DK Osseo-Asare

DK Osseo-Asare is a Ghanaian-American polymath who collaborates with communities to craft material assemblies tuned for ecosocial resilience. Osseo-Asare is co-founding Principal of Low Design Office (LowDO) based in Austin and Tema, Ghana. He is a registered civil engineer with the Ghanaian Institution of Engineering. LowDO have been profiled as emerging architects in The Architectural Review (2018), were featured in ARCHITECT’s Next Progressives, were MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program finalists (2019), were named one of Domus’ 50 Best Architecture Firms (2020), and received and Emerging Voices Award from the Architectural League of New York (2021). Osseo-Asare has led participatory architecture, landscape, and urban design–build projects along the Guinea Coast from the Anam City eco-town in Anambra State, Nigeria to Berekuso Hill Station and Koumbi City in Ghana. He was architect of Ghana’s second pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale, which was redeployed as the installation Enviromolecular at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale: The Laboratory of the Future. Osseo-Asare co-initiated the Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform (AMP) project, which won the Rockefeller Foundation’s Centennial Innovation Challenge (2013), the Design Corps’ SEED Award for Public Interest Design (2017), and Le Monde Cities Urban Innovation Award – Citizen Engagement Prize (2020). AMP spacecraft is an open design and manufacturing framework that utilizes quantum design for reassembly and modular prefabricated components to reformat autochthonous kiosk culture as synergetic matrix for material coordination across space-time. Osseo-Asare is Associate Professor of Architecture and Engineering Design at Penn State University, where he directs the Humanitarian Materials Lab. He received MArch and AB in Engineering Design degrees from Harvard University.