Women In Urbanism

Hello and welcome to the fourth episode of Women in Urbanism Podcast!

In this episode, we'll be discussing architecture for people.

“First life, then spaces, then buildings.”  is how Jan Gehl would put it when describing what cities for people look like. Our lives are impacted by the places we live in, but we, as users of those spaces, have been mostly forgotten during the design process. Our needs were not always taken into consideration neither our wellbeing. Fortunately, we are starting to see some change. The built environment is now more a result of interaction with people transforming it into comfortable, joyful and beautiful places.

Our guest, Natasha Reid is a British architectural designer and artist specialised in people-centred design. She is the founder of MATTER.SPACE.SOUL since 2014, spatial design and research consultancy based in London focusing on putting people first. Starting from the social, psychological and emotional impacts of our surroundings on people, her work aims to create uplifing, meaningful, enriching places, whilst tackling the pressing issues of today. Natasha is also an Associate of the Quality of Life Foundation and a Fellow of think tank the Centre for Conscious Design. She co-chaired the Conscious Cities London festival 2020 on science-informed, human-centred and socially-engaged design. Natasha is a passionate advocate for the power of architecture to create change that matters, and regularly speaks on forward-thinking solutions to pressing issues - exploring how places can better reconnect us to ourselves, each other and the natural world.

Links to the mentioned projects:

Hello and welcome to the third episode of the Women in Urbanism Podcast!

In this episode, we're going deeper into the discussion on placemaking and gender.

Placemaking has been gaining momentum all over the world with the goal of making great spaces through community-driven, inclusive and collaborative processes. It has become a hot topic since the 60s and the term “Placemaking” was introduced by Project for Public Spaces in the 90s based on William Whyte’s ideas. Today, we see examples of these processes that lead to amazing new or refurbished places.

Our guest, Milena Ivković is a Dutch-Serbian architect, urban designer and digital artist part of Placemaking Europe network. She is one of the advisors of ISOCARP Institute (International Society of City and Regional Planners) and the creative director of Blok 74, both in the Netherlands. She uses her knowledge on urban form and co-design techniques to help make better public spaces for everyone, with everyone.

Links for Milena's projects: