Socializing Architecture: Top Down / Bottom Up

At the intersection of architecture, art, public culture, and political theory, Socializing Architecture urges architects and urbanists to mobilize a new public imagination toward a more just and equitable urbanization. Drawn from decades of lived experience, Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman engage the San Diego–Tijuana border region as a global laboratory to address the central challenges of urbanization today: deepening social and economic inequality, dramatic migratory shifts, explosive urban informality, climate disruption, the thickening of border walls, and the decline of public thinking. Following Spatializing Justice, Socializing Architecture is the second part of a two-volume monograph. It continues to build a compelling case for architects and urban designers to intervene in the contested space between public and private interests. Through analysis and diverse case studies, the authors demonstrate strategies for altering exclusionary urban policies and advancing instead a more equitable and convivial architecture.

Professors Cruz and Forman are principals in Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, a research-based political and architectural practice in San Diego. They lead a variety of urban research agendas and civic/public interventions in the San Diego–Tijuana border region and beyond. They also direct the University of California, San Diego’s Center on Global Justice, which focuses on community-based solutions to poverty and environmental crisis.