Spatial Justice; Inequality and Difference in Cities; Urban History and Theory; Architecture Theory and Criticism; Decolonizing Pedagogies; Peripheral Urbanization; Brazil; Global South.

Giuseppina Forte is a Ph.D. candidate in Architecture at UC Berkeley, with a designated emphasis in Global Metropolitan Studies. Her research focuses on urban politics, inequality, and the spatialization of difference. 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. 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 was 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.

University of California, Berkeley
Design, Urban Ecologies, and Environmental Justice, Instructor of Record.
Seminar in the Teaching of Architecture, Instructor of Record.
Historical Survey of Architecture and Urbanism: Baroque to the Present, Lead GSI.
Introduction to Design Theory and Criticism, GSI (2 terms).
Social and Cultural Processes in Architecture and Urban Design, GSI.

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

Yale School of Architecture
Advanced Design Studio, Visiting TA.

Other Teaching
Design Studio III. University of Architecture Roma Tre, TA.
Architecture Design. University of Architecture La Sapienza of Rome, TA. 
Architecture Technology. European Institute of Design Rome, TA.

Peer-reviewed Publications

Forte, Giuseppina, and Kuan Hwa (eds.). Embodying the Periphery. Open-access publication, University of California eScholarship (online), Florence University Press (printed) (forthcoming, 2021).

Forte, Giuseppina. "Concrete Embeds: Assembling Modernity in the Periphery of Mexico City." In Mexico City: Materiality, Performance, and Power, edited by Greig Crysler and Maria Moreno Carranco, Metropolitan Autonomous University Press (forthcoming, 2021).

Forte, Giuseppina. “The Neighborhood in the Morro: Heterogeneity, Difference, and Emergence in a Periphery of the Global South." Lo Squaderno n. 53, September 2019.


Other Publications

Forte, Giuseppina. "O Caminho Para um Espaço mais Aberto" (The Path towards a more Open Space). In Jardim Filhos da Terra: Reflexões de uma Experiência Construída, edited by Glauber Triana et alt, Escola da Cidade, December 2018.

Forte, Giuseppina. "Subversive Spatial Practices at the Urban Fringes of São Paulo," Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Working Paper Series, Vol. 266, 2015.

Forte, Giuseppina. "Architettura e Comunicazione Sociale" (Architecture and Social Communication). Misurare la Comunicazione, November 18, 2009.

Conference Activity

Uneven Ground: Frontiers of Urbanization and Difference in São Paulo's Periphery, BRASA 2020 (Brazilian Studies Association), University of Texas, Austin, March 2020.  

Perform, Educate, Curate: The Cultural Politics transforming Urban Subjectivities in the Peripheries of São Paulo, Cross-disciplinary Approaches to Urban Space, University of Florence, June 2018.

Building Humanitarian “Expertise” in Ouagadougou, Landscapes of Humanitarian Expertise, American Association of Geographers, Boston, MA, April 2017.

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

Bottom-Up Incremental Urbanism, International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, December 2014.

Invited Talks

"Topographies of Difference in the Peripheries of São Paulo," University of Trento, Department of Sociology and Social Sciences, December 2020.

"Relearning Architecture," Social and Cultural Processes in Architecture and Urban Design, UC Berkeley, October 2018.

“Transformative Pedagogies in Architecture and Planning,” Seminar in Teaching of Architecture, UC Berkeley, January 2017.

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

“Spatial Justice: Social Justice through Space,” Social and Cultural Basis of Design, UC Berkeley, December 2015.

“Architecture and the Postcolonial: the CBF in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso,” Yale School of Design, April 2011.

“From Architecture to Reality,” Polytechnic of Milan, December 2010.