Keynote Lectures
Teddy Cruz
Professor of Public Culture and Urbanization in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego, where he is Director of Urban Research at the UCSD Center on Global Justice and Co-Director of the UCSD Cross-Border Initiative. He is known internationally for his urban research on the Tijuana/San Diego border, advancing border neighborhoods as sites of cultural production from which to rethink urban policy, affordable housing, and civic infrastructure. Recipient of the Rome Prize in Architecture in 1991, his honours include representing the United States in the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale, the Ford Foundation Visionaries Award in 2011, and the 2013 Architecture Award from the U.S. Academy of Arts and Letters. From 2012–2013 Cruz and Fonna Forman were special advisors on Civic and Urban Initiatives for the City of San Diego, and together led the development of its Civic Innovation Lab.
Fonna Forman
Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego and founding Director of the UCSD Center on Global Justice and Co-Director of the UCSD Cross-Border Initiative. She is a political theorist best known for her revisionist work on Adam Smith, recuperating the ethical, social, spatial, and public dimensions of his political economy. Current work focuses on human rights at the urban scale, climate justice in cities, and equitable urban development in the global south. She presently serves as Vice-Chair of the University of California Climate Solutions Group, and on the Global Citizenship Commission (advising UN policy on human rights). Forman and Teddy Cruz are presently co-investigating a Ford Foundation-funded study of citizenship culture in the San Diego/Tijuana border region, in collaboration with Antanas Mokcus and the Bogota-based NGO, Corpovisionarios.
Alejandro Echeverri
Co-founder and Director of urbam, the Center for Urban and Environmental Studies at EAFIT University in Medellín, Colombia. His work has earned, among other awards, the National Architectural Award in 1996, the National Urban Planning Award in 2008, the Curry Stone Design Prize in 2009, and the 10th Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design from Harvard. As The General Manager of the Empresa de Desarrollo Urbano (EDU) from 2004 to 2005, and the City’s Director of Urban Projects for the Municipality of Medellín from 2005 to 2008, Echeverri has played a crucial role in the rejuvenation of Medellín. With the mayor, Sergio Fajardo, Echeverri established public works programmes and initiated building a series of visually striking libraries, schools, parks, and community entres in Medellín’s most impoverished areas. Because of these efforts, Medellín is now considered a blueprint for the future of other cities in the developing world.
Sergio Fajardo
Former Governor of the state of Antioquia, Colombia and previous mayor for the city of Medellin (2003 to 2007), Sergio’s career has oscillated from journalism and academia to independent politician. Mathematician by training with a Ph.D. in Mathematics and minor in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Sergio was a member of the National Council on Basic Sciences, the National Commission on Masters and Doctorates and Director of the Center for Science and Technology in Antioquia. As Governor, Sergio has developed innovative processes for resource allocation in rural areas for cultural and educational facilities with the program Parques Educativos. His work in the transformation of Medellin has acquired international recognition as a model for citizen participation and transparency in the use of public resources. Sergio was a recipient of the Curry Stone Design Prize in 2009.
Caroline Shannon de Cristo
Co-founder of +D Studio and Curator of Park and Institute Sitiê, both located in the Favela of Vidigal in Rio de Janeiro, where she is dedicated to integrating the research, design and development of architecture, public policy and technology to improve people’s lives. Her previous professional experience includes work at Shepley Bulfinch Richardson and Abbott, NBBJ, MASS Design Group and MoMA. She received a Master’s degree in Architecture with distinction from the Harvard GSD, earning the AIA Henry Adams Medal and, together with Pedro Henrique de Cristo, the Appleton Fellowship for Architectures of Urban Integration in Latin America (exhibited at the GSD in 2015). She was awarded with the Sitiê and +D’s teams the SEED Design Awards for Excellence in Public Interest Design in 2015 and will exhibit at the Rotterdam and Venice Biennales in 2016.
Pedro Henrique de Cristo
Co-founder of +D Studio and Executive+Design Director of Park and Institute Sitiê, both located in the Favela of Vidigal in Rio de Janeiro, where he integrates the research, design and development of architecture, policy and technology. A two-time UN laureate on urban sustainability and the integration of arts and activism, he is trained at Officina de Arquitetura and has a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard where his thesis was turned into the studio School of the Year 2030@RJ and he earned, with Caroline de Cristo, the Appleton Fellowship for Architectures of Urban Integration in Latin America (exhibited at the GSD in 2015), both at the Harvard GSD. He was awarded with the Sitiê and +D’s teams the SEED Design Awards for Excellence in Public Interest Design in 2015 and will exhibit at the Rotterdam and Venice Biennales in 2016.
Symposium Panelists
John Peterson
John Peterson, architect, educator and activist, is curator of the Loeb Fellowship at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Peterson is also the founder of Public Architecture. Public Architecture’s 1+ program has attracted participation from over 1500 firms nationwide and supports over $60 million in pro bono service annually. Peterson also led the architectural practice Peterson Architects from 1993 to 2010, and has taught at the California College of the Arts and the University of Texas at Austin. Peterson has played an important part in defining the concept of “public interest design.” He holds degrees in fine arts and architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design and was a Loeb Fellow in 2006.
