The miles of fencing separating the two countries have captured public attention as a symbol of America’s amplified security concerns, and architects’ attention as well, with the New York Times commissioning 13 architects to envision a new border design in 2006. Despite the fence, Tijuana, Mexico’s fastest-growing city, segues into San Diego in an often discordant mélange where tidy track housing is repurposed for roadside businesses like taco stands, barber shops, or even houses of worship. On the Tijuana side, formulaic single-family homes are often turned into colorful communal dwellings or extended in resourceful ways — a key inspiration for Cruz. The Mexican city, he says, is where “the entire continent of Latin America washed up against a great big wall.”

Cruz has applied lessons learned from the social, economic, and cultural dynamics of the area to innovative community-based housing developments in California and New York. Curator Aaron Levy of the Slought Foundation, a promoter of social activism in the arts, says, “We feel Cruz’s contribution to the design community in the United States is unique and more urgently needed than ever. His rigor and unceasing commitment to exploring new forms of sociability and community is empowering and inspiring.”     

In Venice, the architect has shrouded the front of the U.S. pavilion with a monumental photographic reproduction of the Tijuana-San Diego fence; the gateway is lined with snapshots of places within a 30-mile radius of the border crossing, offering glimpses of the affluence and neglect that characterize either side. Says Levy, “Visitors literally and metaphorically pass through this border to enter the exhibition.”

Andrew Sturm, director of architecture, PARC Foundation, on Ted Smith (and other)’s “Essex Development”

When the Venice Architectural Biennale debuted in 1980, its postmodernist displays marked the birth of architecture as international spectator sport. Two years later, architect Armistead (Ted) Smith developed and built the Carlsbad Condos, unusual loft housing in the San Diego neighborhood Del Mar that mixed a history book of styles and debuted the “go-home”— affordable housing with communal kitchens and easily divided spaces. Smith has since insisted on do-it-yourself, accessible real-estate development, as opposed to the pursuit of a signature style, a decision that has fanned his notoriety and attracted the attention of curator Andrew Sturm, who explains that when a name architect like Smith doubles as a housing developer, everyday buildings garner value beyond the bankable profit margin, becoming culturally and socially significant. “Ted believes this value is passed on to the end user and the passerby, because thoughtfully considered places lead to great neighborhoods which lead to better cities,” explains Sturm, who heads the PARC Foundation, an organizer of design-driven, community-geared development.

Although Smith exhibited early in his career alongside now internationally recognized giants like Frank Gehry and Tom Mayne, he has followed a locally grounded, small-scale design path. At the biennale, he presents artifacts from a recently built 49-unit row development in downtown San Diego, one of several developments he has brought to life since Carlsbad. The structure is named the Essex after a WWII aircraft carrier, and with a raised outdoor parking deck and tall stacks protruding from the roof, its profile successfully evokes its namesake. He also presents a documentary short and a scale model made of interlocking blocks in painted wood meant to represent individual living units. The latter may look like a Bauhaus-designed board game, but it is, in fact, a tool meant to illustrate design and planning dynamics in simple terms.