Spencer Bailey is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the media company The Slowdown and host of the Time Sensitive podcast. He is also the editor-at-large of the book publisher Phaidon. His latest book, Alchemy: The Material World of David Adjaye, comes out from Phaidon in July 2023.
A writer, editor, and journalist, he has written at length about architecture, art, culture, design, and technology, and contributed to publications such as Town & Country, The New York Times Magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek, Fortune, and Newsweek. From 2013 to 2018, he was the editor-in-chief of Surface magazine. He is also the author of the books In Memory Of: Designing Contemporary Memorials (Phaidon, 2020) and Tham ma da: The Adventurous Interiors of Paola Navone (Pointed Leaf Press, 2016), and co-author, with Andrew Zuckerman, of At a Distance: 100 Visionaries at Home in a Pandemic (Apartamento, 2021).
Bailey is a trustee of the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, New York. He also serves on the New York honorary committee of the L’Ecole jewelry-making school, which is supported by Van Cleef & Arpels. He has been on the juries of the Hyères Design Parade festival, the CFDA Fashion Awards, the James Beard Restaurant Design Awards, the Rado Star Prize, and the Swarovski Designers of the Future Award. He has taught a workshop in the Design Research master’s program at the School of Visual Arts.
Born and raised in Colorado, Bailey is a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and Dickinson College. He lives in New York City.
Portrait: Ogata