Pedro Cruz Cruz
De Manera Isleña Initiator
Spatial Designer, Community Planner, Educator, Social Practitioner, Visual Artist, Researcher & Storyteller
Pedro Cruz Cruz is a Caribbean born Puerto Rican, based in Washington Heights, NYC. Cruz is a current Adjunct Lecturer of architecture at City College’s Spitzer School of Architecture where he is also a Communications and Engagement Associate of the new Place, Memory, and Culture Incubator for Harlem.
Cruz’s practice critically engages both digital and built environment projects in urban and rural contexts, often looking to BIPOC, and other marginalized histories to unlock and visualize new spatial imaginaries through politically and culturally informed design, community-led initiatives, interdisciplinary collaboration, and multimedia methodologies. Cruz is an emerging academic leader in design and climate justice pedagogy, a design lead for Jerome Haferd Studio and a core member and visual designer of Dark Matter U (DMU).
Below you can find some of Pedro’s featured work in collaboration with colleagues, or/and under the leadership of mentors and people who continue to inspire his practice and his work at De Manera Isleña.
01 Design Activism, A Planning Tool for Community Advocacy
Keep Safe Puerto Rico. A Self-guided manual for resilient design. With Enterprise Community Partners
Project: Water Table
Company: Jerome Haferd Studio
Role: Designer
Location: East Harlem, NYC
Project: Aleia
Company: Jerome Haferd Studio
Role: Designer / Install
Location: Central Harlem, NYC
Course: Archipelagic Estates of Puerto Rico - Island Cultures in light of Climate Change
Type: Year-long Grad Studio
Co-taught with: Nandini Bagchee & Paul Ruppert
Course: Unit 25 Re-Imagining New Paradigms of Manufacture in East New York, Brooklyn
Type: Year-long Grad Studio
Co-taught with: Nandini Bagchee
Course: Exchange As Spatial Practice - Designing with Stories of Radical Mobility in East Harlem
Type: Advance Summer Studio
Program: DMU x Freedom Ride: 2024 Summer Institute
Role: Visual Artist & Co-Coordinator
Program: Place, Memory and Culture Incubator for Harlem
Role: Communications & Engagement Associate
Title: Architectures of Joy, Collectivity, and Abundance
Role: Co-Editor, Co-Designer & Co-Contributor
Publisher: Architecture Magazine
Title: Context, A Subversive Act of Communing
Role: Co-Designer & Co-Contributor
Publisher: Architecture Magazine
Title: Poly Particles: Dark Matter U In Conversation
Role: Co-Editor, Co-Designer & Co-Contributor
Publisher: Architecture Magazine
Title: Market Share
Role: Co-Editor, Co-Designer & Contributor
Publisher: Urban Omnibus
Design Justice & Policy Change through Stories of Phantom Flooding in The Rockaways
Planning with Sovereignty and Mutual Aid: A Right to Public Space in Corona, Queens
Reclaiming Roots: Indigenizing the History of Salinas' Factory Town | Puerto Rico
Re-Storying Las Mareas: Building a Case for Reparations and Sustainable Renewal
02 Built Projects
Project: Teatro Estación Cultural
Company: FUNdamental
Role: Designer / Install
Location: Tapachula, México
Project: Sankofa
Company: Jerome Haferd Studio
Role: Designer / Install
Location: Central Harlem, NYC
03 Academia & Research
04 Publications & Visual Storytelling
DMU Polyphony Matrix
(Dark) Notes on the Caribbean: A Collaborative Manifesto
Title: Incorporating Informality, Experiments in Urban Reconfiguration
Role: Visual Artist & Co-Contributor
Publisher: nai010
Title: (Dark) Notes on the Caribbean
Role: Co-Editor, Co-Designer & Co-Contributor
Publisher: Architecture Magazine
