Dr Tao DuFour

Tao DuFour is Assistant Professor in History and Theory of Architecture and Director of the MArch Programme. His work investigates the embodied nature of spatio-environmental experience, focused on problems of generativity in its relation to the lived experience of the historical past (environmentality). His interests are in the phenomenology of perception and corporeity, phenomenological accounts of the experience of spatiality, and their relationship to ethnographic descriptions of space. Tao’s current research focuses on the regional context of the Caribbean and Guianas examining, through photography, ethnographic methods and documentary film the lived experience of environmental change. He is particularly interested in the historical and narrative qualities of spatio-environmental experience, drawing on the literary traditions of the region.

Tao has recently completed, in collaboration with postcolonial scholar Natalie Melas and documentary filmmaker Kannan Arunasalam, a feature-length documentary film – Possible Landscapes – the result of a two-year Mellon funded research project investigating environmental experience in the Caribbean with a focus on Trinidad & Tobago. Tao was awarded, with Melas and Arunasalam, the 2023 SAH Award for Film and Video by the Society of Architectural Historians for their previous documentary short, We Love We Self Up Here.

Tao obtained his PhD and MPhil in the History and Philosophy of Architecture from the University of Cambridge and BArch from The Cooper Union. He is a registered architect (RIBA) and held the Rome Prize in Architecture at the British School at Rome. Tao is the guest editor of the recently published special issue of Future Anterior dedicated to the theme of “Space and Heritage.” He is the author of Husserl and Spatiality: A Phenomenological Ethnography of Space (Routledge 2022), which was awarded the Edward Goodwin Ballard Book Prize in Phenomenology. Tao is a Fellow of Trinity College.