As co-founders of CRO studio, Adriana Cuellar and Marcel Sanchez have established a collaborative research and outreach architecture firm focusing on the border region of Tijuana/San Diego. CRO studio emphasizes architecture’s role in rethinking power dynamics within urban space production. Their work involves collaborating with community projects ranging from social housing prototypes and community centers to private developments on both sides of the border.
CRO studio’s approach involves orchestrating civic engagements that challenge prevailing environmental values and explore material aesthetics, programmatic innovations, and spatial appropriations. By reimagining the everyday challenges of urban life, they seek to create architectural interventions that address the needs and aspirations of the communities they serve.
CRO studio has received numerous distinguished awards, including the 60TH Annual Progressive Architecture Design Award, XXII CEMEX Awards, the IX BIAU Ibero-American Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism in Rosario Argentina, in recognition of their built work Modulo Prep / Casa de las Ideas. They have been honored in Arquine’s “Best of XXI Century, Vol. 5 2011-12 and Vol.6 2013-14”, and selected for the publication and exhibition “From the Territory to the Inhabitant” for their design of new housing prototypes for INFONAVIT. Recently, has been recognized with several AIA Honor and Merit Awards by the American Institute of Architecture San Diego Chapter, they received the Best Project 2020 ACSA College of Distinguished Professors Award, and in 2017 their rural house project was selected among 32 social housing prototypes built in Apan Hidalgo, Mexico as part of the Social housing laboratory for INFONAVIT Institute of the National Housing Fund for Workers.
Adriana Cuellar received her Bachelor of Architecture from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and holds a Master’s in Design Studies from Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where she won the Annual Award for Excellence in Housing Design. She is a recipient of the Rome Prize Fellowship in Design by the American Academy in Rome in 2007-2006. Adriana is currently Assistant Professor and Director of the Architecture Program at the University of San Diego, she was lecturer at UC Berkeley and Howard A. Friedman Visiting Professor of Practice. She has been critic, invited lecturer and has taught at various universities in the United States, México and Italy. For several years, she co-founded and co-directed the Rome study abroad program at The New School of Architecture and Design.
Marcel Sanchez received his Bachelor of Architecture from Iberoamerican University in México and a Master’s in Architecture from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he was awarded the Director’s Scholarship Award. He received the Rome Prize Fellowship in Architecture by the American Academy in Rome in 2018-2019. He is an Associate Professor at the University of San Diego and previously was Associate Professor of Architecture, ARCUS Social Justice Faculty Director at the College of Environmental Design UC Berkeley, Spring 2020 Howard A. Friedman Visiting Professor of Practice at UC Berkeley and Professor at Woodbury University San Diego. He has been a critic, invited lecturer and has taught at various universities in the United States, México, Australia, China, and Italy. He co-founded and co-directed the Rome study abroad program at The New School of Architecture and Design. For several years he participated in a wide range of urban studies along the México-US border with San Diego State University, the University of California San Diego, Colef-College of the Northern Border, the Municipal Planning Institute of Tijuana and the San Diego Association of Governments.
