News & Updates
april 14, 2023
We Love We Self Up Here Wins SAH Award for Film and Video
We Love We Self Up Here, a documentary film produced by Tao DuFour and Natalie Melas and directed by Kannan Arunasalm, was awarded the Society of Architectural Historians Award for Film and Video. The film explores narratives of lived experiences of urban, agricultural, and industrial landscapes tied to colonial and postcolonial legacies of sugar production and hydrocarbon extraction in Trinidad & Tobago. Read the citation.
March 31, 2023
Environmentality: Spatial Description and Caribbean Landscape | Lecture at the Caribbean School of Architecture, Jamaica
Tao DuFour will lecture at the Caribbean School of Architecture, at the University of Technology in Jamaica on his recently published book, Husserl and Spatiality: A Phenomenological Ethnography of Space, and his collaborative documentary film project, We Love We Self Up Here.
November 28, 2022
Husserl and Spatiality: A Phenomenological Ethnography of Space | Lecture and Exhibition at Galerie VI PER, Prague
Tao DuFour will give a lecture on his recently published book Husserl and Spatiality: A Phenomenological Ethnography of Space at the VI PER Gallery in Prague, Czech Republic. The lecture is accompanied by an exhibition of black and white photographs from DuFour’s fieldwork, exploring the spatiality of a specific Candomblé ritual. See on Facebook
December 12, 2022
Generativity Workshop at the Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen
Tao DuFour will present a workshop titled "Environmentality: Notes on a Phenomenology of Generative Space in Husserl" at the Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen.
November 22, 2022
Roundtable | Space and Heritage: On the Generativity of Environing Worlds
A roundtable discussion on the theme of a special issue of the journal Future Anterior – ‘Space and Heritage: On the Generativity of Environing Worlds’ – guest edited by Tao DuFour. The event is organized by Tao DuFour as part of his term as Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall Cambridge, and is hosted jointly by Clare Hall and the Department of Architecture at the University of Cambridge.
AUGUST 31, 2022
Tao DuFour Guest Edits Space and Heritage Future Anterior Journal
Tao DuFour guest edits this edition of the journal, which is dedicated to the theme of heritage, viewed in terms of its implicit sense as a mode of lived experience that is embodied, and in this way, spatial. Read more
August 31, 2022
Tao DuFour Receives Visiting Fellowship at Cambridge University
Tao DuFour will continue his explorations of the phenomenology of perception and corporeity, phenomenological accounts of the experience of spatiality, and their relationship to ethnographic descriptions of space at Clare Hall at Cambridge University in the Fall of 2022.
May 11, 2022
Tao DuFour and Natalie Melas Receive Mellon Foundation's Just Futures Initiative Grant
DuFour is Co-PI with Natalie Melas of the project ‘Possible Landscapes’ – a two-year research and documentary film project investigating environmental experience in the Caribbean with a focus on Trinidad and Tobago, funded by the Cornell Mellon Foundation Just Futures Initiative.
April 9, 2022
Spectres of Time in Space: Tracing Phantom Temporalities with Architectural Methodologies | Lecture at Cambridge University
Assistant Professor of Architecture Tao DuFour is a keynote speaker at a conference hosted by the University of Cambridge's Department of Architecture. The conference takes the realms of the spectral, the phantom, and the haunted as central drivers of urban transformation.
march 28, 2022
Husserl and Spatiality: A Phenomenological Ethnography of Space | Panel Discussion and Book Launch at Cornell AAP
Please join the Department of Architecture for a presentation by the author and discussion with colleagues for the launch of the book Husserl and Spatiality: A Phenomenological Ethnography of Space, by Tao DuFour and published in 2022 by Routledge. Participants will include Tao DuFour, Jeremy Foster, Maria Goula, and Viranjini Munasinghe, moderated by Sean Anderson. This event is accompanied by an exhibition of associated photographs and field notes from DuFour's fieldwork in Brazil.
march 21 – march 28, 2022
Husserl and Spatiality: A Phenomenological Ethnography of Space | Exhibition at Cornell AAP
Accompanying the panel discussion and book launch of Husserl and Spatiality: A Phenomenological Ethnography of Space, black and white photographs are exhibited in AAP's Hartell Gallery which were taken during Tao DuFour's fieldwork in the city of Salvador, Brazil during the summer of 2010.
february 11, 2022
Husserl and Spatiality: A Phenomenological Ethnography of Space | Panel Discussion and Book Launch at The Cooper Union
Please join the School of Architecture for an interdisciplinary panel discussion and launch of the book Husserl and Spatiality: A Phenomenological Ethnography of Space. Participants will include Tao Dufour, moderator Leslie Hewitt, Natalie Melas, Jorge Otero-Pailos, and Anthony Vidler. This event is accompanied by an exhibition of associated photographs and field notes from DuFour’s fieldwork in Brazil.
