Prof. iain Low shares his life-long concern with the overlap between teaching, research and service, and his support of the speculative testing of theory through practice that takes action out of the university and into the 'city'. "My interest is in the challenge of urban activism to engage beyond the physical and theoretical limits by establishing a locally situated Design Build Research [DBR] Urban Lab that focuses in enabling strategies for 'careful urban renewal'", he says.
Iain Low is professor at the University of Cape Town where he convenes post graduate programs in architecture. He was Fulbright scholar at the University of Pennsylvania and visiting scholar at the American Academy in Rome. As a practitioner he was Project Architect for the World Bank/GoL where he researched and designed schools for the Training for Self Reliance Project throughout Lesotho, and has designed an award winning reinstallation of Iziko SA Museum's San Rock Art in Cape Town. Currently his research area is 'space and transformation' and the spatialisation in the contemporary [post apartheid] city. He is published in a number of local and international journals, notably AD|Architectural Design, the Journal of South African Architecture and most recently a chapter in 'Representation & Spatial Practices in Urban South Africa'. He is editor of the Digest of S A Architecture and the Digest of African Architecture. (more)