Annual theme "Fragile Identities"
Three-part Symposium "Fragile Identities" (2013/14)
13.12.13
Panel 4: Identities in Urban Conflict
Teddy Cruz, Gareth Jones, Miguel Robles-Durán and Andres Lepik
in cooperation with the Museum for Architecture (Architekturmuseum TU Munich)
Miguel Robles-Durán
The urbanist Miguel Robles-Durán is Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Ecologies at The New School/Parsons in New York, cofounder of Cohabitation Strategies, an international non-profit cooperative for socio-spatial development based in New York and Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and since September 2013 co-directs with David Harvey the new National Center for Advanced Research in Socio-Spatial Justice in Quito, Ecuador. He currently is in the advisory board of the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI) Right to Housing Program and research advisor for The Right to the City Alliance. Robles-Durán has wide international experience in the strategic definition and coordination of trans-disciplinary urban projects, as well as in the development of tactical design strategies and civic engagement platforms that confront the contradictions of neoliberal urbanization. His design, research and theory work has been commissioned, exhibited and published in Europe, Asia, North/South America and he recently co-edited/authored the book Urban Asymmetries: Studies and Projects on Neoliberal Urbanization (2013).
Teddy Cruz
Teddy Cruz has been recognized internationally for his urban research of the Tijuana-San Diego border, advancing border immigrant neighbourhoods as sites of cultural production, from which to rethink urban policy, affordable housing and civic infrastructure. In 1991 he received the prestigious Rome Prize in Architecture and in 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. In 2008 he was selected to represent the US in the Venice Architecture Biennial and in 2011 he was a recipient of the Ford Foundation Visionaries Award. Teddy Cruz is currently a professor in public culture and urbanism in the Visual Arts Department at University of California, San Diego, where he founded the Center for Urban Ecologies.
Gareth A. Jones
Gareth A. Jones is Reader in Urban Geography at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He was educated at universities of London and Cambridge, and has held tenure and visiting positions at University of Wales, University of Texas at Austin and the Universidad IberoAmericana, Mexico City. His initial research considered how the urban poor gained access to land, housing and finance, before becoming interested in how urban space is contested physically and representationally. His recent ethnographic work has been with street youth in Mexico, and has resulted in a co-edited volume Youth Violence in Latin America (Palgrave, 2009) and a forthcoming monograph on street lives, identity and social practice. His present research covers three projects: elite identity and architecture in South Africa; empathy and ‘the slum’ as spectacle; and, violence and security in the contemporary city.
Andres Lepik professor at the department for Architectural History and Curatorial Practice at the Technical University Munich (TUM) and director of the Architecture Museum of the TUM. He studied art history, modern German literature and linguistics in Augsburg and Munich. After completing his PhD about Renaissance Architectural Models at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome he took up his scientific and curatorial work at the National Museums in Berlin and the New National Gallery in 1994. After various assignments at the National Museums in Berlin he headed the 20th- and 21st -century architecture collection at the Kunstbibliothek. Among the exhibitions he conceived are Renzo Piano (2000), Content/Rem Koolhaas and AMO/OMA (2004) and Oswald Mathias Ungers. Cosmos of Architecture (2006). In 2007 he became curator at the Architecture and Design Department of the Museum of Modern Art in New York where he curated the exhibition Small Scale – Big Change. New Architectures of Social Engagement (2010). As Loeb Fellow of the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University he is at present investigating the history and theory of social engagement in 20th century architecture. His most recent project is the current exhibition Afritecture – Building Social Change at the Architecture Museum of the Technical University Munich (running until February 2014).