We are excited to welcome Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman as part of the UC Placemaking Speaker Series. They are the principals of Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, a research-based political and architectural practice in San Diego, investigating issues of informal urbanization, borders and civic infrastructure. Together they lead the UCSD Community Stations, a platform for community-based research and teaching on poverty and social equity in the border region. This lecture will be followed by a question and answer session.
Supported by the UC Placemaking Initiative with support from Imagining America and the UC Davis Department of Design
Teddy Cruz (MDes Harvard) is an architectural designers and professor of Public Culture and Urbanism in the UCSD Department of Visual Arts. He is known internationally for his urban and architectural research of the Tijuana/San Diego border. Fonna Forman (PhD Chicago) is a professor of Political Science 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, climate justice, border ethics, and equitable urbanization. Together they are principals in Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, a research-based political and architectural practice in San Diego, investigating issues of informal urbanization, borders and civic infrastructure. Blurring conventional boundaries between theory and practice, and merging the fields of architecture and urbanism, political theory and urban policy, visual arts and public culture, Cruz + Forman lead variety of urban research agendas and civic / public interventions in the San Diego-Tijuana border region and beyond. 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. Together they lead the UCSD Community Stations, a platform for community-based research and teaching on poverty and social equity in the border region.
Their work has been exhibited widely in prestigious 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; and M+ Hong Kong. They represented the United States in the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. They co-edited Informal Market Worlds Reader: The Architecture of Economic Pressure(Rotterdam: nai010); and have two forthcoming monographs: Top-Down / Bottom-Up: The Research and Practice of Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman (Berlin: Hatje Cantz); and The Political Equator: Unwalling Citizenship (London: Verso).
UC Placemaking is excited to welcome Howard Rheingold (virtually!) to UC Davis as part of the Placemaking speaker series. Do we need physical spaces for creative placemaking? Can we manage to create a sense of community while being geographically separated due to COVID-19? Please join us on Friday, May 22nd for a digital discussion on virtual communities with the man who first coined the terminology in the 1980s, Howard Rheingold. Rheingold, a professor at UC Berkeley and Stanford, has been part of digitally-mediated social communication since WELL, the first electronic forum. He has investigated its capabilities in detail in his books The Virtual Community (1993) and Smart Mobs (2002), and is widely recognized as an influential voice surrounding modern communication technology.
As part of the “Shelter in Placemaking” event, UC Placemaking mini-grant recipients will present their ongoing work. Presentations include: David de la Peña, Gabi Kirk, Beth Ferguson, Harold Linde, Elizabeth Marley, Tracy Corado, Daniel Tran, Susana Barron, Tracy Manuel and Thomas Maiorana.
UC Placemaking is excited to welcome Eric Bunge of Brooklyn based nARCHITECTS to UC Davis as part of the Placemaking speaker series. Is architecture inherently complete? Or is it a state of incompletion and seeming inadequacy that incites us to imagine architecture as an armature for an ever-changing daily life? Across a range of buildings, public spaces, and ephemeral installations, nARCHITECTS argues for the formal and social potential of an architecture that remains somehow incomplete and ambiguously perceived—or in the architects’ words, Almost Buildings.
This lecture series explores relationships between art and belonging, with a focus on race. Might more art remind us of the forgotten, excluded, and devalued contributions of marginalized people to our rich history, or is public art merely a way to manage multiculturalism and silence dissent? How would Berkeley look if art and design were used to create spaces of care for relationships of justice and equity?
UC Placemaking is excited to welcome inventors, artists and activists Alex Hornstein and Hannah Liongoren to speak at UC Davis as part of the Placemaking speaker series. Alex and Hannah will be sharing their stories of innovation, technology, holography and sustainable communities. UC Placemaking is a multicampus initiative that seeks to enrich the connection between people and place through the arts and design. This free talk is open to all and will be followed by refreshments. Generous support has been provided by Imagining America, the UC Davis Department of Design and The University of California.
This free presentation is open to all and will be followed by refreshments. Generous support has been provided by the Art Department, the Arts Division, and The University of California.
In recent years, placemaking has emerged as a revitalization strategy to address social and environmental challenges in diverse communities. To some, it is a way to invigorate underutilized areas. To others, it is a problematic tool of gentrification. This workshop asks: how can universities play a more positive role in creative placemaking on and off campus? Building on the work of a University of California placemaking initiative, this workshop asks participants to contribute to an expanding set of strategies to best address these questions.
With Mimi Zeiger; Interrogating the spatial conditions of design and citizenship and rethinking conventional binaries embedded in architectural histories, these exhibitions present works by architects, designers, artists, and thinkers who are putting forth visions of future ways of belonging and making.
What is the role of the arts in catalyzing social justice? How do new technologies alter our conceptions of creativity and democracy? Join Berkeley Arts + Design and dozens of UC Berkeley campus organizations every Monday as we explore the connections among creative practice, social movements, and the strategic research of our public university.
