Ramia Mazé
As a researcher, educator and designer, I specialize in participatory, critical and politically-engaged design practices. I have led, published and exhibited widely through major interdisciplinary and international practice-based design research projects, most recently in the areas of social innovation and sustainable design.
University webpage https://people.aalto.fi/ramia.maze
Research portfolio www.ramiamaze.com
Orchid ID orcid.org/0000-0002-6310-7767
University webpage https://people.aalto.fi/ramia.maze
Research portfolio www.ramiamaze.com
Orchid ID orcid.org/0000-0002-6310-7767
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The book was edited by Meike Schalk, Thérèse Kristiansson and Ramia Mazé. It is designed by Maryam Fanni.
Access the book as pdf (lowres) under:
http://kth.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?dswid=6462&pid=diva2%3A1340312&c=9&searchType=SIMPLE&language=sv&query=Feminist+Futures+of+Spatial+Practice&af=%5B%5D&aq=%5B%5B%5D%5D&aq2=%5B%5B%5D%5D&aqe=%5B%5D&noOfRows=50&sortOrder=author_sort_asc&sortOrder2=title_sort_asc&onlyFullText=false&sf=all
Authors include international practitioners, researchers, and educators, from architecture, the arts, art history, curating, cultural heritage studies, environmental sciences, futures studies, film, visual communication, design and design theory, queer, intersectional and gender studies, political sciences, sociology, and urban planning. Established as well as emerging voices write critically from within their institutions, professions, and their activist, political and personal practices.
Feminist Futures of Spatial Practice deepens and broadens how we can understand and engage with different genders, bodies and peoples, diverse voices and forms of expression, alternative norms and ways of living together.
Edited by Meike Schalk, Thérèse Kristiansson, Ramia Mazé Contributions by Mariana Alves Silva, Jenny Andreasson, Nishat Awan, Katarina Bonnevier, Karin Bradley, Sara Brolund de Carvalho, Brady Burroughs, Ragnhild Claesson, Yvonne P. Doderer, Macarena Dusant, Annika Enqvist, Maryam Fanni, Liza Fior, Hélène Frichot, Katja Grillner, Ulrika Gunnarsson-Östling, Sophie Handler, Nel Janssens, Elke Krasny, Thérèse Kristiansson, Anja Linna, Nina Lykke, Helena Mattsson, Ramia Mazé, Irene Molina, Ruth Morrow, Jane da Mosto, MYCKET, Doina Petrescu, Julieanna Preston, Rehearsals (Petra Bauer, Sofia Wiberg, Marius Dybwad Brandrud, Rebecka Thor), Helen Runting, Nora Räthzel, Meike Schalk, Despina Stratigakos, Kristoffer Svenberg, The New Beauty Council, Kim Trogal, and Josefin Wangel.
Schalk, M. Kristiansson, T., and Mazé, R. (eds) (2017) Feminist Futures of Spatial Practice: Materialisms, activisms, dialogues, pedagogies, projections. Baunach, DE: Spurbuchverlag.
Discussions of the future may raise questions such as what can be known about the future and how. In design research, such epistemological questioning can become preoccupied with the nature and scope of knowledge and recourse to more established ways of relating to such questions from the natural and social sciences. However, futurity is more than an epistemological question. Contemporary philosopher Elizabeth Grosz, for example, poses a potential of futurity that is given precisely by the ontological assumption that the future is different. It is, categorically, not the past nor the present. From this perspective, futurity can be a conceptual modality through which it is possible to ask: How can things be different?
The future as different is a political as well as a philosophical question. That things can be different also raises political questions about what can, or should, change and what difference that makes. As design takes part in giving form to the future, to possible or preferred futures, we need more and critical ways of relating to issues of futurity.
In this chapter, I reflect upon issues of futurity for design. I briefly characterize ‘concept’, ‘critical’ and ‘persuasive’ design practices, because they explicitly take on the future by formulating visions, speculating on alternatives and steering toward particular ideals. While important in my own work as a practice-based design researcher, these practices expose issues that I problematize here in terms of futurity. I have (re)positioned my own work over the years, and, increasingly, in relation to futures studies and philosophies of time as illustrated here through a description of the project ‘Switch! Energy Futures’. Suggesting that futurity can be a philosophical and political modality for ‘seeing and acting’ differently in and through design, I frame two proposals to invite further work in design research and design anthropology.
