About

Tess is an urban designer, planner, and historian.

Tess received her Master’s in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and her Bachelor’s in History from Yale University, from which she graduated with honours.

Her work at M.I.T. ranged from urban design projects to historical geography papers, representing her broad academic interests in history, cartography, ecology, landscape aesthetics, and placemaking. For her thesis project, she wrote a history of development at what today is called “Suffolk Downs,” in East Boston, and explored potential futures of neighboring sites. At Yale, she specialized in historiography and 19th century German militarism.

Prior to joining Publica as a Senior Urban Designer, Tess worked as an Urban Planner at Field Operations, the landscape architecture firm, and as a Strategist and Project Manager at Pentagram Design.

She writes for the New York Review of Architecture and for the Leventhal Map and Education Center at the Boston Public Library.

She’s currently based in London.