Bio

Justin McElderry is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, creative director, and writer. His work has spanned art, architecture, music, product, and service design.

Trained in Architecture at Harvard and Economics at Morehouse, his approach to improving the world is framed by reimagining how resources are deployed and how distinct cultures (read: environments) are produced and preserved. Artistically, Justin is interested in understanding the material, and immaterial, consequences of economic progress. Specifically, his work and writings investigate the compound tensions of spirituality-technology, precision-folly, and ornament-ordinary.

Justin is also the founder of the strategy, design, and foresight studio,WorkStudy, where he partners with ambitious companies to incubate and launch bold ideas that make a difference. Through his practice, he’s art-directed activations for global sneaker brands, designed a retail storefront at the Oculus WTC in NYC, and more. His experience integrates strategic and architectural methods to address civic, business, and cultural needs. In addition to these collaborative projects, Justin makes work that explores the intersection of ecological, economic, and cultural forces shaping our world by producing limited-edition design objects, publications, art pieces, and speculative architecture. Justin continues to expand his practice to other mediums and topic areas, including sound design, photography, poetry, and screenwriting.

In addition to building WorkStudy, Justin has worked across several strategy, art direction, and product roles. During his previous engagements, he designed a 4,200 sq ft art exhibition installed by a robot, led an innovation project for the USDA, co-edited and designed a 200-page publication for Harvard University, and incubated a global SAAS policy product. In 2018, Justin founded Educated Guess—a globally recognized podcast for people interested in thinking critically about the future of cities, economics, and culture.

As an active contributor to thought leadership in Sustainable Business, Urban Design, Artificial Intelligence, and Culture, Justin has helped operationalize multiple research and teaching teams at Harvard, covering concepts of AI Ethics, Reparative Justice, 2D/3D Generative Design, and Tech-Enabled Environments. He is also a Food Systems Innovation Fellow at the Institute of Design at IIT and has been a visiting architecture critic at OSU Knowlton School of Architecture and Illinois Institute of Technology. Justin has not received any design awards. Still, he is proud of the many awards for music, golf, baseball, and little league football that are still on display in Birmingham, AL, at his childhood home.

Past Partners, Collaborators, and Experiences

Adidas

A Ma Maniere

Birmingham Office of Economic Development

Atlanta Design Festival

Certain Measures

Chicago Architectural Biennial

Deloitte Consulting

Deloitte AI & Innovation

Educated Guess

Harvard Graduate School of Design

Harvard University Lab for Design Technologies