Trained as an architect, Usman Haque is co-founder of HAQUE TAN, a design studio combining the scale of architecture with the ingenuity of art and the eccentricities of technology; and founder of Umbrellium, an urban technology studio dedicated to transforming cities and getting communities meaningfully involved.

He co-founded Starling Technologies in 2020, an Umbrellium spin-out dedicated to pedestrian safety, and earlier founded Pachube, one of the world's first open IoT data platforms (acquired by LogMeIn in 2011), as well as Thingful, a search engine for the Internet of Things.

For over three decades he has worked on the democratisation of public space and the relationship between people, cities, technology and climate change. His interactive installations, participatory spectacles, urban infrastructures, and civic and democratic participation projects have featured in hundreds of books and publications. More recently he has focused on designing and building for multi-species urbanism and hyperlocal algorithmic governance, and on how technology platforms are concentrating control over how cities are designed, lived in and decided upon.

Commissions include Wild Imaginarium, the interactive entrance of Great Ormond Street Hospital, London (with Ling Tan); Another Life, one of Europe's largest permanent interactive public artworks in Bradford, England; Open Burble, which opened the Singapore Biennale and the Dubai World Cup; Flightpath, which headlined Toronto's Nuit Blanche; and a ten-year creative vision and digital masterplan for urban wilding in East London in association with the Eden Project.

His work has been shown at institutions including the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Théâtre du Châtelet (Paris), Vitra Design Museum, MoMA (New York), Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), the Barbican (London), Ars Electronica (Linz), The Architectural League of New York, NTT InterCommunication Centre (Tokyo), Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Seoul Museum of Art, National Art Museum (Beijing), Museum of Modern Art (Aalborg), Science Gallery (Dublin), Netherlands Media Art Institute (Amsterdam), Itaú Cultural (São Paulo), HMKV (Dortmund), Arts Centre Santa Mònica (Barcelona), National Maritime Museum (London), Biosphère Montréal and RIXC (Riga).

He was appointed Design Council Ambassador in 2021 and to the Mayor of London's Data for London Advisory Board in 2022. He has written on second-order cybernetics and its architectural relevance, particularly the theories of Gordon Pask, and taught with Prof Stephen Gage in the Interactive Architecture Workshop at the Bartlett School of Architecture until 2005. In 2015/16 he led the Bartlett Urban Design cluster "Participatory Systems for Networked Urban Environments", with Adam Greenfield.

He received the 2008 Design of the Year Award (interactive) from the Design Museum UK; a 2009 World Technology Award (art); the Asia Digital Art Award Grand Prize (2005); a Wellcome Trust Sciart Award (2004); and the Japan Media Arts Festival Excellence Prize (2004).

Usman is also a composer and performer, releasing music as uah.