New Now Next: Thandi Loewenson

The Irish Architecture Foundation, supported by Arup, is delighted to present Thandi Loewenson in conversation about her groundbreaking work.

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 Loewenson was awarded a Special Mention for her participation in The Laboratory of the Future, La Biennale di Venezia.