Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman Kick Off the Spring Hyde Lecture Season

The College of Architecture is excited to announce border ethics and urban equity advocate team Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman, principals of Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, will be giving the first Hyde lecture of the spring semester titled “Unwalling Citizenship” at 4 p.m., February 12 via Zoom. https://unl.zoom.us/j/96889170927

For their lecture, the pair will explore the earth’s increasingly walled world and the possible reasonings behind the surge of anti-immigrant sentiment everywhere. Can the idea of citizenship be recuperated for more emancipatory and inclusive political and social agendas? Cruz and Forman will discuss their work on “citizenship culture" at the US-Mexico border and delve into the possible roles art and architecture can play to advance these agendas.

Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, a research-based political and architectural practice in San Diego, investigates 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 and Forman lead a variety of urban research agendas and civic / public interventions in the San Diego-Tijuana border region and beyond.

Their work has been exhibited widely in prestigious cultural venues across the world. 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. They are both professors at the University of California, San Diego. Cruz is a professor of public culture and urbanism in the UCSD Department of Visual Arts and Forman is a professor of political theory in the UCSD Department of Political Science and founding director of the Center on Global Justice.

This presentation is part of the College of Architecture’s 2020-2021 Hyde Lecture Series featuring speakers from across disciplines that are united under the common theme of “Building Justice- Design and Planning for a Just Society.”

The college’s Hyde Lecture Series is a long-standing, endowed, public program. Each year the college hosts compelling speakers in the fields of architecture, interior design, landscape architecture and planning that enrich the ongoing dialog around agendas which are paramount to the design disciplines and our graduates.