Taylor Lowe

Taylor Lowe is the Associate Director of metaLAB at Harvard University. His work as an architectural designer and a cultural anthropologist theorizes how broader political formations materialize in our interactions with designed objects and buildings. Taylor holds a Masters in Architecture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Chicago.

His current book project, “Design-ification: Design Activism and Cosmopolitical Representation in Thailand,” theorizes the possibilities that design has created for political action in Bangkok based on five years of ethnographic observation of self-described ‘design activists’ who attempted to transform Thai society through their design of government architecture. Design-ification analyzes how these activists configured design as a mode of political representation by activating a building’s forms, surfaces, programming, and materials as safeguards designed to act both against corruption and for social justice in future politics. Across his work, he asks: why is design a medium for politics, what politics can its processes afford, and what subjects does it create?

After practicing architecture in Bangkok for over a decade, Taylor now runs StudioLowe Design, an independent architectural reseearch and design practice in Cambridge. His work has been published in multiple journals and exhibited at the AEDES Gallery in Berlin, the Sullivan Studios in Chicago, and the Ladakhi Arts and Media Organization in Ladakh, India. He has taught architecture and social theory at Chulalongkorn University, Cornell University, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the University of Chicago.