In a society increasingly obsessed with policing borders and erecting boundaries, architect Teddy Cruz operates in the zone between countries, disciplines, and cultures. “We should be turning our attention away from the wall and toward the landscape, the ecology, and the communities,” says Cruz, whose work is featured in the Walker exhibition Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes. He has followed that admonition with projects of passion, gaining critical acclaim for engaging issues of community, sociability, and immigration, and for collaborating with community-based nonprofit organizations on affordable, sustainable housing and its potential to transform urban policy. A native of Guatemala, Cruz has won the prestigious Rome Prize in Architecture, has his own longtime architecture practice (Estudio Teddy Cruz), and is a professor in the visual arts department of the University of California, San Diego.
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