Jury

René’s work in recent years explores the contemporary and future forms of the urban border between the United States and Mexico. René is a coauthor, with Fiamma Montezemolo and Heriberto Yépez, of the book, Here is Tijuana, published in 2006 by Black Dog, London. In 2018, he co-edited, along with Tito Alegría and Roger Lewis, the commemorative edition of the book A Temporary Paradise: A look at the special landscape of the San Diego Region, originally prepared by Kevin Lynch and Donald Appleyard (COLEF 2018).

His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, Santa Monica Art Museum, Mexico House at the Embassy of Mexico in Washington, DC, Shenzhen Architecture and Urbanism Biennial 2007 and the Central Society of Architects in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 2015, his research on the Experimental Housing Project (PREVI) in Lima, Peru, was part of the exhibition “Latin America in Construction: Architecture 1955-1980” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 2017, he directed Hyperloop West, a group that went on to become a semi-finalist in the global challenge competition organized by Virgin Hyperloop One. In 2017, Rene curated the Tijuana-San Diego exhibit space at the 2017 Architecture and Urbanism Biennial in Seoul, Korea.

I have developed a wide-ranging practice, as an architect, teacher, writer, publisher, and initiator and curator of events and exhibitions. I have taught widely in the UK and elsewhere in Europe, including Sweden (Umeå) and Germany (Berlin, Bochum), where I had my own practice. My research focuses on performative practices which entangle knowledge, methodologies and techniques from various disciplines, including architecture, performance, geography, anthropology, and sociology. I am interested in the role architecture and its processes of production play in the construction of political practices and the establishment of the 'common'; in critical pedagogies inhering in embodied practices; and in research as intraventional. Much of my work in pedagogy and other areas of research draws particularly upon theories and views which are inclusive and nondual, performative in their diffractive mode, and are fundamentally about an ethical and responsible engagement with the making of the world with others.

My architectural focus is sustanability driven which seeks information from contextual appropriateness. It is an amalgamation of past, present and the future.