Evading design genres of greenwashing and eco-horror, future utopias and dystopias, the authors of this book attempt to raise more fundamental questions. We ask, for example, how does design mediate people’s access to nature and control over resources? What kinds of futures – or who’s – do we assume, desire and determine by design? How are environmental experiences, risks and values made visible in everyday life? These questions were explored in a series of collaborative and experimental design processes carried out since 2008 by an international team of designers, artists, architects, computer and social scientists at the Interactive Institute in Sweden. Collectively authored, the book is a highly visual and reflective presentation of these processes.
SWITCH! Design and everyday energy ecologies is edited by Ramia Mazé, with contributors Martin Avila, Jenny Bergström, Loove Broms, John Carpenter, Brendon Clark, Karin Ehrnberger, Alberto Frigo, Aude Messager, Johan Redström, Thomas Thwaites, Anna Vallgårda, Başar Önal, maoworks (Tobi Schneidler, Tom Ballhatchet and Solon Sasson), Olivia Jeczmyk and Bildinstitutet. Published by the Interactive Institute, the book is designed by Martin Frostner and Lisa Olausson at Medium.
The book is published and distributed in a sustainable way. A limited print-run of the book is available through Antenne Books and Amazon.com, and an electronic version is widely available.
for dynamic information visualization, interactive story-telling and user interaction. By providing a long view upon the ‘life’ of things we might ordinarily take for granted, the project aims to engage a broad audience in ecological thinking.
The book features texts by Ana Betancour, Otto von Busch, Mauricio Corbalan, Pelin Derviş, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, Magnus Ericson, Joseph Grima, Peter Lang, Yanki Lee, Tor Lindstrand, Natasha Marie Llorens, Helena Mattsson, Ramia Mazé, Ou Ning, Doina Petrescu, Meike Schalk, and Christina Zetterlund.
The book also includes descriptions of 36 projects from the DESIGN ACT archive by: A+URL, Camilla Andersson, Anti-Advertising Agency, Jon Ardern and Benedict Singleton, atelier d’architecture autogérée, Otto von Busch, Constant in collaboration with Recyclart, City Mine(d) and Speculoos, Dunne & Raby, eskyiu, Fantastic Norway, Aslı Kıyak İngin and Teike Asselbergs, International Festival with Front, Natalie Jeremijenko and the xClinic staff, Yanki Lee with Paula Dib, live|work, m7red, MINE, muf, New Beauty Council, Josh On, Marjetica Potrč and STEALTH in collaboration with A5 Arkitekter, Michael Rakowitz, Raumlaborberlin, Hannah le Roux, School of Missing Studies/Centrala – Foundation for Future Cities, Stalker, Think Public, Unsworn Industries and Zoom Architecture
As argued in this doctoral thesis, a central, and particular, concern of interaction design must therefore be the 'temporal form' of such objects and the 'form of interaction' as they are used over time. Furthermore, increasingly pervasive technology means that the temporality of form and interaction is implicated in more widespread changes to the material conditions of design and of society. Challenging conventions – of 'formalism' and 'functionalism', 'good' and 'total' design – temporal concerns and implications require new ways of thinking about and working with the materiality, users, and effects of design. Located at an intersection between emerging technologies and design traditions, interaction design is approached in Occupying Time through diverse disciplinary frames and scales of consideration. If focus in interaction design is typically on proximate 'Use', here, a discussion of 'Materials' scales down to reconsider the more basic spatial and temporal composition of form, and 'Change' scales up to examine large-scale and long-term effects. To anchor these themes in established discourse and practice, architecture is a primary frame of reference throughout. Accounts of 'event', 'vernacular', and 'non-design', and concepts of 'becoming', 'in the making', and 'futurity', as treated in architecture, extend a theoretical and practical basis for approaching time in (interaction) design discourse. ...
Implications for practice also emerge and are discussed. Basic to the materiality of interaction design, technology puts time central to 'Material practice'. 'Participatory practice' moves beyond user involvement in design processes to active participation in ongoing formation. Since temporal form extends design more deeply and further into future use, 'Critical practice' queries accountability. More specific reflections are situated in relation to my experience in the design research programs 'IT+Textiles', 'Public Play Spaces', and 'Static! Energy Awareness'. Drawing from architecture and from my own practice, this thesis maps out and builds up a territory of ideas, relations, and examples as an inquiry into issues of time in interaction design.