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Teddy Cruz was born in Guatemala. He began studying architecture at Rafael Landivar University in Guatemala City (B.A., 1982), and after emigrating to the United States, continued his studies at California State Polytechnic University San Luis Obispo, with a year spent in Florence, Italy, through the California State University International Program, (B.Arch, 1987 ). After working for some years with the firm of Pacific Associates Planners & Architects in San Diego (1984-89), he went to work in the office of San Diego architect Rob Wellington Quigley (1989-1993). In 1991, Cruz received the prestigious Rome Prize in Architecture, becoming a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome. Returning to San Diego from Rome, he established his own practice - estudio teddy cruz - in 1993, and shortly thereafter completed his architectural education at Harvard University GSD (M.Des.S. 1997).

Cruz's work dwells at the border between San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico, inspiring a practice and pedagogy that emerges out of the particularities of this bicultural territory and the integration of theoretical research and design production. He has taught and lectured in various universities in the U.S. and Latin America and in 1994 he conceived and began the LA/LA Latin America / Los Angeles studio, an experimental summer workshop at SCI-Arc in Los Angeles.  During 2000-05, he was associate professor in the school of architecture at Woodbury University in San Diego where he began BI -Border Institute- to further research the urban phenomena at the border between the US and Mexico.  He has been recently appointed associate professor in Public Culture and Urbanism in the Visual Arts Department at University of California, San Diego. In 1998 he was invited to be editor of the British Journal AD Architectural Design for a special issue on the Architecture of the Borderlands.  Teddy has received awards for projects on both sides of the border, including various AIA San Diego chapter awards, as well as for his academic work regarding issues of urbanism in the broader border region. He received a San Diego American Institute of Architecture Honor Awards in 2002, Progressive Architecture Awards from Architecture Magazine in 2001 and 2004, the Architectural League of New York Young Architects Forum Award and the Robert Taylor Teaching Award from the ACSA. Last year, he received the 2004-05 James Stirling Memorial Lecture On The City Prize, sponsored by the CCA in Montreal, the Van Alen Institute In New York and the London School of Economics and Political Science. He was recently selected among eight other firms, as one of the national "Emergent Voices" in architecture by the Urban League in New York City.

Teddy has been involved in many civic and cultural advocacy groups at a local, national and international level. He is currently a member of the board of directors of C-3, one of San Diego's oldest advisory citizen groups on urban and environmental policies. He also co-chairs, with Joyce Cutler-Shaw, the Hot Topics Committee for the Council of Design Professionals in San Diego and he was recently invited to be part of the advisory committee for the 2nd Mies Van Der Rohe Award for Latin American Architecture and the International Editorial Board of AD Magazine in London.

His work has been published in various architectural journals and newspapers, including The New York Times, Global Architecture, Progressive Architecture, Architecture Record, Casas International, Thresholds MIT, The San Diego Union, The Los Angeles Times, Praxis Magazine and Princeton Architecture press' City Limits. It has also been exhibited locally, nationally and internationally, most recently in the exhibition "Urban Diagnostics," commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Centro Cultural de Tijuana, in ARCHILAB, France, "Dark Places," at the Santa Monica Museum of Art and "Tijuana: A Strange New World," at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, California. This year Teddy Cruz has been invited to participate and exhibit at the Architecture Biennials in Rotterdam and Lisbon.