Teddy Cruz is a Guatemalan-born architect, whose work dwells at the border between San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico. He has been developing a practice and pedagogy that emerges out of the particularities of this bicultural territory. He is recognized internationally in collaboration with community-based nonprofit organizations such as Casa Familiar for its work on housing and its relationship to an urban policy more inclusive of social and cultural programs for the city.
Teddy Cruz obtained a Masters in Design Studies from Harvard University and the Rome Prize in Architecture from the American Academy in Rome. In 2004–2005 he was the first recipient of the James Stirling Memorial Lecture on the City Prize, by the Canadian Center of Architecture and the London School of Economics, and is currently an associate professor in public culture and urbanism in the Visual Arts Department at UCSD in San Diego. He has designed new mixed-use developments that reuse and adapt existing structures and recycled materials.
