University of Brighton | There Is No Place 3

Kinda Al Naser, University of Brighton
Nakba, 2023

BA Hons Interior Architecture | AD676 Interior Architecture | Film & Architecture
Studio Leader: Dr. Rafaella Siagkri
Tutors: Alex Fitch, Judit Pusztaszeri, Dr. Peter Marsh, Sophie Ungerer, Terry Meade and Tom Munson

The Nakba, meaning “catastrophe,” refers to the 1948 occupation of Palestine, which led to the forced displacement of over 750,000 Palestinians. Farha tells the story of a young girl whose aspirations to learn and break away from traditional expectations are cut short when her village is invaded, separating her from her father. This project explores the home as both a place of belonging and rupture—where safety is an illusion, and one’s future can be stripped away instantly. A modern space represents Farha’s lost dreams of education, which mirror the lost hopes and unfulled aspirations of many Palestinians following the occupation, while a traditional side re ects her father’sprotective role. A skylight open to rainwater, symbolising traditional Palestinian wells,

represents both a nourishing source of community and its loss. A leap-impossible gap enforces their irreversible separation, embodying the struggle and resilience of the Palestinian experience and the hidden traumas within displaced homes.

Farida Eltayeb, University of Brighton
Ενδυνάμωση των Γυναικών Μέσα από τον Χώρο

- Είμαι Εκεί που Με Βάζουν, 2025

50 x 24 x 16 εκ, γύψος, ρητίνη και συρματόπλεγμα

BA Hons Interior Architecture | AI676 Interior Architecture
Dr. Rafaella Siagkri, Judit Pusztaszeri, Dr. Peter Marsh, Terry Meade and Tom Munson

“Conformity is the last refuge of the unimaginative” by Edith Wharton.

For years, discussions on women’s oppression within their own homes have persisted. During my BA in Interior Architecture, I questioned how conformity functions as a tool of oppression, particularly in spaces shaped by men.

Women are often forced to conform, not just at home but in professional settings, facing further marginalization if they resist. Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1879) illustrates this struggle, where women escape one form of control only to find themselves trapped in another.

This led me to a compelling metaphor—women as liquid. Just as liquid takes the shape of its container, women are expected to adapt to their environments, no matter how restrictive or unjust. To explore this concept, I created a model representing a home, structured with irregular elements symbolizing entrapment. The model was then filled with liquid, representing a woman's forced adaptation. As the liquid sets in place, it reflects a woman’s growing awareness of patriarchy, highlighting the burden of conformity until she finds the courage to break free.

Conclusively, society forces a woman to blindly accept that she is where she is put.

Building on this concept, I redesigned an existing structure to accommodate survivors of homelessness,

incarceration, and domestic abuse. The core idea was to invert the metaphor for the model—shifting control from the environment to the women themselves. To achieve this, I incorporated kinetic walls, enabling women to shape their surroundings and adjust their level of privacy. In this way, they reclaim agency over their space and their placement within it.

(I would like to express my gratitude to Rafaella Siagkri, my BA Interior Architecture tutor, for firstly the incredible opportunity to participate and present my work in this exhibition. Her constant support through conceptual planning and model-making has been unwavering, as has her dedication to push every detail to mere perfection through thoughtful feedback. I would also like to thank Edward Randall, UoB workshop technician, for his close and attentive guidance through the making of the model, assisting with material selection, and ensuring a polished final look.)

Elena Mouis, University of Brighton

A Girl in Black, 2023

Under the film and architecture brief, this projects aims to transfer the main themes within Michael Cacoyannis 1956 film, “A girl in Black”.
These themes of society gender roles, domestic abuse and emotional vulnerability are represented through the architecture within the film, depicting destruction and damages within the home.
This physical representation of damage symbolises the slow deterioration of the protagonist’s mental health.
Through gossip and conversation, the privacy of the protagonist is stolen, this notion is then transferred to the Fitzroy house, after the damage analysis of the local area of Lewis, the local community will take and remove from the site what is needed to improve their own homes. Thus, illustrating how people take others privacy by gossiping to improve their own lives through conversation.
Furthermore, the site is transferred into a cafe on the ground floor to encourage conversation and gossiping, in representation of a Greek cafe < καφενές >. Whilst the first floor is renovated into the protagonist’s accommodation.

Mia Soman

Real or Make Believe, 2025

The Fitzroy House located in Lewes, East Sussex, England, was transformed into a theatre production set for the couple from the ‘Marriage Story’. The lead characters, Nicole and Charlie, had a fragmented relationship during their divorce, from emotional to violent outbursts while also both having a passion for acting and directing.
The design provides the couple with a shared living area (kitchen, living room and dining room), but separate sleeping quarters (Nicole and Henry and Charlie alone as Nicole won the custody battle).
A part of this design was inspired by paper, to emphasise the power paper has over our lives. Money, divorce papers, birth certificates, passports, and so on. The moveable backdrops made of paper-like structure could be stretched, following the ceiling curtain grid, exposing the cohabit living area, and revealing the toxic relationship between the characters to the public.
What's the real performance?