Socializing Architecture Top-Down / Bottom-Up

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.

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.

Introduction: A Critical Spatial Practice at the US-Mexico Border 7
Section I: Essays
1 Conflict is Generative 14
2 Informality is Praxis 22
3 Co-Producing the City with Others 30
4 Where is Our Public Imagination? 44
5 A Practice of Mediation: Top-Down / Bottom-Up 56
Section II: Projects
Clusters:
1 Conflict Urbanizations: Visualizing the Political 68
2 Urbanizations of Adaptation: Cross-Border Migrant Flows 158
3 Immigrant Neighborhoods: Housing Laboratories 216
4 Bottom-Up Public: The Functional Dimension of Participation 352
5 Top-Down Public: Designing Urban Justice 442
6 Decolonizing Knowledge and Democratizing the City: The UCSD Community Stations 494
Notes 575
Image Credits 579
Acknowledgements 581
Colophon 584