Spatial Politics; Inequality; Epistemologies of Architecture and Planning; History and Criticism of Architecture and Urbanism; Design Activism; Decolonizing the Curatorial; Racial Capitalism; Urban Peripheries; Brazil; Peripheral Subjectivities

Giuseppina Forte is a Ph.D. candidate in Architecture at UC Berkeley, with a designated emphasis in Global Metropolitan Studies. Her research focuses on spatial politics, social equality, and epistemologies of architecture and urban planning. She is currently investigating the urban peripheries as sites of radical politics, subjectivities and citizenship production, taking São Paulo, Brazil, as an extended case study. By challenging fixed profiles of poverty and subaltern agency, formal/informal and local/global divides, Giuseppina positions the peripheries of São Paulo as historically relevant sites of larger urban dynamics under republican (1946-64), dictatorial (1964-85), and democratic regimes (1985-present). As an architect, she has extensive experience in Italy, Burkina Faso, France, and California. She participated in the research and design for a center advocating against female genital mutilation (Burkina Faso) and supported the socio-economic rights of immigrants from Eastern Europe in construction sites (Paris). As a Fulbright-Hays Fellow, Giuseppina is currently visiting researcher at the University of São Paulo, in the Department of History of Architecture and Urbanism (FAU-USP) and affiliated with the Laboratory of Other Urbanisms.

Critical Architecture Practice. Escola da Cidade, University of Architecture. São Paulo. Instructor

Introduction to Design Theory and Criticism ARCH 130. UC Berkeley. GSI for Greig Crysler

Historical Survey of Architecture and Urbanism: Baroque to the Present ARCH 170B. UC Berkeley. GSI for Margaret Crawford

Social and Cultural Processes in Architecture and Urban Design ARCH 110. UC Berkeley. GSI for Galen Cranz

Seminar in Teaching of Architecture ARCH 375. UC Berkeley. Instructor

Advanced Design Studio 1117B. Yale School of Architecture. Visiting Teaching Assistant for Peggy Deamer

Design Studio III. University of Architecture Roma Tre. GSI for Emilio Vendittelli

Architecture Design. University of Architecture La Sapienza of Rome. GSI for Emilio Vendittelli

Architectural Technology. European Institute of Design Rome. TA for Giovanni Amici

Peer-reviewed Publications
“Concrete Embeds: Assembling Modern Concretescapes in the Periphery of Mexico City.” Book chapter, Mexico City: Materiality, Performance, and Power, Crysler, Greig and Maria M. Carranco (eds), Trevesías Press (forthcoming, Spring 2020)

“Perform, Educate, Curate: the Cultural Politics transforming Urban Subjectivities in the Peripheries of São Paulo,” New Urban Identities, Ross, Silvia and Giulio Giovannoni (eds), Florence University Press (forthcoming)

Working Papers
“Subversive Spatial Practices at the Urban Fringes of São Paulo,” Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Working Paper Series, Vol. 266, 2015

Conference Papers
“Building Humanitarian ‘Expertise’ in Ouagadougou,” American Association of Geographers Conference, Boston, April 2017

“Global Archeology of Informality,” Understanding Informal Urbanization: between Different Narratives and Conflicting Meanings, Symposium, Polytechnic of Milan, July 2016 

“Towards a more Inclusive City? Architecture, Development, and Social Justice in São Paulo,” Cross-disciplinary Approaches to Urban Space, Univ. of Florence, June 2016

Professional Services

Referee, Ardeth Magazine