Manufactured Sites
San Diego / Tijuana
Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman
architecture and urbanism agency, San Diego
Custom strategies serving informal urban development
Teddy Cruz lives and works in San Diego, California, and has made the border with Mexico the subject of his work. Despite the apparent brutality of this administrative and political separation and the glaring inequalities it reveals, he shows that it works like an ecosystem, a place of friction and intense exchange where everyone tries to pursue their own interests. An example is the circuit of construction materials made in Mexico to be sold in the USA, but used to build slums housing candidates for immigration. A careful observer of systems and the people involved, Teddy Cruz acts as a negotiator and mediator, elaborating support strategies for informal urban development, organising its economic systems, and improving life in these neighbourhoods.
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photographs : © Estudio Teddy Cruz + Forman