In episode 23, Season 2 of A is for Architecture, I spoke with UC San Diego professors, Fonna Forman and Teddy Cruz about their two recent books, Spatializing Justice: Building Blocks and Socializing Architecture: Top-Down / Bottom-Up, published by MIT Press in August 2022 and March 2023 respectively. Fonna and Teddy run Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, a ‘a research-based political and architectural practice in San Diego, who investigate ‘issues of informal urbanization, civic infrastructure and public culture […] 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’ [leading] urban research agendas and civic/public interventions in the San Diego-Tijuana border region and beyond’. Fonna is Professor of Political Science and Teddy is Professor of Public Culture and Urbanism at UC San Diego, where they also co-direct the Centre on Global Justice and the X-Border Lab.

Both books are well worth a read, and are full of thoughtful, practice-based insights and provocations, drawing on a rich, political interpretation of the spatial conditions of exclusion found in a very extreme condition. Spatializing Justice is ‘a practical handbook for confronting social and economic inequality and uneven urban growth in architectural and planning practice’. Socializing Architecture follows this, urging architects and urbanists ‘to design political and civic processes that mediate top-down and bottom-up urban resources, and to mobilize a new public imagination toward a more just and equitable urbanization.’

Big, important stuff, so be a diamond and have a listen.

You’ll find Spatializing Justice and Socializing Architecture on the MIT Press website, linked above, where you can buy them. Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman’s website is here, with more information on their work and practice to be found all over the internet; their Instagram is here, Fonna’s LinkedIn is here, Teddy’s UC San Diego profile is here, Fonna’s is here.

Thanks for listening.

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Music credits: Bruno Gillick

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