Academy Talks Design: Paulina Yurman

Academy Talks Design is an open lecture series held on Tuesday evenings at 16:15 at Holmen. The programme brings leading international practitioners to Copenhagen to share perspectives, critical insights, and approaches to contemporary design. Open to all, the talks offer a rare opportunity to engage with a broad range of influential voices shaping design practice.

Paulina Yurman’s Wellcome funded research project Maternal Machines: Design Speculations about Fantasies of Care (2024-2028) uses speculative and participatory design approaches to explore ideations with AI and other technologies in spaces related to maternal and infant care. 

Through watercolour drawings and prototypes, she challenges narratives around technologies for care, motherhood and reproduction, often creating provocative artefacts and visualisations. 

Her ‘fluid speculations’ uses watercolour renderings to investigate ambivalent feelings towards technology, probing how design can reveal the messy and subjective realities of perinatal experiences rather than offering technological solutions.