HYSTERIA, Co-Founder

» Developing a web-based resource center for women and other people with marginalized gender experiences in design professions.
» Compiling a library of gender-related design projects, articles, and books, as well as firms headed by women and non-binary leaders.

University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, US, MArch, Architecture

Thesis: almost:OTHER
Can heterotopic spaces be reconfigured as positive catalysts for social change? Michel Foucault's concept of heterotopias specifically condemns bodies experiencing menstruation or labor to his "other" spaces, making them always an "other" body. Therese heterotopias were once realized spatially in menstruation huts and continue to exist in contemporary spaces like lactation rooms and abortion clinics. These spaces are at once within society and without, places in which a productive irony is embedded: they are places for "others" only, no longer under the surveillance of the powers of oppression that put them there. The concept of heterotopia gives name to a collective purpose that women's spaces hold in generating solidarity. This thesis conducts an architectural analysis, reorientation and redesign of these spaces as an act of feminist resistance, making trans-inclusive women's spaces prominent and publicly accessible while maintaining their productive heterotopic qualities.