Ryan Bollom (Spring, USA, 1979)
lives and works in State College, USA and Tema, Ghana
DK Osseo-Asare (State College, USA 1980)
lives and works in Austin, Texas, USA
Low Design Office
Enviromolecular
Album
Description
Over two decades, Low Design Office – based in Austin, Texas and Tema, Ghana – has explored autochthonous material ecologies of micro-architecture.
Integrating design and engineering, the work of Low Design Office advances a model of autoconstruction that recasts kiosk culture as an emergent infrastructure for African ‘rurban’ transformation. Launched with French design consultancy Panurban in 2012, the Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform (AMP) initiative combines lab research and iterative ‘popular prototyping’ via community workshops with grassroots makers in West Africa to co-design flexible archi-technology for crafting space.
Coproduced in and around Accra’s Agbogbloshie scrapyard, recycling, and maker hub, AMP amplifies circular processes of (re)making with others as a mode of collective habitation. The open-source design kit builds equity by replacing paradigms of innovation with reparative praxis of renovation for spatial justice across physical and digital realities. Components of this ongoing project are presented in The Laboratory of the Future.
Credits
Authorial collaborators
Yasmine Abbas, Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform (AMP)
Technical collaborators
HelenHanCreative with Allie Palmore, Humanitarian Materials Lab (HuMatLab) and Digital Fabrication Lab (DigiFAB) at the Stuckeman School of Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Graphic Design
Team
Kwabena Acheampong, AMP Makers Collective, Ashley Heeren
With the additional support of
Stuckeman Collaborative Design Research Program at the Pennsylvania State University, ANO Institute for Art and Knowledge, producers of the Ghana Pavilion: Biennale Arte 2022, curated by Nana Oforiatta Ayim
