Design as Mother

Good design evinces a sensitivity to its users and their needs, often reimagining the user experiences of a given space to promote beauty and delight; nowhere is this sensitivity more essential than in designing for the youngest and most impressionable members of our societies. From birth and infancy through to adolescence and even early adulthood, the spaces we — by choice or not — place our children in or subject our youth to inherently structure their formative experiences of the world. We can come to think of design as an act of care, and consider how design and its related processes can form part of the responsibility of care we have towards the younger generation, whether intentionally or inadvertently designing for children.

”Mother,” from the Greek ‘mētēr’ and mḗtra, meaning womb, and the Latin māter, shares etymological lineages with matter, material, medicine and metropolis—raising the question of how cities, governance, healing and material cultures all serve to nurture new life and creativity. These questions hold constructive and radically subversive potentials, especially when the act of "mothering" is at once saccharine and easily vilified: it is often readily associated with heteronormative roles or dismissed as mere domestic labour, and then just as easily identified as the root cause of psychological damage. If motherhood can encompass everything from an animal instinct or martyrdom to a scapegoat for societal ailments, where and how can it intersect with design? 

The upcoming issue of The Site Magazine is interested in explorations (in any format) that pertain to design for, or as experienced by youth, and/or through the lens of “mother” (considering this term its broadest and queerest sense). From environments of childbirth to education design, from landscapes of memory and imagination to accidental urban playgrounds, how do we promote, protect for, and reimagine positive environments for today's children and youth? How do we respond to the wonder and optimism associated with childhood, especially outside of socially-sanctioned children’s spaces like schools and playgrounds? How can we centre children's needs against systemic adultism? Where can designing for youth better intersect with the queering of public spaces? Can childhood, with all of its attendant longings and hopes for the future, serve as a design brief?

Visit The Site Magazine to submit.