Exclusions, Edges, and Ecologies

César A. Lopez is a designer, researcher, and educator whose work explores the entanglements between architecture and territory and the politics that dictate them. He draws from his experiences growing up in the México-United States border region to look beyond its fortification and investigate ways political geographies form human and environmental subjects. From 2013 to 2022, Lopez was an Associate and the Representation Lead at The Open Workshop where his primary role was developing the office's representational project, which aims to frame collateral populations and environments that often go unheard in the discipline. His work included many widely published projects and installations, including New Investigations in Collective Form, which was awarded the 2021 Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Faculty Design Award, Commoning Domestic Space at the 17th Venice Biennale, and The Center Won't Hold at the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial. Lopez has published his research and design work in ARQ Magazine (Chile, 2022), Pidgin Magazine (Princeton, 2021), Bracket [Takes Action] (AR+D, 2020), Momentum Magazine (2020), Art Journal (2020), and Places Journal (2017). Lopez is an Assistant Professor in Architecture at the University of New Mexico, School of Architecture and Planning, where he teaches studios on territorial typologies and seminars on representation as a counter-political device. He has previously taught at the California College of the Arts, Architecture Division and the University of California, College of Environmental Design.

This book isolates and dissects long-overlooked architectural typologies to unveil political aesthetics and protocols along geographic boundaries shaping contemporary society.