Architecture professor to speak at African summit on urban challenges and opportunities

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – DK Osseo-Asare, an assistant professor of architecture and engineering design at Penn State, is a featured speaker at the Futur.e.s in Africa summit in Casablanca, Morocco on Oct. 29. The event is dedicated to the challenges of sustainable and inclusive territories on the African continent, including agriculture, mobility, access to education, water, energy and waste management with respect to urban futures. Osseo-Asare is a cofounding principal of Low Design Office (LOWDO), an architecture and integrative design studio based in Austin, Texas and Tema, Ghana that explores the links between sustainability, technology and geopolitics. Among the firm’s largest projects are the integrated design and master planning of the new towns of Koumbi City in Ghana and Anam City in Nigeria. In 2017, Osseo-Asare and Yasmine Abbas, an assistant teaching professor of architecture and engineering design, co-created the Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform (AMP), a transnational project that helps bolster maker ecosystems in Africa by teaching students and young professionals how to reuse recycled materials. AMP was a winner of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Centennial Innovation Challenge award and the Design Corps’ 2017 SEED Award for Public Interest Design. A Fulbright scholar, TED Global Fellow and Africa 4 Tech Digital Champion, Osseo-Asare was a 2019 finalist in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program. At Penn State, Osseo-Asare runs the Humanitarian Materials Lab (HuMatLab), which triangulates the Stuckeman School, the School of Engineering Design, Technology and Professional Programs, and the Materials Research Institute. The lab serves as the University’s Alliance for Education, Science, Engineering and Design with Africa (AESEDA), a cross-university initiative to leverage teaching, research and service to better the lives of those living in Africa and the diaspora. Osseo-Asare’s research spans design innovation, open-source urbanism, digital fabrication and architecture robots. This year marks the second edition of the Futur.e.s in Africa summit, which is organized by the Casablanca Settat Region and the Paris Region, in partnership with the Maroc Numeric Cluster and Cap Digital. More information can be found at https://futuresin.africa.