Designing-Women's Lives

- Blurb -

Designing Women' s Lives calls for a place-making revolution based on women' s culturally nurtured "feeling" sensibility. Women too often have had to repress that sensibility in order to become designers. Now, rather than struggle to fit-in, women can break new ground by using Design Psychology as the foundation for creating emotionally satisfying place. To encourage such a heart/mind shift, the author discusses how she took architecture Gold Medalist Denise Scott Brown and interior design legend Margo Grant Walsh through a series of Design Psychology exercises. The process revealed ways these renowned women unconsciously embedded their heroic struggles as minority females in their designs: Grant Walsh' s journey from her Chippewa childhood home with only one green couch to her plush NYC residence reflected her embrace of her Native American + designing-woman' s identity. Scott Brown grew up in a more privileged South African household, yet she translated the oppression she witnessed during Apartheid and the bias she experienced as a Jewish woman into the inclusive approach to architecture that made her famous. Interweaving such designing-women' s stories, feminist design thinking and her personal vignettes, the author inspires readers to "design from within" their personal psychology as a form of personal liberation. Project case studies further demonstrate how Design Psychology helped women create a nurturing-even transformative-home during life-passages such as partnering or grieving. Such case studies provide inspiring examples of how color, shape, texture, space layout, and special objects can be catalysts for such personal evolution.