FERNANDA OPPERMANN
Mutuo
SAY IT LOUD - CALIFORNIA Exhibitor
California Based Designer
Who or what inspires you professionally?
What inspires me is seeing how people appropriate the spaces that we design and how they emotionally connect with built space. I’ve always been inspired by the effect of light in buildings as well.
FERNANDA OPPERMANN
Bio:
Fernanda Oppermann is a founding principal of Mutuo. She designs spaces that support her clients’ experiences, and her research addresses systemic barriers to housing and proposes new construction methodologies. She is a John G. Williams Distinguished Visitor at the Fay Jones School of Architecture. In 2021 she received the World Architecture News Female Frontier Social Change Award and in 2020 she was included in the Beverly Willis Foundation’s `Built by Women’ exhibition.
How did you first learn about architecture and when did you decide that built environment profession was an area of interest for you?
I learned about Architecture in middle school when my family purchased a condo in Sao Paulo. I loved looking at the plans and imagining the built result. I also enjoyed conceiving and drawing new spaces at a technical drawing class in high school.
What do you do?
At Mutuo I design and build spaces that celebrate the cultural and personal characteristics of our clients, users, and neighbors of the spaces we imagine.
What excites you in the work you do?
What excites me about my work is the possibility to impact communities and cities through design. A successful project has ripple effects that improve the street, community, and lives of the people that occupy or live in the vicinity of the project.
Who or what inspires you professionally?
What inspires me is seeing how people appropriate the spaces that we design and how they emotionally connect with built space. I’ve always been inspired by the effect of light in buildings as well.
What is your proudest professional accomplishment or achievement?
My proudest professional moment was being present at the opening of the North Shore community park. Seeing how the members of this community in the Coachella Valley was appropriating and using one of our first built spaces.
Featured Project Name:
A Journey to find Flexibility within Systems
Featured Project Location:
Bentonville, Arkansas
Featured Project Completion Date:
June 2022
Role in Featured Project:
Concept and Design
Featured Project Description:
Through our work, we’ve learned that the challenges of producing housing go beyond design. The ‘Architecture at Home’ exhibit at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art afforded us the opportunity to highlight the underlaying housing systems and create awareness, empathy, and dialog. Our fragmented prototype is not a housing solution. It is an exploration of different systems meant to challenge the visitor’s expectations and assumptions about housing and the housing system.
