Teddy Cruz and the wall:
An architectural discourse

Guatamalan born architect Teddy Cruz brought his form of socially responsible and artistically motivated architecture to the University of Detroit Mercy's McNichols campus in Detroit on Feb. 26th. He keynoted the second of several public lectures conducted by the UD-Mercy's School of Architecture and sponsored by the Great Lakes Fabricators & Erectors Association.

Cruz is an architectural graduate of Cal Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo and an assistant professor of architecture at Woodbury University's San Diego campus. He also holds a masters degree from the Harvard School of Design and has gained national reputation for his low income housing designs. He is adept at turning overlooked and unused space within a dense, urban neighborhood into a live-able, workable environment.

Owner of eStudio, San Diego, Calif., Cruz is a winner of the Rome Prize as well as numerous architectural awards,

Teddy Cruz, speaking at the university of Detroit-Mercy February 26, 2003

Three of his more noteworthy projects are in San Diego County in California.

The Casa Familiar, in the city of San Ysidro, involves transforming a church into a community and residential center along with a public plaza and open air Mercado. "This project is showing that you can raise density without compromising privacy and open space, though the result may be semi-private and semi-public areas," Cruz says.

La Maestra Family Clinic, in City Heights, is a small, non-profit health center serving African and Southeast Asian refugees as well as Latino immigrants. Ten old buildings are being recycled, with the spaces in-between them serving as walkways, outdoor waiting rooms, and play areas. Besides providing medical care, the clinic also hosts a job placement center.

Housing Corridors, in San Diego, is a plan prepared by Cruz for addressing urban sprawl with a mixed-use project that integrates housing, jobs, and the community. Cruz has received two American Institute of Architects awards for this effort.

In introducing Cruz, UD-Mercy Prof. Dan Pitera, AIA, said his work was fully in keeping with this year's theme for the lecture series, that of breaking ground.

"We (as architects) have attempted to be 'in the ground,' 'on the ground,' and 'above the ground,'" Pitera said, quoting from a poster advertising the lecture series. "This ground that defines us is more than the physical landscape of a site. It is embedded within our method of operation. What inspirations do we draw from as architects? What is our conceptual territory? How are we 'grounded?' Some have attempted to transgress this ground - to try to stake new ground. Thus, this year's lecture series focuses on these architects whose praxis exists on shifting ground. They have searched beyond the conceptual territory of architectural discourse. Their search is one of revealing - one of investigation, one of curiosity, and one of uneasiness."

Cruz's presentation used that statement as its foundation. Most of the architect's hour and a half lecture focused on his roots for inspiration, with only one of his projects - the Casa Familiar - actually presented, if briefly, to the audience. Instead, he began by illustrating how borders are being used to define, isolate, and discriminate against cultures. The prime example he cited in detail is the border between the U.S. and Mexico which, in many ways, symbolizes a deep division between northern and southern cultures in the Americas.

Architects have tended to operate in a similar negative manner, Cruz said, throwing up artificial borders within the profession that prevent the assimilation of knowledge and ideas from exterior sources. Major cities in the third world have attempted to do the same thing, he observed, projecting several slides in illustrating attempts in the 19th and early 20th centuries to pattern their urban development after famous European cities, such as Paris. Yet this artificial approach, imposed upon people and their cultures without their input or participation, often has not been successful. Even worse, in some instances they have come off as parodies, rather than good statements of architecture. And they can lead to misperceptions and stereotyping. Thus, Cruz charged, a common misperception of Mexico by Americans draws on stereotypes developed in the 1920s and 1930s that were untrue even then, coupled with fantasy images from fast food advertising.

Architects need to be far more realistic than that.

"We seem to always be in a tension between the past and future," Cruz said, in discussing the roots of architectural inspiration. For today, socially responsible architects must serve as a bridge across borders, to develop architecture that responsibly serves people and their communities without imposing arbitrary restrictions - an architecture that understands real human needs, such as privacy, space, and freedom.

To practice this type of architecture often requires the dismantling of borders, especially political institutions based on a way of life that's outdated, if not realistic. Cruz discussed the urban development of the poorer sections of third world cities, pointing out how families have adapted both their living and working environments to maximize the use of space. Where people can't afford automobiles, garages and sheds have been turned into workspaces for small entrepreneurs, in a manner that may or may not be in keeping with local zoning laws. In the third world, underground economies are quite common, turning out economical products or providing useful services behind the government's back.

This phenomena is beginning to creep into the poorer sections of first world countries, such as the U.S., Cruz said. It's not an underground based on drugs or immoral conduct - it's an alternate world of poor entrepreneurs serving the poor by providing food, clothing, construction, and related series independent of the mainstream economy. While every third world city "wants to become a first world city," Cruz said, ironically, "every first world city now contains a third world."

In designing and planning communities for this emerging culture, Cruz finds inspiration in third world South American cities where this adaptation and transformation has already taken place. He showed several slides where housing has been developed on top of open structures that can provide sales booth or kiosk space for business purposes. He discussed the renovation of churches for use as community and health centers and the development of Mercado or open markets for daily or weekly use.

Certainly some of the ideas presented by Cruz could be useful in the redevelopment of southwest Detroit, especially the Mexicantown area. A modernized area of concentrated mixed use development might generate an economic incubator while meeting the needs of low income people and recent Hispanic immigrants. Yet, as he observed when discussing his Casa Familiar project, architects may find local zoning laws to be far too restrictive to allow for it.

Fortunately for his project, Cruz has been able to obtain a special demonstration classification that eases zoning restrictions. But that doesn't mean architects and planning officials shouldn't be examining development laws for social relevancy. They may well be killing the healthy transformation of urban areas. Where they have become exclusionary, they need to be changed, to allow the borders separating people to be bridged.