ORU – Oficina de Resiliencia Urbana and TERREMOTO

The Architectural League’s annual Emerging Voices program spotlights North American architects, landscape architects, and urban designers who have significant bodies of realized work and the potential to influence their field.

Adriana Chávez, Victor Rico, and Elena Tudela founded ORU – Oficina de Resiliencia Urbana in Mexico City in 2018. Working across the academic, public, and private sectors, the practice advocates for “scaled-up architectural thinking to foster new futures of interconnected urban regions, strengthened ecological structures, and resilient human and non-human communities,” in its own words. With a profound sensitivity to each project’s environmental and social context, ORU produces a broad spectrum of work, from regional analyses and strategic plans to landscapes, buildings, and exhibitions.

David Godshall and Alain Peauroi founded the landscape architecture design studio TERREMOTO in 2013. Three years later, they were joined by partners Jenny Jones and Story Wiggins. With offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco, the TERREMOTO team creates, in its own words, “well-built, site-specific landscapes that respond to client needs while simultaneously challenging historical and contemporary landscape construction methods, materials, and formal conventions.” Ranging from residential gardens to public parks, the practice’s work reflects a playful, sensitive, and self-critical approach to landscape design.

The presentations will be followed by a conversation with Fernanda Canales and Zach Mortice, two members of the 2023 Emerging Voices jury.

Canales is an architect, designer, critic, and curator based in Mexico City. She has taught at Harvard University GSD, Princeton University School of Architecture, and Yale School of Architecture. Her publications include Shared Structures, Private Space and Architecture in Mexico, 1900–2010.

Mortice is a design journalist and critic based in Chicago. He is a frequent contributor to Landscape Architecture Magazine, Bloomberg CityLab, The Architect’s Newspaper, and The New York Review of Architecture, among others.