February 8 – March 3, 2022
Husserl and Spatiality: A Phenomenological Ethnography of Space | Exhibition at The Cooper Union
The black and white photographs presented in this exhibition were taken during Tao DuFour’s fieldwork in the city of Salvador, Brazil in the summer of 2010. The field notes and sketches exhibited are taken from DuFour’s field notebook, used during his ethnographic fieldwork. They are exhibited accompanying the launch of DuFour’s book, Husserl and Spatiality: A Phenomenological Ethnography of Space, published in 2022 by Routledge.
November 12, 2021
A Screening of We Love We Self Up Here
A film screening of We Love We Self Up Here including an introduction, panel, and Q&A with the filmmakers. We Love We Self Up Here is a documentary film by filmmaker Kannan Arunasalam, Cornell Assistant Professor of Architecture Tao DuFour, and Cornell Associate Professor of Comparative Literature Natalie Melas.
October 22, 2021
Cornell Chronicle: Transdisciplinary Film Explores Trinidad and Tobago
“We Love We Self Up Here,” a new documentary focused on the complex histories of labor and migration in Trinidad and Tobago, is a transdisciplinary collaboration between Tao DuFour, assistant professor of architecture in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning; Natalie Melas, associate professor of comparative literature in the College of Arts and Sciences; and filmmaker Kannan Arunasalam.
september 21, 2021
Depth of Field: Tao DuFour on We Love We Self Up Here
Cornell AAP presents the first iteration of Depth of Field, a short video with Assistant Professor Tao DuFour, architecture, who discusses his transdisciplinary, collaborative film that captures labor, migration, and landscape in Trinidad and Tobago through the history, experiences, and stories of a few persons.
september 30, 2021
Book Publication: Husserl and Spatiality
Assistant Professor of Architecture Tao DuFour has published his new book, titled Husserl and Spatiality: A Phenomenological Ethnography of Space (Routledge 2021). Husserl and Spatiality is an exploration of the phenomenology of space and embodiment, based on the work of Edmund Husserl. Combining in-depth architectural philosophical investigations of spatiality with a rich and intimate ethnography, Husserl and Spatiality speaks to themes in social and cultural anthropology from a theoretical perspective that addresses spatial practice and experience.
March 5, 2020
Empathy and the Phenomenological Ethnography of Space MA HCT & PhD Debates: History ‘in-translation’ | Lecture at The Architectural Association
The lecture addressed the Debates’ theme of history ‘in-translation’ in terms of an inquiry into three interrelated phenomena: empathy, corporeity, and spatiality.
February 18, 2020
DuFour's Design is a Finalist for Romanian Pavilion at Venice Biennale
In a national competition for the design of the Romanian National Pavilion at the 2020 Venice Biennale of Architecture, the Union of Architects in Romania awarded second place to the entry by Tao DuFour and five collaborators. DuFour, whose work explores the significance of the phenomenological tradition for descriptions of spatial and environmental experience, is an assistant professor in the Department of Architecture at AAP.
November 15, 2019
Preston Thomas Memorial Symposium Expands Earth Art in Theory and Practice
"Earth: Projections 50 Years after Earth Art," AAP's fall 2019 Preston Thomas Memorial Symposium, brought a range of experts, artists, architects, and scholars to the college over three days to discuss and expand upon a deeply resonant historical moment in art practice and exhibition at Cornell. The 50-year anniversary of the original exhibition served as an ideal opportunity to acknowledge Earth Art's prescient questions that remain critical to reconsidering the environmental and political contexts of art and design practices today.
November 1, 2019
Symposium to Mark 50th Anniversary of Earth Art
Designers, artists, and scholars will reflect on the legacy of the landmark 1969 Earth Art exhibition at Cornell in "Earth: Projections 50 Years After Earth Art," November 7–8 in the Abby and Howard Milstein Auditorium.
January 19 – February 13, 2015
Tao DuFour: Colonnofagia and the Dissolution of the Wall
An exhibition of drawings and photographs from Tao DuFour’s Rome Prize project titled Colonnofagia and the Dissolution of the Wall in Piranesi's Campo Marzio – The Case of Plate XIV and the Church of S. Nicola in Carcere. DuFour held the Rome Prize in Architecture at The British School at Rome (British Academy) in 2012-13.