Next Tuesday April 21st, our Development by Design: Dialogues in Architecture, Equity and Development comes to a exciting finale with architect Teddy Cruz, widely known for his urban research of the Tijuana-San Diego border. (Register here!)
Teddy Cruz has been credited with expanding the role of the architect through his innovative practice, carrying out research into systems, materials, and socio-political phenomena and engaging in political and legal issues related to the built environment. In this dialogue, ESARQ professor architecture critic Fredy Massad will talk to Teddy about his ongoing work along the San Diego-Tijuana border and how he finds inspiration in the resourceful informal practices used by communities in the face of crisis and how architects can engage in political and legal issues related to the built environment in order to effect positive change. Teddy’s bottom-up approach primarily engages the micro-scale of the neighborhood, transforming it into a laboratory to construct alternative urbanisms of transgression that infiltrate themselves beyond the property line in the form of non-conforming spatial land entrepreneurial practices.
Our students were lucky enough to spend time with Teddy on the field just a few months back during this year’s field trip. Led by codirector Carmen Mendoza, the two-week workshop explored collaborative urban strategies on the Tijuana-San Diego border and analyzed the transformation of vacant sites into opportunities for spatial inclusion, relying on feedback from Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman of the UC San Diego’s BLUM Cross-Border Initiative together with Sergio Palleroni and Todd Ferry of Portland State University’s Center for Public Interest Design. See more photos of the fieldtrip in our FB album.
To attend, just register online and let us know you’re coming on our Facebook event. We hope to see you at the last session of our Development by Design series at our partner’s sleek venue Roca Barcelona Gallery next Thursday at 7pm! Stay tuned for updates here and on Facebook and Twitter.
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SPEAKER BIOS
Teddy Cruz | Teddy Cruz, architect of Guatemalan origin, currently works as associate professor of Public Culture and Urbanism in the Visual Arts department of the University of California in San Diego (UCSD). He is advisor to the City of San Diego on Urban and Public Initiatives, director of the Center of Urban Ecologies, and co-director of UCSD-Blum Cross-Border Initiative and Civic Innovation Lab. Teddy has based most of his work in the Tijuana-San Diego border region and is recognized internationally for his bottom-up artistic, architectural and urban projects. By viewing informality not as precariousness but as social practices of adaptation and creative intelligence, Teddy brings to life new forms of citizenship, governance, social organization and infrastructure. His most recent awards include the Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City’s Architecture Award and his nomination by Fast Company Magazine as one of the 50 Most Influential Designers in America.
Fredy Massad | Fredy Massad studied architecture in Argentina, his country of origin, and is a researcher and critic of contemporary architecture. He is lecturer at ESARQ-UIC of Theory and Criticism of Architecture and co-founder of ¿btbW/Architecture. In previous years he coordinated the architectural section in a Spanish contemporary art magazine called EXIT Express. Fredy currently writes the blog La viga en el ojo in the online version of the ABCnewspaper. As writer, author and co-editor of several publications, he analyzes the ideological and political debate of architecture in modern society. He is often guest speaker in international conferences and universities which focus on dialogue, debate and opinion-making on topics related to the architectural world. Fredy invites us to value criticism, be aware of the responsibility that criticism entails, and most importantly, reflect on the reality of architecture from different perspectives.