Faculty Forum with Cruz Garcia & Nathalie Frankowski

In this episode, Cruz Garcia and Nathalie Frankowski share about their search for critical forms of architectural pedagogy and how they are deeply invested in the development of new curricula and pedagogical experiments searching for diverse forms of public engagement with architecture, as well as a decolonization of the role of architecture in the construction of new worlds. Garcia and Frankowski discuss their international art and architecture workshops for diverse participants, spanning from children, to college students working across different fields and the general public.

Cruz García is a Puerto Rican architect, educator, author, theorist, curator, and artist. Nathalie Frankowski is a French architect, educator, author, poet, curator, and artist. Together they are working across different platforms to ask critical questions about the role of architecture, art and pedagogy in the construction of new worlds. In 2008 they co-founded in Brussels WAI Architecture Think Tank to contribute to the collective intelligence of architecture from a panoramic and critical approach oscillating from the design of buildings and master plans with a public agenda, to the creation of publications and pedagogical projects addressing questions of historical urgency. The work of WAI Think Tank includes the shortlisted design for the National Centre for Contemporary Art (NCCA) in Moscow, the design of LI Creative Offices, and several cultural and educational buildings and spaces around the world, as well as a series of Narrative Architecture projects exploring the role of architecture in an age of planetary challenges.

(Both were also serving as Assistant Professors at Virginia Tech at the time of recording.)