BDI Director Micaela Maccan has been working with PRAXXIS a female led, cross disciplinary teaching atelier at the Manchester School of Architecture (MSA) investigating architecture, landscape architecture and urban design.
PRAXXIS is a feminist collective and a vertical teaching atelier which explores and ask questions as to what feminist architecture might be now and in the future. By using the lens of intersectional feminism, PRAXXIS explores inequalities and inequities in society and what that may mean for the built and digital environments.
Micaela’s role as a contributor included working with BA and MArch students, reviewing their structural strategies and proposals for their individual projects. Providing structural engineering advice to each individual student/project. The structural strategies and proposals varied greatly from project to project, so it is certainly challenging as throughout each session Micaela is presented with completely different schemes to advise on. These include different structural proposals and also different materials, ranging from concrete and steel frame buildings to more traditional brick and block or timber frame structures to CLT or SIP buildings.
Micaela commented “I was invited to be a contributor to the PRAXXIS MSA programme for the first time in September 2020 by Sarah Renshaw, one of the lecturers, after being recommended by Carma Masson, architect and owner of Playground, an architectural studio in Manchester. I decided to contribute because I thought an insight into what young aspiring architects are working on is always really beneficial to BDI. We work so closely together with architects and understanding their vision is a crucial part of our job. I was also very interested in the atelier’s feminist approach to architecture from both a personal and professional point of view.”
You can find out more about PRAXXIS at MSA here https://www.msa.ac.uk/study/ateliers/praxxis/ or check them out on Instagram and Twitter on @praxxis_f
