Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman
Teddy Cruz (MDes GSD Harvard University) is a Professor of Public Culture and Spatial Practice in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego, where he co-directs the Center on Global Justice. He is known internationally for his urban research on the Tijuana/San Diego border, advancing border neighborhoods as critical sites for socio-spatial research, from which to rethink urban policy, affordable housing, and civic infrastructure. Recipient of the Rome Prize in Architecture, his honors also include the Ford Foundation Visionaries Award, the Architecture Award from the US Academy of Arts and Letters, the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture, by the French National Museum of Architecture, and most recently, the Vilcek Prize in Architecture.
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. Trained as an intellectual historian, her work engages the intersection of ethics, public culture and urban policy, with a focus on climate policy and education. Forman regularly serves on local and international advisory bodies on human rights, climate justice and climate migration. She currently serves as co-chair of the UC President’s Global Climate Leadership Council, advising UCOP on climate and sustainability policy, research and education. Forman is a co-chair of CRC2 (Climate Resilience California and Californians), a partnership between the California Governor’s Office, The Vatican’s Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences, and the University of California Office of the President.
Together, they are principals in Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, a research-based political and architectural practice at UC San Diego investigating borders, informal urbanization, climate adaptation, civic infrastructure and public culture. They have served as special advisors on civic and urban Initiatives for the City of San Diego, and directed this city’s Civic Innovation Lab. In 2015, they founded the UC San Diego Community Stations, a cross-border network of public spaces located in migrant neighborhoods on both sides of the border wall, designed and built for collaborative education and research, in partnership with grassroots organizations. 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 represented the United States in the 2008 and 2018 Venice Architectural Biennales. They have two new monographs: Spatializing Justice: Building Blocks and Socializing Architecture: Top-Down / Bottom-Up by MIT Press and Hatje Cantz; and one forthcoming: Unwalling Citizenship by Verso.