Teddy Cruz

Teddy Cruz’s San Diego infoSite is a commissioned work of ephemeral architecture that was inserted within existing strategies of cross-border recycling. The temporary structure combined salvaged materials with elements related to recycling processes—such as truck beds used to transport crushed cars to recycling plants—and dynamics of transit and transportation. The design components not only characterize the “spaces of flow” in the border region, but also refer to materials that are utilized in the construction of emergency habitats. Through the transformation of use—the way in which a packing material can become a building material—Cruz posits a sustainable architectural practice.

In a city in which public space is increasingly diminished and demarcated by parking lots, the decision to locate the San Diego infoSite on the site of twenty-eight parking spaces in front of the San Diego Museum of Art was, in part, fueled by a desire to appropriate the space for alternative public use. The San Diego infoSite was a temporary architectural strategy for the (re)occupation and recovery of a public space that had hitherto been primarily associated with traditional white cube exhibitions.

Curators: Osvaldo Sánchez and Donna Conwell
Venue: Balboa Park, San Diego

Acknowledgments