Georgina Pantazopoulou

‘Her Practice’ is an interdisciplinary design project aiming to tell her story; to bring things to the front; to establish a new design practice following an intersectional feminist approach. This practice focuses on the “dialogue” that should be carefully cultivated when the designer and user come together, before and during the design process. This practice simultaneously aims to create future domesticities which not only satisfy and facilitate the user but that also shape social behavioral patterns.

The proposal takes the public through an interactive route which tells this story, my quest, and finally empowers other individuals leading them to read, to listen, to understand, to experience, even to identify themselves with my autobiographical story. Through my grandmother’s kitchen I question the gender performativity and patriarchal structures working as common ground which allows the users to embrace their own truths as they compare facts, objects, spatial paths or behaviors with their own domestic environments.

‘Her Practice’ is telling her story also in order to encourage other individuals to tell their own. When the designers know, understand and consider the real needs of the users, listening and accepting their own “truths”, then they can achieve a resilient design that respects the users, meets their needs and finally inspires them.  

Through this practice I see myself as a critical practitioner rather than an expert, believing that everyone can be potential expert based on their own lived experience. Thus, I invite other users to explore, discuss and develop together this practice exercising on my grandmother’s house through the alternation of scale, spatial qualities and domestic rituals. This collective process drives us to exchange thoughts and common visions for a new design paradigm which reflect more equal and inclusive worlds using a feminist approach.