Dionysia is an architect specializing in social and educational participatory design. She studied architecture at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) and holds a Master of Architecture in Metropolitan Design Research and Policy from Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc).
She is a researcher at the Transformable Intelligent Environments Laboratory of the Technical University of Crete (TUC TIE Lab), with a focus on the intersections of Architecture, Education and Technology. Along with a multidisciplinary team, she develops the “Educational Pla(y)ces'' methodology (Εκπαιδότοποι in Greek) and implements it in the framework of the ''Designed for Better Learning'' program, supported by the Municipality of Athens, with the aim of upgrading the school environment and empowering the educational skills of the students and teachers through maker learning practices.
As a founding member of Kollektivemind* creative team, she enjoys creating imaginative installations through the up-cycling of everyday materials and objects with local identity and character. Among her interests are ideas that promote social activism through architecture and design, redefine our relation to the built environment and stimulate a new urban consciousness on a collective level.
She advocates for children being the vehicle for every positive change we aspire to see in our world and is always happy to work with them in any project playful, educational or, ideally, both!
Marousa is a preschool teacher who studied at the Department of Early Childhood Education in The Technological Educational Institute (TEI) of Athens. She is also a Certified Occupational Therapy Assistant.
With a never-ending eagerness for learning, she participated in a European Erasmus + program in Cyprus, specialized in Outdoor Education. Her interest in discovering new knowledge also urged her to take part in an educational course led by the pioneer program "Designed for Better Learning" of the Municipality of Athens and she recently completed the training program "Special Education and Promotion Of Mental Health In The School Environment" at the University of West Attica.
The last few years she has been working in a kindergarten school of the Municipal Nursery of Athens.
She loves discovering the world allover again together with children. Her belief is that children need their own time and space to learn and should be encouraged and supported to play in any form they like. Play can be active, risky, creative, fun, cooperative and so much more, so let it be…!
