebEcoist (part of Webist Publishing and a green sibling site to WebUrbanist) as well as Dornob and Gajitz (part of Misnamed Media and representing a new direction in niche web publishing). Currently, he writes primarily for Dornob while acting as executive editor across all four websites.