Even though my diploma says I’m an interior designer and I'm more than thrilled with my profession, through 10 years of professional experience in both, interior design and stage design, and through years of research in learning-teaching experiences and design oriented teaching, with the 2020 pandemic I started to redefine myself and now I like to think of myself as a Spacemaker.
I realised, since I was in college, that I had many questions regarding to the production of space and what we consider the “tangible” space or ready-to-be designed space. I knew back then that there were other approaches to space and that was my responsibility to find the answers to my questions in the limits or confluences of other different, yet complimentary disciplines. At that time, I felt there was a lack of interior design literature that supported facts or even scientific data that supported decisions and on the other hand, I was searching for a more phenomenological approach to the production of space.
So, how is space created? I've found that space is immediately everything that can give us shelter, that can protect us... everything that surrounds us... starting from the perfection of nature and then immediately to our own bodies. I know that this might sound weird, but we're creating spaces with our bodies each day, with our postures, with how we move our arms around, with how we smell, with how we behave. Actions build up spaces and they create atmospheres.
Then, we have clothes. They build up that second layer on top of our bodies that allow us to change our volume and shape, how we interact with the world around us and also, they help us communicate a message as well (mostly linked to oneself's identity, social interactions, etc.). Following clothes, the objects that we own also make up a space, so the third layer of space is the one built up by the objects that surround us and their spatial needs.
And, with the fourth layer we start entering to the magic world of the built- environment. Here is where the interior design practice becomes super powerful, because it gives us the perspective to design the world literally from the inside-out, considering evolving and travelling through different senses of spatial approaches to create specific experiences according to ones most personal needs to the most collective needs, through different scales, through different temporal experiences.
Community building is a priority
A fundamental part of my job -speaking from any point of view- is all the people with whom I work. My job has taught me first, to have empathy, second, to be open to learn and to ask for help from anybody. I’m used to work with architects, wood masters, furniture builders, lighting specialists, music designers, video and mapping artists, producers, photographers… huge groups of creative people, all working from what they know and contribute for a greater good. I think that each and everyone of us is important.
Handmade objects and DIY have always been core in how I experience my design practice
My design practice is guided by context, behaviours and actions
Materials as a way to connect to the context, ancestral knowledge and new technologies