Designing Motherhood: Things That Make and Break Our Births (MIT Press, 2021)

“This smart, image-rich, fashion-forward, and design-driven book explores more than eighty designs—iconic, conceptual, archaic, titillating, emotionally charged, or just plain strange—that have defined the relationships between people and babies during the past century. The book features a prologue by Erica Chidi and a foreword by Alexandra Lange.”

‘Layer After Layer of Loving Devotion’ A long form essay on the act of dressing young children and what this kind of care can reveal.

Read the piece in Vestoj, a research platform and the leading public intellectual in the field of fashion. Vestoj shows that fashion is not only about objects, but rather a mindset and approach to identity, culture and life.

'Birth Places: From the Bedroom to the Hospital and Back Again'. An examination of the design and architectural histories of birthing centres, so-called dream hospitals and at-home models of midwifery care, exploring the role designed birth settings can play in birth outcomes.

Read the piece in AA Files 79, or listen to the audio version on Files on Air. AA Files is the Architectural Association’s journal of record, which promotes original and engaging writing on architecture and its related fields.

‘Upwardly Mobile’ is an essay about the design legacy of the radical Hungarian feminist paediatrician and childcare reformer, Emmi Pikler.

Read it in Issue 4 of Mother Tongue, a biannual print magazine that interrogates (and celebrates) modern motherhood through inclusive stories about art, sex, pop culture, politics, food and a few things in between.

‘A Fucking Raw Deal: Designing Motherhood the All American Way’

Read the piece in Vestoj, a research platform and the leading public intellectual in the field of fashion. Vestoj shows that fashion is not only about objects, but rather a mindset and approach to identity, culture and life.

‘Birthing Furniture: An Illustrated History’

Read the piece in MIT Reader, Thought-provoking excerpts, interviews, and original essays written for a general reader but backed by academic rigor.

‘Project Intrepid’

A profile on Manisha Mohan and her design for a bra which doubles as wearable tech “intended to detect, communicate, and prevent sexual assault”. The story originally appeared in Disegno Issue #17.

'The Stroller—a design love story in seven parts’ or ‘Älskade barnvagn-en formsagi sju design’

This issue of Stockholmstidningen, or The Stockholm Newspaper addresses how children are actors within urban transformation. This article is about the evolution of strollers and the topographies they traverse.

“A Beach Ball in an Unmade Bed’ How the tie-waist skirt revolutionized maternity wear”

Read the piece in Slate, a magazine covering current affairs, politics, and culture in the United States.

‘Care and Birth Advocacy: A Midwife’s Own Story and Maternity Care Coalition’

Read at ArtHx, Princeton University’s digital platform illuminating the historical and ongoing entanglements of art, colonialism, race, and medicine.

‘But is it a Beetle?’

In December 2016, I visited the U.S. Supreme Court to report on the unanimous verdict in favour of Samsung in the technology company’s long-running legal battle with Apple over patent violations. My essay appeared in Disegno #13.

‘Lessons from Objects: Designing a Modern Hungarian Childhood, 1890-1950’

Working in partnership with the Iparművészeti Múzeum—the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest—and archives across Hungary, this article unfolds how art and architecture created for children helped deliver and define a vision for modern Hungary. Read the article in Hungarian Cultural Studies.

‘Play:ground: architectural history by way of play’

Play:ground, an adventure playground on Governor’s Island in New York City and the history of this play typology. The story originally appeared in Disegno.

‘Manus x Machina: Fashion in the Age of Technology’

An exhibition review of Andre Bolton’s blockbuster fashion show at the Met, where the traditional barriers between haute couture and prêt-à-porter collapse in the face of technology. Read it in Disegno #11.

‘Applied Design at MoMA’

An exhibition review of Applied Design at MoMA, where curators Paola Antonelli and Kate Carmody included video games, portable shelters, and other firsts for the Museum. This review appeared in Disegno.

‘Ellen Key and the creation of childhood’

A profile on the prophetic social theorist and design reformer, Ellen Key, who published her book The Century of the Child in her native Sweden on New Year's Day 1900. Written in conjunction with MoMA’s Century of the Child: Growing By Design exhibition. This article appeared in Disegno.