The Defence | TRESDA

The Defence is TRESDA’s bi-annual public examination.

It marks the culmination of 003 — SYNTHESIS, where work developed under the programme’s conditions is tested beyond the individual, the cohort, and the institution itself. The Defence is not a showcase. It is a moment of accountability.

Held twice yearly — Autumn/Winter and Spring/Summer — The Defence situates work within a shared spatial condition, allowing decisions to be read, compared, and challenged publicly.

At the centre of The Defence is an erected living room.

This four-walled living room is constructed specifically for examination. It functions as a neutral yet demanding spatial volume, placing all projects within the same architectural condition. By working within a shared living room, attention is shifted away from display and toward coherence, interpretation, and consequence.

The familiarity of the living room removes spectacle as defence. What remains is how the space has been understood, negotiated, and resolved.

Each project presented at The Defense is developed as a professional living room proposition.

Work is produced under mentorship from industry leaders and in collaboration with seasonal partners, whose materials, systems, or products inform the spatial decisions made within the room. These partnerships introduce real constraints and real accountability.

The living room is conceived, detailed, and resolved as a complete environment, then subjected to public critique.

Presentation at The Defence is not performative.

Participants are required to articulate how Self and Other have been held together within the living room, and how decisions respond to use, presence, and consequence. The examination tests whether synthesis has been achieved — not rhetorically, but spatially.

Work is not judged privately. It is examined in public and entered into record.