Ersela Kripa
Email: ersela.kripa@ttu.edu
Phone: 806.834.6261
Ersela Kripa is an Associate Professor and Director at Texas Tech College of Architecture
(CoA) – El Paso, and Director of Projects at POST (Project for Operative Spatial Technologies),
a CoA research center. Ersela is a registered architect and founding partner of AGENCY.
Her awards include the Rome Prize in Architecture, the Architecture Award from the
American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Emerging Voices award from The Architectural
League of New York, among others. Born and raised under communist dictatorship in
Albania, Ersela's work is particularly focused on uncovering the machinations of the
securocratic regimes that surveil and control public lives. Her practice, located
on the US–Mexico border, develops targeted methods to identify and subvert subperceptual
urban and atmospheric events that violate human rights. AGENCY's work has been exhibited
internationally, at the Hong Kong–Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale for Architecture and Urbanism,
the Venice Biennale, the Berlin Biennale, Storefront for Art and Architecture in New
York, and the Richmond Art Center. Kripa's recent book FRONTS: Military Urbanisms
and the Developing World (AR+D, 2020), co-authored with Stephen Mueller, compiles
original urban research and analysis, revealing a growing geography of codependence
between the global security complex and the urban morphologies of the developing world
which it increasingly incriminates.
Academic Degrees
Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. 2006
Bachelor of Architecture, New Jersey Institute of Technology College of Architecture
Statement of Research Interests
Ersela's research interests center on hackable infrastructures: research and visualizations that focus on using data to transfer agency to marginalized urban communities by operating where hacker culture meets the city, cataloging, analyzing, and co-opting ways in which citizens intersect with urban systems. Kripa uses design as an empowering tool for agency in public space. Her work is located on the U.S. Mexico border where she maps trans-border shared ecologies, urbanism, infrastructures and exposes binational systems of control that affect human rights. In her position as director of projects at the Project for Operative Spatial Technologies, a CoA research center, Ersela works on community-based projects that mitigate intense desertification and growing urbanization in the contested geopolitics of the US-Mexico Border.
Key Intellectual Products
Book: Fronts: Military Urbanisms and the Developing World, AR+D 2020, co-authored with Stephen Mueller
Installation: Spectral, a digitally fabricated installation combating multispectral surveillance. Exhibit Columbus 2021, University Design Fellowship with Stephen Mueller.
Organization: Border Consortium for Actionable Spatial Research and Practice. The Consortium is a platform for shared, comparative, and impactful cross-border research, led by POST directors Ersela Kripa and Stephen Mueller with over 50 participants from leading practices and universities in the US and Mexico. Supported by TTU CoA, the ASCA, and ASINEA.
Essay: 'Hackable Infrastructures' in Two Sides of The Border, Tatiana Bilbao Editor. Lars Muller, 2020
Edited Journal, peer-reviewed: Impact and Collective Empathy, International Journal of Architectural Computing. Editors: Ersela Kripa, Dana Cupkova, Lauren Vasey. 2020
Graduate School
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Address
Administration Building 328, Texas Tech University, 2625 Memorial Circle, Lubbock, TX 79409-1030 -
Phone
806.742.2787