Tucker de Vazquez Architecture

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Tucker de Vazquez is a registered architect, educator, and founding principal of Tucker de Vazquez Architecture, an interdisciplinary research and design practice that explores the cultural and ecological dimensions of the built environment. She currently serves as Associate Professor and Director of the Interior Architecture Program at the University of Houston Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design, where she has led the program since 2021. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the Georgia Institute of Technology, a Master of Architecture from the University of Texas at Austin, and completed a Postgraduate Fellowship in Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. Her academic and professional work centers on climate-responsive design, cultural resilience, and community engagement, with a particular focus on historically marginalized communities. Her design and research projects often investigate the intersection of architecture, ecology, and social justice, and have been recognized with numerous national and international awards and grants, including support from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the Graham Foundation. She is especially known for her long-standing collaboration with artist Rick Lowe on Project Row Houses, for which she received the AIA Houston 25-Year Campus Award. In 2021, she launched the acclaimed project “The Hair Salon: Black Hair as Architecture,” supported by a Graham Foundation grant. This work explores the generative potential of Black hair care practices as a framework for architectural thinking and design. Her installation “Coiled Field”—a sculptural piece composed of coiled copper tubes—was featured in exhibitions that reimagine the spatial and cultural significance of Black hair.  Tucker de Vazquez’s teaching is deeply collaborative and community-oriented. Her students’ work has garnered accolades, including an AIA Houston Design Award for the “Libromat”—a hybrid laundromat and library designed for Houston’s Third Ward. The project, developed in partnership with Dr. Felicia Davis of Penn State, continues the legacy of Project Row Houses by engaging local communities in the design and construction process. She has taught and lectured at institutions including UC Berkeley, Tulane University, and Prairie View A&M University, and her writing on Black culture and the American built environment has been widely published

PRESS

The Architect’s Newspaper
Gumbo : The Podcast
Houston Chronicle
YES! Magazine Solutions Journalism
Estetica Magazine
Vex Populisphere

Before the advent of Airbnb, a contractor purchased a building in New Orleans’ Warehouse District. I was tasked with combining the program of a private residence with a small family-run bed and breakfast in the former warehouse. The two programs are integrated with a circulation band that links them and brings natural light into the deep infill space. The walls of the bed and breakfast on each floor swing outward to create varying divisions and scales of rooms depending on the guests’ needs.