Tessa Forde is an architectural practitioner, and a doctoral candidate and lecturer at Auckland University of Technology’s Huri Te Ao - School of Future Environments in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa New Zealand. Her interest in experimental education platforms and how they can disrupt and reimagine the discipline of architecture is at the centre of her research and has seen her co-organizing the Free School of Architecture in Los Angeles in 2018, establishing The Night School in Aotearoa, and involved with the Architecture Beyond Capitalism School for 2022 and 2023. This research work sits alongside her work in the profession across Aotearoa and Los Angeles and has culminated in the co-founding of a small practice who experiment with how architecture is practiced, who for, and how the architect's tools can be redeployed for a more aspirational, equitable, collective future.
Please get in touch if you would like to collaborate or share ideas about community building and architecture.
Please get in touch if you would like to collaborate or share ideas about community building and architecture.
Available to Mentor
Anyone with a vested interest in the built environment and its communities and how we can change the shape of the discipline
Looking For a Mentor
Help to develop my teaching and explore how radical pedagogies and alternative practice meaningfully impact the built environment
Showcase
The House that Politics Built
This House that Politics Built explores the realms between satire and sincerity, fixity and fluidity and conflict and leisure. Born from a fascination with politics, the media and its influence on our cities and spaces, The House that Politics Built proposes a new parliamentary model for New Zealand, one that challenges traditional typologies and the normative origins of design.
The new Parliament Aoteroa is located in the heart of Auckland CBD. It places politicians alongside theatre goers, minimum wage workers, gamblers at the casino and attendees of the future brothel.
Satire was used as a design driver, exploring the nature of politics, power and propoganda but with the intent of still designing something beautiful. When the satire slips away, the sincerity remains.
This is a parliament complex designed not for the politicians but for the people. It hopes to find a way to destigmatise the government, restore a sense of public ownership and engagement in politics and make clear to the people what is theirs.
The new Parliament Aoteroa is located in the heart of Auckland CBD. It places politicians alongside theatre goers, minimum wage workers, gamblers at the casino and attendees of the future brothel.
Satire was used as a design driver, exploring the nature of politics, power and propoganda but with the intent of still designing something beautiful. When the satire slips away, the sincerity remains.
This is a parliament complex designed not for the politicians but for the people. It hopes to find a way to destigmatise the government, restore a sense of public ownership and engagement in politics and make clear to the people what is theirs.
Year of Completition
2015
Type
Thesis
In Association With
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