Lía Duarte Rodríguez

















































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© 2024, Lía Duarte Rodríguez

I am an architect and spatial researcher based in Berlin and Santo Domingo.

My practice investigates social dynamics behind spatial production, the movement of subjects across territories, the spaces they find themselves interacting with and the narratives behind.

My current line of research revolves around the interplay betweenhost-guest interdependencies by looking into female migration flows, social reproduction, and the spatialization of practices of care in the Caribbean.

2024 - Doctoral Candidate, Hochschule Anhalt
2020 - 2023 M.Sc. Architecture Typologies, TU Berlin
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(un)caring landscapes:
a look into the trajectories of (paid) domestic workers
Santo Domingo,  Dominican Republic

In 2022, in the Dominican Republic, paid domestic work employed 12.35% of the economically active female population, being the third biggest brand of employment for women in the country. 

(un)caring landscapes, looks into the hostile environments  produced and reproduced in the country under the asymmetrical power relationships between (care)givers and (care)receivers, with a special focus on live-in paid household work in Santo Domingo.
2023
research

Domestic scale: 
axonometry of a room for a domestic worker. 
Domestic scale: 
the room for the domestic worker allocated in the employer’s apartment.

Territorial scale: 
Narrations from one’s home to the other’s home. Mapping the journey of a domestic worker to her employer’s home in Santo Domingo.


home, safe space?

Domesticity in the Dominican Republic demands the presence of a (paid) household worker in the houses of the middle and upper classes in the country. Architectures of the home end up confining and attaching these women to areas traditionally recognized under the label of service spaces.

Taking my position as point of departure, home, safe space? aims to contest notions of domesticity in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic and give a glimpse of such through the lenses of a critical spatial analysis.
2023
film essay
 


don’t wash your dirty laundry outside

As many other (un)paid care-works, laundry has always been identified as a female responsibility.
Traditionally, depending on where the laundry was being done, it promoted conditions for socializing and developing kinship among female care-workers. An opportunity to alleviate struggles of daily life by sharing stories and common struggles.

By appropiating for a weekend  Lausitzer Platz in Berlin, don’t wash your dirty laundry outside became an open invitation to feel free to be vulnerable, to complain, and to share (or not) common struggles while doing laundry together.
2022
performance,
urban intervention



with Lea Weise,
Emil Bodo, Elnaz Shafiezadeh,
Gwen Ackermann


traces of silence and archives of the Berlin Zoologischer Garten

Personal narrations on a journey through the Archives of the Berlin Zoologischer Garten and the on-going role of the institution on reproducing colonial ideals through its architectural objects.
2022
film essay


 not a cartography

Traces of moments and memories through maps and embroidery.

ongoing
mapping

mapping alternative infrastructures of care

Casa Hogar Paola Buenrostro in Mexico City is an initiative aimed at addressing the housing needs of the LGBTQI+ community by providing shelter and support to transgender individuals and sex workers.  Kenya Cuevas, activist and leading voice of the initiative, guide us through the space while narrating her*story and describing the different care practices that are particular to the shelter. 

By using care as the primary lens to understand the project, we employed architectural visualization tools to highlight the care practices, people, and spaces involved. 

2022
research
mapping


Casa Paola Buenrostro, Mexico City
Home-making practices and infrastructures of Care

cores of convergence

The former Lufthansa  Cargo building at Tegel Airport in Berlin is adapted in order to host work spaces. The framework proposed is flexible enough so that the different working spaces can converge in communal thresholds, corridors and inner courtyards.  
2021
architectural design

with Bachir Benkirane, Pablo Prado Serrano, Inés Vachez