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Home > Prizes > Prize Recipients > Teddy Cruz

Teddy Cruz

2018 Vilcek Prize in Architecture

Location

San Diego, CA

Title

Teddy Cruz

Area(s) of Research

Urban architectural research; urban policy; affordable housing; public space

Education

Harvard Graduate School of Design, Harvard University (MDes);
California State Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo (BArch)

Country of Birth

Guatemala

Links
  • estudioteddycruz.com

Tags
affordable housing architect architecture design designer guatemala immigration infrastructure urban planning urbanism
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Since fleeing the Guatemalan civil war for the U.S. in 1982, San Diego-based Teddy Cruz has devoted his professional life to building public-space architectural projects along the Southern border, helping create new sights for education, empowerment, and flowering civic discourses. His immigration story isn’t just trivia in his biography, it’s the genesis of his mission.

His love of architecture was ignited by a visit to a family friend who was an architecture student. “He had his table near a window, and he had a cup of coffee and sketch paper, and he was doodling,” Cruz says. “And it was raining outside, and I said, ‘This is exactly what I want to do—to be involved in shaping things.’”

Teddy Cruz with partner Fonna Forman and student at University of California, San Diego

But Cruz has distinguished himself in the field of architecture by trying to reshape political systems and the socioeconomic forces behind them. “I didn’t want to…be designing boutique hotels or galleries or houses for the one percent,” he says. Instead, his work is focused on considering the citizenship experience of people living along the U.S.–Mexico border.

As founding director of Latin America/Los Angeles (LA/LA), an initiative at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, he investigated the impact of immigration on the urban landscape of Los Angeles. After studying architectural theory in graduate school at Harvard, he moved to San Diego, where he began a long-term collaboration with Casa Familiar — a nonprofit organization engaged in community development in San Ysidro, a district directly abutting the border.

Architectural models of cross-border community stations, education-based public spaces, by Teddy Cruz.

Cruz has co-designed, with partner Fonna Forman, a series of what he calls cross-border community stations: education-based public spaces he hopes will become a catalyst for community development. “This project is a network of hubs located in marginalized communities, where teaching and research can be conducted collaboratively,” he says. “It’s not just a place of beautification, but it’s a site of knowledge.”

 

Awards and Accomplishments

  • Social Design Circle Award, Curry Stone Foundation (2017)
  • “50 Most Influential Designers in America,” Fast Company (2011)
  • Global Award for Sustainable Architecture, French National Museum of Architecture (2011)
  • Visionary Leader Award, Ford Foundation (2011)
  • Progressive Architecture Award, Architecture Magazine (2001, 2004)
  • The James Stirling Memorial Lecture on the City Prize (2004)
  • Rome Prize in Architecture (1991)

Related Prize Recipients

2018 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Architecture

James Leng

Born in China
James Leng receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Architecture for his investigations into the role of defunct buildings and his vision for public, social uses of infrastructure.
Portrait of James Leng
2018 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Architecture

Jing Liu

Born in China
Jing Liu receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Architecture for her innovative interdisciplinary work and for developing new approaches to urban housing.
Portrait of Jing Liu
2018 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Architecture

Mona Ghandi

Born in Iran
Mona Ghandi receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Architecture for using data-driven design and biofeedback information to create responsively empathetic spaces.
Portrait of Mona Ghandi

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