Socializing Architecture: Top-Down / Bottom-Up
Oct 2025 · MIT Press
Ebook
584
Pages
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infoThis book will become available on October 7, 2025. You will not be charged until it is released.
About this ebook
With a focus on deepening inequality across this world, this richly illustrated monograph of social practice in architecture shows how to catalyze productive change in the world’s border regions.
Situated at the intersection of architecture, art, public culture, and political theory, Socializing Architecture urges architects and urbanists to intervene in the contested space between public and private interests, 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. Drawn from decades of lived experience, Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman engage the San Diego–Tijuana border region as a global laboratory to address the central challenges of urbanization today: deepening social and economic inequality, dramatic migratory shifts, explosive urban informality, climate disruption, the thickening of border walls, and the decline of public thinking.
Socializing Architecture follows Spatializing Justice (Cruz and Forman, 2022). It is organized into two main sections—essays and projects—and continues to build a compelling case for architects and urban designers to do more than design buildings and physical systems. Through analysis and diverse case studies, the authors show architects and urbanists how to alter the exclusionary policies that produce public crisis and instead realize new political and economic strategies that advance a more equitable and convivial architecture.
Situated at the intersection of architecture, art, public culture, and political theory, Socializing Architecture urges architects and urbanists to intervene in the contested space between public and private interests, 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. Drawn from decades of lived experience, Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman engage the San Diego–Tijuana border region as a global laboratory to address the central challenges of urbanization today: deepening social and economic inequality, dramatic migratory shifts, explosive urban informality, climate disruption, the thickening of border walls, and the decline of public thinking.
Socializing Architecture follows Spatializing Justice (Cruz and Forman, 2022). It is organized into two main sections—essays and projects—and continues to build a compelling case for architects and urban designers to do more than design buildings and physical systems. Through analysis and diverse case studies, the authors show architects and urbanists how to alter the exclusionary policies that produce public crisis and instead realize new political and economic strategies that advance a more equitable and convivial architecture.
About the author
Teddy Cruz is Professor of Public Culture and Urbanization in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego, and Director of Urban Research in the UCSD Center on Global Justice.
Fonna Forman is Professor of Political Theory at the University of California, San Diego, and Founding Director of the Center on Global Justice. Cruz and Forman are principals in Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, a research-based political and architectural practice in San Diego. They designed El Santuario Frontera (the Border Sanctuary), housing for immigrants on the San Diego–Tijuana border.
Fonna Forman is Professor of Political Theory at the University of California, San Diego, and Founding Director of the Center on Global Justice. Cruz and Forman are principals in Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, a research-based political and architectural practice in San Diego. They designed El Santuario Frontera (the Border Sanctuary), housing for immigrants on the San Diego–Tijuana border.
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