In the repertoire of 'Afronautics', utility corresponds to uniquity: the liberty to precipitate possibility. Born of a decade-long community-based (participatory design) research into bamboo building systems - co-creating architecture as a form of collective building technology - FUFUZELA are an open-source architecture, in the form of modular mobile #BAM BOTS (bamboo micro­infrastructures) that interoperate at the scale between furniture and architecture.

Exhibition in Nantes, France

Spring, 2021

Photos by David Gallard

Adaptive/Expansive Housing is a human community-powered system that is designed to accommodate a range of cohabitation scenarios, as well as fostering genuine relationships between housed and unhoused, high- and low-income residents, owners and renters. The combinatory system operates not unlike a sequence of hybrid architectural DNA that interlaces living and dwelling functions by means of a dynamic human-powered algorithm: building clusters evolve via accretion and reconfiguration, determined by choices and decisions made by members of the community over time, while the overall...

LowDO selected as one of the top 50 architects in North America by Architects Newspaper

LowDO selected as a 2021 Architectural League of New York Emerging Voice!

AMP received the Smart Cities Urban Innovation Award for Citizen Engagement in the Le Monde 2020 World Urban Innovation Challenge in June 2020

LOWDO Selected as one of 50 best emerging architecture practices in the world

Designed and built by LowDO on a three-acre property in the Texas hill country, the Dakota Mountain Residence is a homestead that pilots sustainability for contemporary lifestyles. A retired couple wanted to build a climate-responsive house tailored for their creative pursuits, and to host their children and grandchildren. The project emerged accordingly as a form of intermittent intra-family co-housing, interlocking two homes into a single block.

2019

Dripping Springs, Texas

Finalist submission for 2019 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program

FUFUZELA are free modular mobile #BAMBOTS (bamboo micro-infrastructure) that interoperate at the scale between furniture and architecture. Designed for self-assembly, fufuzela are—like deer and sheep—irregular plurals that are simultaneously one and many. In a world at war with itself, how can we accommodate...

Three siblings use this 2900sf home as a gathering point for their families. They asked that the design create a space that promotes and emphasizes connections 1) between the families, 2) to light and the surrounding landscape, and 3) to the river. Additionally, the house needed to be built on a very tight budget-- no simple feat for a site within the Guadalupe River Floodway. To achieve these demands, we focused design around standard materials, details, and components while emphasizing dramatic spatial configurations at connection points that would enhance shared moments between the...

The Beauregard House is a transitional building, designed around ideas of salvage / revitalize / reinterpret. The transitional nature of the design allows it to serve its multiple functions of home, office, and vacation rental.

The house embraces the peace and quiet beauty of a house built in 1900—a grand structure surrounded by a lush neighborhood—even as it becomes a 21st century space in an ever more...

Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform (AMP) is a pan-African participatory design initiative to build alternative futures, cooperatively—networking the practical know-how of grassroots makers with the technical knowledge of students and young professionals in STEAM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics). Working in and around the Agbogbloshie scrapyard in Ghana’s capital, Accra, over 2000 youth from West Africa, Europe and the United States have collaborated over seven years to iteratively design...

This house weaves green building and contemporary design into the context of its Austin, Texas neighborhood -- on a budget. It was conceived as a framing system for the lives of those within, using a variety of implicit framing devices at different scales to create subtly distinct moments that can be experienced separately or simultaneously.

2012

Austin, Texas

Commission for the opening of contemporary African art Gallery1957 at the ANO Institute in Accra, Ghana. The design brief called for a long canopy to host a lunch-time meal and conversation. However, at the time of installation the question was posed: Can the canopy instead simple create an entry into the ANO courtyard? This was accomplished by means of a lightweight lattice vault woven from split bamboo, installed over 24 hours as a...