New Now Next: Thandi Loewenson

About Thandi Loewenson:

Thandi Loewenson (b.1989, Harare) is an architectural designer/researcher who mobilises design, fiction, and performance to stoke embers of emancipatory political thought and fires of collective action, and to feel for the contours of other, possible worlds. Using fiction as a design tool and tactic, and operating in the overlapping realms of the weird, the tender, the earthly, and the airborne, Thandi engages in projects which provoke questioning of the status-quo, whilst working with communities, policy makers, unions, artists, and architects to act on those provocations. In July 2024, Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) announced Loewenson as the recipient of the prestigious Wheelwright Prize. The $100,000 grant supports investigative approaches to contemporary architecture, with an emphasis on globally minded research. In 2023 Loweson was awarded a Special Mention for her participation in The Laboratory of the Future, La Biennale di Venezia.

About NewNowNext 2024

Innovators, ground-breakers, and inspirational leaders in politics, architecture, design, cultural production, and research whose work engages and negotiates the local impacts of challenging global issues of climate, leadership, housing, and displacement inform this season of the international public lecture series New Now Next, presented by the Irish Architecture Foundation and supported by Arup. Taking the position that the only way to imagine a future is to admit that the time for action is now, the exciting line-up includes former directly-elected Mayor of Bristol Marvin Rees; cultural leader, urban planner, and philosopher Marion Waller; award winning Paris-Olympic building architect Nicolas Guérin of NP2F - architectes; celebrated visionary Sami architect and artist Joar Nango; and the 2024 Harvard GSD Wheelwright awardee, Thandi Loewenson.

Accessibility

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Photo Credits

Image 1 - Graphic by ArtDept

Image 2 - Photo by Niall Finn, graphic by ArtDept

Image 3 - Image courtesy of Thandi Loewenson, graphic by ArtDept

Host or Publisher Irish Architecture Foundation