Lecture: Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman

Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman

For decades Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman have argued that architects and urban designers can to do more, must do more, than design buildings and physical systems. In their two new books Spatializing Justice and Socializing Architecture (MIT Press) and Socializing Architecture: Top-Down / Bottom-Up (Hatje Cantz), they call for, and demonstrate, a new kind of architecture that confronts urban inequality, racialized violence and ecosocial catastrophe. In their lecture, they will discuss their work on “citizenship culture” at the US-Mexico border, and share the network of civic spaces and social housing projects that they have co-developed with migrant communities to address the challenges of accelerating migration, and cultivate regional and global solidarities.

Teddy Cruz (MDes Harvard University) is a Professor of Public Culture and Urbanization in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego.

Fonna Forman (PhD University of Chicago) is a Professor of Political Theory at the University of California, San Diego and Founding Director of the UCSD Center on Global Justice.

Together they are principals in Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman is a research-based political and architectural practice in San Diego investigating borders, informal urbanization, climate resilience, civic infrastructure and public culture. They lead variety of urban research agendas and civic / public interventions in the San Diego-Tijuana border region and beyond. Their work has been exhibited widely in cultural venues across the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, New York; Das Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; M+ Hong Kong, and representing the United States in the 2018 Venice Architectural Biennale. They have two new monographs: Spatializing Justice: Building Blocks and Socializing Architecture: Top-Down / Bottom-Up (MIT Press and Hatje Cantz) and one forthcoming: Unwalling Citizenship (Verso).

Lectures are free and open to the public.