TEDDY CRUZ ::::
born in 1962, Guatemala city, Guatemala
lives and works in San Diego

Teddy Cruz’s work integrates research, theory, and design production to create architecture, interiors, furniture, installations, public art, and landscape interventions. He founded his San Diego–based practice, Estudio Teddy Cruz, in 1993. His work “dwells at the border between San Diego and Tijuana, inspiring a practice and pedagogy that emerges out of the particularities of this bicultural territory and the integration of theoretical research and design production.” Cruz’s projects include Corridors on Imperial in San Diego and Casa Familiar—affordable housing in San Ysidro, CA. His housing project, Border Postcards: Chronicles from the Edge, was awarded the 2004–2005 James stirling memorial lecture on the city by the canadian centre for Architecture.

For World Factory, Cruz has produced an architectural model in the form of a frame which was manufactured in Tijuana at a maquiladora (“assembly plant”). The frame is naked and raw and sits on a tower of rubber tires. Additionally the installation will have a model of a frame inserted into the favela (“shanty town”) as an example of the project realized to its full extent. On the wall behind the frame is a visual narrative of the factory producing the metal for the frame. This narrative explains the dynamics between the settlements and the maquiladoras as they give back to their community. This story is explained through images on a wall. it is an example of the systems for a stable house.

Teddy Cruz will be in residence at SFAI for his project for World Factory and a workshop project with Didier Faustino as part of the Acting Out in the City program in late March/early April.