Summary: Teddy Cruz delivers the inaugural 2004-2005 James Stirling Memorial Lecture on the City. With an introduction by Benjamin Prosky. Teddy Cruz is a Guatemalan-born architect and founding principal of Estudio Teddy Cruz in San Diego. His Stirling Lecture explores the perennial alliance between systems of control and urbanisation that is re-enacted in the San Diego/Tijuana border region as the United States hardens the wall against its Mexican neighbour, transforming San Diego into the world’s largest gated community. Conceived in homage to architect James Stirling, who believed that urban design is integral to the practice of architecture and a vital topic for public debate, the James Stirling Memorial Lectures on the City competition was inaugurated in 2003 as a unique forum for the advancement of new critical perspectives on the role of urban design and urban architecture in the development of cities worldwide. The intent of this bi-annual competition is to promote innovative approaches to urban phenomena, and to reposition architecture at the centre of debates on the city of the 21st century. The first Stirling Lectures competition was a collaboration between the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) and the Cities Programme of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), in association with the Van Alen Institute Projects in Public Architecture, New York. www.cca.qc.ca/stirlinglectures Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal, 28 October 2004
