One of the aspects that makes our master program so special is the range and quality of its faculty. As a course focused on the role of architecture and urban planning in the field of emergency and development, our professors are not only architects and planners with exceptional experience in those fields, but are also social, political and environmental scientists, anthropologists, geographers, humanitarian workers and logisticians from both local and international institutions, universities and agencies.
Next year for our 2016-17 course, in addition to returning professors like Nabeel Hamdi (Oxford Brookes University), Clara Irazabal (Columbia GSAPP) and Reena Tiwari (Curtin University), we are proud to announce four new members to our visiting faculty.
Here they are:
Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman
Originally from Guatemala, Teddy is a Professor of Public Culture and Urbanization in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego. He is known internationally for his urban research on the Tijuana/San Diego border, advancing border neighborhoods as sites of cultural production from which to rethink urban policy, affordable housing, and public space. Recipient of the Rome Prize in Architecture in 1991, his honors include representing the US in the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale, the Ford Foundation Visionaries Award in 2011, and the 2013 Architecture Award from the US Academy of Arts and Letters. Teddy was a guest speaker at our Development by Design: Dialogues in Architecture, Equity and Design which highlighted the role of architects and designers in contexts of poverty, disaster, conflict and rapid urbanization.
Fonna is a Professor of Political Theory and Founding Director of the Center on Global Justice at the University of California, San Diego. A theorist of ethics and public culture, her work focuses on human rights at the urban scale, climate justice in cities, and equitable urban development in the global south. She serves as Vice-Chair of the University of California Climate Solutions Group, and on the Global Citizenship Commission (advising UN policy on human rights).
Together they direct the UCSD Cross-Border Initiative, and are principals in Estudio Teddy Cruz + Forman, a research-based political and architectural practice in San Diego. Their work emphasizes urban conflict and informality as sites of intervention for rethinking public policy and civic infrastructure, with a special emphasis on Latin American cities. From 2012-13 they served as special advisors on Civic and Urban Initiatives for the City of San Diego and led the development of its Civic Innovation Lab.
You can learn more about their work here and here.
Teddy and Fonna’s joint workshop for our course will be on Bottom-up Strategies for Urban Regeneration.
Eric Cesal
Eric is an analyst, writer, designer, builder and humanitarian based in San Francisco, CA. He grew up in Washington, D.C. and holds an undergraduate degree in Architectural Studies from Brown University and Master’s Degrees in Architecture, Construction Management and Business Administration (MBA) from Washington University in St. Louis. He was Architecture for Humanity’s last executive director, after having worked with the organization since 2006 and led its Haiti Rebuilding Center from 2010-2012. His book, Down Detour Road: An Architect in Search of Practice, is a memoir/manifesto that is widely acknowledged as a roadmap to 21st century architecture. Eric gave a talk in Barcelona last November at RMIT’s Design for a Fragile Planet symposium in partnership with our university and UN-Habitat.
Learn more about Eric in this recent interview.
Eric’s workshop for our course will be on Disaster and Resilience.
Aditya Kumar
Aditya has a master degree in Architecture MR+D (Metropolitan Research and Design) from the Southern California Institute of Architecture, in Los Angeles. He work focuses on supporting communities living in poverty stricken slums in Southern and Eastern Africa, with a strong focus on South African slums, townships, housing and backyard communities. He has an outstanding work which comprises among others the reconstruction of Nahr El Bared Palestinian refugee camp, and is Head of the Design and Planning Unit of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Tripoli, Lebanon. Last year he gave open lecture to our students on community-based planning in managing disaster reconstruction, post-war reconstruction and slum upgrading.
Aditya’s workshop for our course will be on Resettlement Strategies in Post-Disaster and Post-Conflict.
If you’re interested in joining our course in Barcelona and taking advantage of the opportunity to learn from and connect with practitioners like these, find out more about our program.