Trend Watch June 2023

ABC Radio: Advocating for gender sensitive urban design

What makes a safer city, especially for our most vulnerable? OCULUS Associate Director Claire Martin recently joined Nicole Kalms from XYX Lab to discuss Gender Sensitive Urban Design (GSUD) on ABC Radio in The Conversation Hour.

Oculus writes, “we focus on designing places that are sustainable, equitable, inclusive, accessible and safe for everyone, in particular women, girls, gender diverse people and other vulnerable people.

“When we understand the lived experience of the people we’re designing for, we can bring a more empathetic approach to design.”

ABC Radio host Rachel Hunt talked about safety not only being about design but also how we interact with each other.

Claire Martin said, “It is about the community being involved with the process, the engagement, surveys and lived experiences.”

Martin and Kalms agree that GSUD is about activity and uses and the sociability, and the type of furniture and arrangements that support people feeling safe in our streets and cities. Listen to The Conversation Hour recording here.

Photo: Eutah Mizushima on Unsplash.

“We cannot design just to please our clients anymore” says Yasmeen Lari

Pakistan’s first female architect, Yasmeen Lari, speaks with Dezeen’s Lizzie Cook about the important role architects play in supporting our planet. With her recent Royal Gold Medal Win for Royal Institute of British Architects, Lari hopes to encourage a shift towards her ‘barefoot social architecture’.

Cook writes that Lari’s movement, “focuses on improving the lives of disadvantaged communities through low-cost, low-carbon, zero-waste materials and building technologies.”

Lari said she was previously perceived as “a little crazy” with this movement towards a humanitarian brand of architecture, though it is these changes in designs she feels can make a real difference to climate change.

She says, “The future of the planet is in our hands. … We’ve got to rethink how we want to build.

“The planet is far bigger and far more important than any one of us. When we design, we really have to be feeling the Earth in some way, we cannot continue to inflict damage on it.”

Lari says the role of an architect should be that of an activist. Read more on Dezeen.

Image: BBC Urdu on Wikimedia Commons.