UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Low Design Office (LOWDO), an architecture and integrative design studio that was cofounded by DK Osseo-Asare, assistant professor of architecture and engineering design at Penn State, has been named to Domus magazine’s 50 Best Architecture Firms in 2020 list.

This is the second year that the leading Italian design and architecture publication has released a “best of” list. The first edition, in 2019, focused on the 100 most important architecture practices in the world while this second edition, according to editors, “…identifies the world’s 50 most creative, interesting and promising emerging architecture practices.”

LOWDO was informally established in 2006 by Osseo-Asare and Ryan Bollom while they were classmates at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. The firm — which is based in Austin, Texas and Tema, Ghana – explores the links between sustainability, technology and geopolitics through its work.

Domus lauds LOWDO’s work for how “construction content and technology of buildings by interweaving into the warp and weft complex materials and systems” can advance sustainable design strategies through inventive approaches to building construction. The firm does this by considering “architecture as part of a dynamic and heterogeneous ecosystem” and for integrating solutions for ventilation, solar shading, livability and energy performance into new models of co-living.

The editorial board for the 2020 Domus list was comprised of experts including Wowo Ding, Luis Fernández-Galiano, Lesley Lokko, Rahul Mehrotra and Sarah M. Whiting. The board states that 50 selected firms “could lead [us] to thoughts on what our houses and cities can and should do to represent and improve a world whose dramatic fragility no longer eludes us.”