Woodbury University has temporarily moved online in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. All of our courses and presentations are done online and we are fortunately able to continue all our classes. While we look forward to resuming our in-person classroom discussions, this is a great opportunity for you to see what we are doing and what to look forward to once you join us at Woodbury. You can sit in on some live online classes, watch the instructor give a lecture, or you can watch student presentations and the responses they get from instructors. Just click on the links below.
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The Idea of “Conversations” is to have two designers (architects, landscape architects, interior designers, industrial designers, etc.) share what they are currently working on and talk about each other’s work. We are going to start off the series with two faculty members from Woodbury School of Architecture in San Diego: Catherine Herbst and Marcel Sanchez-Prieto.
Catherine Herbst
Catherine Herbst was born in Champaigne-Urbana, Illinois, in 1962. She received her Masters of Architecture from Montana State University. In San Diego, from 1986 – 1987, she worked at Pacific Associates Planners Architects, Inc. From 1989 – 2000, she worked with Rob Wellington Quigley FAIA. She earned her license to practice Architecture in 1995. In 2000, she formed a practice, Rinehart Herbst, with her husband, Todd Rinehart. Rinehart Herbst was included in MIX: Nine San Diego Architects and Designers comprised of lead architectural design firms that are redefining housing design, development, and urbanization in the San Diego region and beyond. In his review, Christopher Hawthorne of the LA times referred to the firm’s work as “smart and hyper-economical”. Rinehart Herbst is currently working on modest residential and commercial work in California, Colorado and Mexico. She was a visiting professor at Montana State University in 2006. She has been an invited juror in state AIA Awards programs in New Mexico, Florida and Arizona.
Marcel Sanchez-Prieto
Marcel Sanchez-Prieto is co-founder of CRO Studio, a collaborative practice established at the border region of Tijuana and San Diego that focuses on urban renewal through architecture and research, including the development of design methodologies that expand geometry as a tool for urban sensing, architectural innovation through the incorporation of civic values and the potential of opportunistic landscapes.
He is the recipient of numerous distinguished awards, including the 2013 Progressive Architecture Design Award and two XXII CEMEX awards. He currently is a full-time Professor at Woodbury University San Diego, has been critic, invited lecturer and taught at The University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia University, RMIT, ITESO Mexico, South Eastern University in China, Iberoamerican University and The New School of Architecture and Design, where he co-directed the Rome study abroad program. For several years he participated in a wide-range of urban studies along the México-US border with San Diego State University, University of California San Diego, Colef-College of the Northern Border, the Municipal Planning Institute of Tijuana, and the San Diego Association of Governments. He has worked for Kieran Timberlake and Frank Gehry in technology driven projects, researching on methodologies of digital design, fabrication, and material assembly.
As co-founder of CRO Studio with Adriana Cuellar, Sanchez-Prieto’s collaborative practice focuses on urban renewal through architecture and research, including the development of design methodologies that expand geometry as a tool for urban sensing, architectural innovation through the incorporation of civic values and the potential of opportunistic landscapes. With a strong social impact agenda, CRO studio engages with community projects reconfiguring urban dynamics, from social housing prototypes and community centers to religious institutional projects and private developments on both sides of the border. Their work seeks to orchestrate civic engagements that question environmental values while re-imagining the everyday challenges of urban life.
CRO studio has received numerous awards, including the 60TH Annual Progressive Architecture Design Award, XXII CEMEX Awards, and 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”, and selected for the publication and exhibition “From the Territory to the Inhabitant” for their design of new housing prototypes for INFONAVIT.
As Marcel stated in his interview, the topics which he brings to the classroom from his own professional work are relevant and dense: “sustainable revitalization of city neighborhoods, emergent growth on urban peripheries, resurgence of civic space, migrant populations and the impact of industry and new material technologies.” As an educator, and as exemplified through the work of his office CRO Studio, he helps students develop as accomplished designers, ready to grapple convincingly – in deed as well as intent – with some of the most important issues of our time.