UC DAVIS
December 1, 2020
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).