Designing the Domestic: Innovation in the Home - Interview with Paloma Carignani & Gabriela Gugliottella

22 September 2023 -

Ahead of our ‘Designing the Domestic: Innovation in the Home’ symposium, DHS Ambassador Alexandra Banister met Paloma Carignani, a Master’s Degree candidate in Urban Studies and Housing in Latin America Faculty of Architecture, Design and Urbanism at the University of Buenos Aires, and Gabriela Gugliottella, Professor of Arts at the University of Buenos Aires, to further discuss their research.

Don’t forget you can sign up to the talk – taking place on Saturday 7th October, 2-4.30pm BST – for free via Ticketsource

What are your backgrounds and how did you develop your interests in design history?

We met and trained in the University of Buenos Aires, particularly in Design and Gender Studies -Flesler Chair -, a theoretical/practical subject for all Faculty of Architecture, Design and Urbanismo-UBA careers. This subject intends to reflect on how gender projections have an impact on design processes, on the uses and readings of objects and social spaces. The hegemony in the disciplines of design and architecture is closely linked to what has been established and reproduced by the Modern Movement since the mid-19th century and early 20th century. Its exponents searched for new types of expression designing from conceptualization, simplification, fragmentation and rationalization. Each discipline sought this inquiry in its own materiality.

What does your research – ‘Billboard Space: Domesticity and Housing on Airbnb’ – focus on?

In this brief essay we are interested in analysing the relationships between housing, decoration and domesticity from the advertisements, photographs and objects of the temporary rental platform in Buenos Aires Airbnb. How are the spatial dimension and its modes of domesticity represented on the platform? Which operations are presented as a guarantee of distinction? Which category does Airbnb use to build a dominant architectural sense?

Your talk is part of a wider symposium on Designing the Domestic: Innovation in the Home. What has drawn you to research design in the home?

In public order interactions in social media, norms are established and rules are discussed for the construction of meaning about housing. The relevance of studying the meanings that circulate in social networks is sustained by the impact that these constructions may have on the design processes of housing production and the social meanings are derived from there.


For more information follow Gabriela @gabrielagugliottella and Paloma @paloma____c