Join us on Thursday, March 4th, for a lecture and live Q+A discussion with Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman

Unwalling Citizenship

In collaboration with the Cal Poly LA Metro Program in Architecture and Urban Design

Lecture is Free and Open to the Public

Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman

Teddy Cruz (MDes Harvard) is a professor of Public Culture and Urbanism in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego. He is known internationally for his urban research of the Tijuana/San Diego border, advancing border neighborhoods as sites of cultural production from which to rethink urban policy, affordable housing, and public space.

Fonna Forman (PhD Chicago) 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, climate justice, border ethics, and equitable urbanization.

Together Cruz + Forman are principals in Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, a research-based practice, investigating issues of borders, informal urbanization, civic infrastructure, and public culture, with a special emphasis on Latin American cities. 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 a 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 cultural venues across the world, including the Museum of Modern Art; the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum; Das Haus der Kulturen der Welt; and M+ Hong Kong. They represented the United States in the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. They 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)

Introduced and moderated by Stephen Phillips, AIA, PhD, Principal of Stephen Phillips Architects (SPARCHS) and professor, director, Cal Poly LA Metro Program in Architecture and Urban Design (California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo)

Free Parking is available at the corner of Helms Ave. and Venice Blvd.

Photos (Left to Right): Image of Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman, Image of The UCSD-CASA Community Station at Living Rooms at the Border (2019), Image of The UCSD-Alacran Community Station + Migrant Sanctuary (2020).