Lectures
Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman
Unwalling Citizenship
Join 2019 William Henry Bishop Visiting Professors Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman for a discussion of their work on the US-Mexico border.
Teddy Cruz is a professor of Public Culture and Urbanism in the UCSD Department of Visual Arts. 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. Recipient of the Rome Prize in Architecture in 1991, his honors the Ford Foundation Visionaries Award in 2011, the 2013 Architecture Award from the US Academy of Arts and Letters, and the 2018 Vilcek Prize in Architecture.
Fonna Forman 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 in cities, border ethics, and equitable urbanization. She is known internationally for her revisionist research on Adam Smith, recuperating the ethical, social, spatial and public dimensions of his thought. She is a Vice-Chair of the 2015 University of California Bending the Curve Report on climate change solutions; and serves on the Global Citizenship Commission, advising UN policy on human rights in the 21st century.
Cruz and Forman are principals in Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, a research-based political and architectural practice in San Diego, investigating issues of 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 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-engaged research and teaching on poverty and social equity in the border region.