Sarah Manning

Sarah Manning is a co-founder and Strategy Director of Spaceagency, where she has set the company’s direction in experience design, wayfinding and strategic planning. She began her career in user interface design in Silicon Valley, before working at the United Nations Headquarters in New York on travelling exhibitions. She later joined Space Syntax Ltd, a spin-off of University College London’s Advanced Architectural Studies, where she became Associate Director, applying research into spatial structure and user behaviour to complex urban environments. She holds a Master’s Degree in Architecture and Urbanism from the Design Research Laboratory at the Architectural Association and graduated magna cum laude from Duke University with a BA in International Comparative Studies.

At Spaceagency, Sarah has led strategic planning and experience design for complex, multi-stakeholder projects for international companies and cities, bringing together user experience, information design and urbanism. She is a joint author of The Spaceagency Guide to Wayfinding. Her London Pedestrian Routemap was exhibited at the New London Architecture “Public City” exhibition and published in Time Out London and GQ Style’s “Blueprint for London” edition. Her work has also been exhibited at the Design Museum as part of Woman at Work and at Somerset House. Sarah was a founding Trustee of Architecture for Humanity UK, where she jointly established a humanitarian lecture series, and in 2017 was selected as a judge for the D&AD international design awards and became a UK Finalist for HSBC’s Women in Business Forward Ladies award.

Sarah is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Bartlett School of Architecture and has taught and lectured internationally throughout her career. She has been an examiner at the Royal College of Art and a Unit Master in the Master of Urban Design courses at the Bartlett/UCL and Cardiff University, as well as teaching architecture at the University of East London and Istituto Marangoni. She has been invited as a guest lecturer and critic at UC Berkeley, Milan Polytechnic, the Royal College of Art and the Architectural Association, and has lectured at the Australian Institute of Architects National Conference 2018, XIV Quito Architectural Biennale, the University of Brighton’s Politics of Space Symposium, the Space Syntax 6th International Symposium in Istanbul, London Biennale, Design Junction, Clerkenwell Design Week and the RIBA People in Space Group.