Profile
Michele Gorman Assistant Professor of Interiors, Objects, and Technologies in the School of Constructed Environments.
Interim Director of the MFA Interior Design Program
Research Interests: Social Justice and Design Activism, Intensifying Forms though Mixed Realities, Democratizing Technology, Radically Inclusive Pedagogy and Curricula, Post-Natural Ecologies
Based in Brooklyn, New York, I work at the intersection of interior design, social activism and emerging digital technologies. As a design activist and technologist, I work to decolonise the design curricula and facilitate the democratization of technologies, heightened since the global pandemic and pivot online. Designing radical feminist events, exhibitions and round table discussions, and collaboratively building an equitable database of resources for the design studio that opens relationships between the Global South and North. Collaboration is central in my practice. I am co-authoring a chapter titled “The Radically Inclusive Studio: an open access conversation on radically inclusive practices in the design studio” with newfound colleagues in South Africa and Australia for The Routledge Companion to Architectural Pedagogies of the Global South, edited by Dr. Harriet Harriss, Ashraf Salama, and Ane Gonzalez Lara. Research presented in December 2020 at HELTASA in South Africa: “Inclusive Spatial Practices for Professional Education” and in May 2020 for Teaching Architecture Online: Methods and Outcomes: “Creating the Virtual Commons”.
Expanded bio:
She teaches at The New School and Pratt Institute where she instructs 5th year thesis, 1st year Design Studio sequence, advanced research seminars, and an Interdisciplinary Course entitled Gaming the Built Environment that looks at how Location Based Games and Augmented Reality speculatively transforms the civic and social space of the city. She lectures and hosts exhibitions on Architecture and Feminism: Public Spaces, Private Choices; Now What?! Advocacy, Alliances, and Activism in Architecture since 1968; Xenofeminism and the Post Natural; Feminist Domestic Mutations: Shared Kitchens; Architecture and the Post Human Life; Architecture and the Refugee Crisis; and New Feminist Design Practices. She designed and hosting the first Dinner Party with the School of Architecture, in the likeness of Judy Chicago’s, that archives feminist designers that have been under-published but have made significant contributions to the field. This will be used as a template for other Schools to launch their own Archive and Dinner Party. Her interdisciplinary work has brought her to collaborations outside of the architectural and interior design fields which have opened critical questions and new potentials within her practice. Working with UX designers, strategists, big data and sound artists, game designers, digital fabricators, and hard core feminists, she has designed award winning projects such as Shakespeare Machine, a programmable LED chandelier within the Public Theater; Open House, a store for Target that integrates the Internet of Things into a spatial narrative that challenges how we approach retail spaces in the 21st century; and Now What?! Advocacy, Alliances, and Activism in Architecture since 1968, an exhibition for the feminist group ArchiteXX that examines the little known history of architects and designers working to further the causes of civil rights, women’s, and LGBTQ movements of the past fifty years.
Degrees Held
Masters of Architecture (Rhode Island School of Design) and BS Interior Design (magna cum laude)
Recent Publications
“The Radically Inclusive Studio: an open access conversation on inclusive practices within the architecture studio”. co-authored with Michele Gorman (US), Jolanda Morkel (South Africa), Lindy Osborne Burton (Australia), Hermie Delport (South Africa). Upcoming chapter contribution toThe Routledge Companion to Architectural Pedagogies of the Global South, edited by Harriet Harriss and Ashraf Salama,Ane Gonzalez Lara 2021.
Companion website: The Radically Inclusive Studio: an open access conversation on radically inclusive practices in the design studio.
theradicallyinclusivestudio.org
Performances and Appearances
Spring / Summer / Fall 2020
Constructing the Virtual Studio
HELTASA: Inclusive Spatial Practices for Professional Education
Immersive Environments Workshops: Part 1, 2, 3 ,4
Towards an Equitable School: Equitable Town Hall I + II, Pratt School of Architecture
Public Workshop / Collaborative Engagement: Radical Education Today: Architecture and Posthuman Life (New School), 2020 (Gorman and Perez de Vega)
Gorman, M., Perez de Vega, E, Harriss, H., Morton, T. 2020, Decolonizing the Architecture Review: A Case Study in Designing an Equitable Review, Pratt Institute, online video, Talks. https://talks.pratt.edu/media/t/1_iz0soo26/41641711
The Dinner Party, Mistresses of Pratt, Coordinator of a 40 person team of faculy, students, staff. Coordinating the making and designing of unique place settings, food, drink and event, licenses, media, websites, researchers, and special guests for feminist dinner party performance and event at President Frances Bronet’s House, March 2020. https://commons.pratt.edu/mistressesofarchitecture/event-photos/
CodeXX Feminist Roundtables + Design Action Exhibitions, 2013-current
Exhibitions: Now What?! Advocacy, Activism, and Alliances in American Architecture since 1968, 2018 in collaboration with ArchiteXX
Feminist Roundatables around the theme of New Feminist Practices and Ecofeminism: Feminist Domestic Mutations, 2020, Xenofeminism and the Post Natural, 2019
WIKIPEDIA EDIT-A-THON SESSIONS, 2016-current: A feminist Wikipedia workshop to write the women of architecture into Wikipedia.
CodeXX Roundtable discussion series: Curator, Coordinator + Researcher for a series of topics affecting women in design. “Future Practices”, “Surface Matters: Sandra Wheeler”, “Engineering Tactics: Mediating Designn, Politics, + Practice: Eunjeong Seong, + The Environmental Tipping Point in Design: “Can Design Save the Climate Refugee?” 2015 Jan ‘13- present
Exhibitions: Private Choices, Public Spaces, 2014 (New School) in collaboration with ArchiteXX. Provides a venue for exhibiting designs, meeting, presentations, and design reivews for the last abortion clinic in Mississippi based around the research of Lori Brown.
Public Workshop / Collaborative Engagement: Radical Education Today: Architecture and Posthuman Life (New School), 2020 (Gorman and Perez de Vega)
Public Talk: Hour lecture on Michele Gorman’s creative work for Architecture, Objects, Technology and Social Justice at Parsons School of Constructed Environments
Zoom Talk: HELTASA (Higher Education Learning and Teaching Association of Southern Africa) 2020 Conference: INCLUSIVE SPATIAL PRACTICES FOR PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION: EXPLORING THE ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN STUDIO, (Delport, Gorman, Morkel, Osborne, Burton), December 3rd, 2020, https://heltasa.org.za/heltasa-conference-2020/ https://youtu.be/8vBfmmb7pCM
Zoom Talk: Creating a Virtual Commons, Urban Morphologies: Teaching Architecture Online: Methods and Outcomes, May, 2020 (Gorman) https://labs.ozyegin.edu.tr/drum/2020/05/20/teaching-architecture-online-methods-and-outcomes/
Zoom Talk: Gorman, M. 2020, Creating a Virtual Commons, Pratt Institute Consortium for Research and Robotics, online video, viewed June 17, 2020, https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/18F1da79-2NIEqv82GqFR6V8LNnJX6a80CIf_aUNyfFnNmyAV7QUGy9ZQ7wdRCk .
Zoom Talk: Mistresses of Architecture, Fosters and Partners, 2020.
Zoom Talk: SoA Equitable Town Hall I, II, II, 2020 / 2021
Zoom Listening Session: Towards an Equitable School, 2020, Co-hosted with Jerrod Delaine, 2020
Research Interests
Social Justice and Design Activism, Intensifying Forms though Mixed Realities, Democratizing Technology, Radically Inclusive Pedagogy and Curricula, Post-Natural Ecologies
Portfolio
The Radically Inclusive Studio