Wednesday, 11/4/2026
EAAD | Campus de Couros | IDEGUI
On November 4th, at 14:30, the IDEGUI will host the lecture "Between Plan and Pavement: Who belongs in Public Space?", featuring Dr. Soukaina Mekrini, architect and professor.
Public space is drawn on plans and lived on pavements. Between the two, design decisions - from urban furniture and bus shelters to street widths and the distribution of shade- quietly shape who can access, use, and appropriate public space, and whose presence or absence goes unnoticed. This lecture explores the gap between design intentions and everyday practices. Far from being neutral infrastructure, public space is a produced space in the Lefebvrian sense: conceived by professionals, perceived through spatial practices, and lived through diverse and unequal experiences. Urban morphology and fieldwork observations offer complementary ways to examine how spatial configurations shape everyday practices, while users’ routines and appropriations continually transform the meaning and use of public space. By examining how gender, age, disability, and other dimensions shape experiences of public space, the lecture questions universalizing approaches to public-space design and invites reflection on how urban spaces can better respond to the diversity of their users.
Dr. Soukaina Mekrini is an architect and Associate Professor at the National School of Architecture of Agadir, Morocco, with a PhD in Urbanism and Planning. Her research explores what people do with the spaces we produce and what their lived experiences reveal about the social relations that shape urban life, with a particular focus on Gender and women’s spatial practices in Moroccan cities. Her career spans professional experience in France and Morocco, public administration, and academia, including teaching mobilities in Spain and Latvia. She coordinates the Gender commission of the International Association of Francophone Geography (AIGF) and has twice served as guest editor for the African Journal of Urbanism, Architecture and Buildings (AJUAB), contributing to critical debates on gender, urban space, and the production of spatial knowledge from and for the Global South.