Miguel Robles Duran
Miguel Robles-Durán is an urbanist, professor and lead faculty member of the graduate program in Design and Urban Ecologies at The New School/Parsons in New York and Senior fellow at “Civic City”, a post-graduate design/research program based at the Haute École d’Art et de Design (HEAD) Geneva, Switzerland. He is also founding member COHABITATION STRATEGIES (CohStra), an international cooperative for socio-spatial research, design and development. Among his other direct engagements in the urban field, he co-directs with the geographer David Harvey the National Strategy Center for the Right to the Territory (CENEDET) in the Republic of Ecuador, and is research advisor of 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 tactical design strategies and civic engagement platforms that confront the contradictions of neoliberal urbanization. His design, research and theory work has been commissioned, published and exhibited widely across Europe, Asia, North/South America.
Anita Berrizbeitia
Anita Berrizbeitia is Chair and Professor of the Department of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Berrizbeitia is a landscape architect specializing in theory and criticism of nineteenth and twentieth-century public landscapes, with particular interests in material culture, design expression, and the productive functions and roles of landscape in processes of urbanization. Her Latin American research centers on the creative hybridization of local and foreign cultural practices as a response to a centuries-old process of global cultural exchange; the role of large-scale infrastructural projects on territorial organization; and the interface between landscape and emerging urbanization.
Jose Falconi
José Luis Falconi is the acting Director of Playdrives, the Director of Publications for the Cultural Agents Initiative, and Fellow at the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University, where he received his PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures in 2010. He has contributed to several journals as writer, editor, and photographer, and has curated more than twenty exhibitions of work by emergent Latin American artists. Falconi’s latest book, Ad Usum/To be Used: The Works of Pedro Reyes, will be published in the U.S. in December 2013. Source: http://www.pre-texts.org/
Christian Werthmann
Christian Werthmann is a Professor at the Institute of Landscape Architecture, Leibniz University Hannover. Werthmann accumulated extensive professional and academic experience in Europe and the United States. In his academic work, he researches the implementation of ecological infrastructure in heavily urbanized areas, especially in the non-formal cities of the Global South. His current research is concerned with the redevelopment of industrial floodplains in São Paulo and pre-emptive urbanization strategies for the landslide prone hills of Medellín in Colombia. He recently published with Jessica Bridger the book "Metropolis Nonformal" documenting 25 expert views on informal urbanization.
Pamela Puchalski
Pamela Puchalski is an urban development expert and a Senior Fellow at New America. Working in the U.S. and internationally, she designs and implements strategies and initiatives for urban resilience, neighborhood revitalization, economic development, and competitiveness. These help cities and communities persevere and prosper in the face of a growing list of threats linked to climate change, economic instability, inequality, and injustice. She developed a resilience strategy anchored by community-based approaches with Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities (2014). She has collaborated on projects in cities across Brazil, India, and Turkey. In addition to a M.S. in Urban Planning from Columbia University, she has degrees in Economics and Literature (Phi Beta Kappa) from the University of Maryland. Pamela lives in Brooklyn. Source: https://www.newamerica.org
Jota Samper
Jota (Jose) Samper has been working as an architect, planner and artist. A lecturer at MIT-DUSP. Born and raised in Medellín, he studied architecture at the U. Nacional de Colombia. He holds a Master Degree in City Planning, and a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning both from MIT. His projects had won more than six national (U.S.) and international awards, including an exhibit at the MoMA. His work concentrates on sustainable urban growth and dwells in the intersection between urban informality (Slums) and urban violent conflict. He is a co-founder of Mobility Movilidad nonprofit dedicated to work with marginalized communities.
Iñaki Ábalos
Iñaki Ábalos is a Ph.D. in Architecture and Chaired Professor of Architectural Design at the ETSAM since 2002. He was Kenzo Tange Professor (2009), Design Critic in Architecture (2010-2012), and since 2013 Professor in Residence and Chair of the Department of Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. In association with Renata Sentkiewicz, he is a founding member of Abalos+Sentkiewicz since 2006. The firm last published monograph is "Essays on Thermodynamics, Architecture and Beauty" Actar (2015).
Diane Davis
Diane E. Davis is the Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design at the GSD. Her research focuses on the relations between urbanization and national development, the politics of urban policy, socio-spatial practice in conflict cities, and comparative urban development. With a special interest in Latin America, she has explored topics ranging from historic preservation, urban social movements, and identity politics to urban governance, fragmented sovereignty, and state formation. Her current research examines transformations in cities of the global south produced by globalization, informality, and political or economic violence.
Rahul Mehrotra
Rahul Mehrotra is a practicing architect, urban designer, and educator. His firm, RMA Architects, was founded in 1990 in Mumbai and has designed and executed projects for clients that include government and nongovernmental agencies, corporate, as well as private individuals and institutions. The firm has also initiated several unsolicited projects driven by the firm’s commitment to advocacy in the city of Mumbai. Mehrotra is a professor of urban design and planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD). His recent book is Architecture in India, since 1990 which became the basis for an exhibition he co curated titled – The State of Architecture – Practises and Processes in India which was opened at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Mumbai in Jan 2016.