Taylor Lowe

Taylor Lowe is the Associate Director of metaLAB at Harvard University. His work as an architectural designer and a cultural anthropologist studies how political imaginaries materialize through design interactions. Taylor is completing his book project, “Design-ification: Design Activism and Cosmopolitical Representation in Thailand.” To understand the possibilities that design has created for political action in Bangkok today, he conducted an 18-month ethnographic study of self-described ‘design activists’ working 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?

Taylor holds a Masters in Architecture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago. Having designed in Bangkok for over a decade, Taylor now runs an independent architectural reseearch and design practice in Cambridge, StudioLowe Design. His work has been 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.