Lecture: Luis Carranza & Fernando Lara
Luis E. Carranza is Professor of Architecture and of Art and Architectural History at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island, and an Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. He obtained his B.Arch. at the University of Southern California and his PhD in Architectural History and Theory from Harvard University.
His research and published work focuses primarily on modern architecture and modern art and architecture in Latin America (with an emphasis on Mexico). This work emphasizes the relationship and codependence of social, literary, philosophical, and theoretical ideas within the historical and material culture of architecture and design. Much of his research on these historical and theoretical themes can be found throughout his publications and, specifically, in Architecture as Revolution: Episodes in the History of Modern Mexico (University of Texas Press, 2010) and in Modern Architecture in Latin America: Art, Technology, Utopia [with Prof. Fernando Lara] (University of Texas Press, January 2015).
Fernando Luiz Lara is a Brazilian architect with degrees from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (BArch, 1993) and the University of Michigan (PhD, 2001). The author of several books and hundreds of articles, in academic and professional journals as well as the general media, Prof. Lara writes extensively on a variety of issues regarding the Latin American built environment. Fernando Lara is Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin where he also serves as Chair of the Brazil Center at the Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies.
A member of the Brazilian Institute of Architects, and the Brazilian DOCOMOMO, Lara has also been active in his native country as a critic, researcher and educator. A licensed architect in Brazil, Lara has designed many structures, alone or in partnership with others. His current interest in the favelas has turned into opportunities to engage with public policy at the municipal level as well as collaborations with local firms designing public spaces in informal settlements. In 2005 he founded Studio Toró, a non-profit devoted to the challenges of water conservation and urban flooding in Latin America. Since 2009 Fernando Lara has collaborated extensively with Horizontes Arquitetura, a Brazilian firm dedicated to public space, favela upgrades and social housing. Together they created the Laboratório de Urbanismo Avançado, a non-profit devoted to the creation of better public spaces.