Carolyn F. Strauss is founder and director of slowLab.

After completing a degree in architecture in 1992, she began her professional career exploring the intersection of design, technology and cultural research. In the 1990's, she organized symposia and commissioned public art to encourage discourse about the social implications of emerging technologies, the creative opportunities they afford, and the new forms of cultural expression they might engender. Notable projects in this field include creation of the Women&Technology conference (1992), the conceptual design of a collaborative, multimedia network in Japan (1994-5) and user experience design and prototyping for interactive media in the Netherlands (1999-2000).

In 2001, Strauss turned her attention to the growing sustainability debate in the design field.  Her research and project work further developed as she embraced the concept of ‘slow design’ as a fertile, holistic framework through which to understand and expand the sustainable design debate.  In 2003, she founded slowLab, a laboratory for slow design thinking and creative activism, and began to connect an international network of designers, design thinkers and exemplary projects to bring the slow design movement to life.

Since then, she has also promoted slow design through extensive lecturing, teaching and curriculum development at several notable art/design institutions in the U.S. and Europe, including Parsons the New School for Design (New York, USA), Yale University’s Faculty of Engineering (New Haven, CT), The Icelandic Academy of Arts (Reykjavik, Iceland)), the Cooper Union School of Art (New York), Cranbrook Academy of Art (Cranbrook, Michigan), Ecole du Louvre (Paris, France), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, NY), and the Sandberg Postgraduate Institute at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy (Amsterdam, Netherlands).

She currently resides in the Netherlands.

contact >