Florencia Sobrero (Córdoba, Argentina, 1990). She holds a degree in architecture (2014) from the Faculty of Architecture, Urbanism and Design of the National University of Córdoba and a master's degree in Gender and Communication (2023) from the Andean University Simón Bolívar, Ecuador. She is a founding partner of the architecture firm Taller General (2017), where she combines design, construction, activism and education to advance her professional practice.
The issue of gender is a point of conflict we experience day after day, in an ultra-hegemonic and patriarchal context, such as the design and construction industry. A sector in which we face complex dynamics, from relationships with clients, to relationships with bricklayers, negotiations with suppliers, and spaces for collective action, such as community construction. These dynamics are rooted in gender stereotypes and exclusionary binary cultural constructs, centered around supposed roles that women and men "should" occupy in society. A panorama that leads us to (re)think who has the ability to build?
From this question emerged the participatory construction days with a gender perspective: Femingas. The space opens as an alternative to the construction mingas (community work), originally conceived in Ecuador as participatory work days in which members of a community come together to develop activities for the common good, such as maintaining a road, building a community facility, cleaning a school, etc.
*minga, is the Quechua term used in Ecuador to refer to the collective effort