PRINCIPAL

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DK's building and research explore sustainability by linking form-making, technology and geopolitics with social dimensions of global environment. DK is a TED Global Fellow, Fulbright Scholar, and Africa 4 Tech Digital Champion. He cofounded the design agency DSGN AGNC (2009-2011) and the Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform (AMP), an open-source maker tech initiative geared for Africa. He also led urban/strategic design for the Koumbi City and Anam City new town projects in Ghana and Nigeria, which were featured at the Clinton Global Initiative (2012-2014). In 2022, he served as architect of the Ghana Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

DK also co-founded the Ashesi Design Lab as Chief Maker and is a tenured Associate Professor of Architecture and Engineering Design at Penn State University, where he runs the Humanitarian Materials Lab (HuMatLab) and serves as Associate Director of Penn State’s Alliance for Education, Science, Engineering and Design with Africa (AESEDA). He has been a visiting scholar at Delft University of Technology (Netherlands), Department of Urbanism, Faculty of Architecture and Built Environment; and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Ghana) Department of Materials Research, College of Engineering and Faculty of Architecture and Building Technology, College of Architecture and Planning.

He has presented his work internationally at the Royal Institute of British Architects, University of Basel, TU Delft, TED Global, Smart City Expo, World Bank CitiSense, AfriDesignX, University of Ghana, Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology, Next Einstein Initiative/African Institute of Mathematical Sciences, MIT, Harvard, Columbia University, and on BBC.

DK received an A.B. in Engineering Design and an MArch, both from Harvard University. DK previously worked for architecture office MOS and Ghanaian architect-builder Alero Olympio. He blogs about African architecture and making at Afrch.