Daniel Lopez-Perez

Daniel López-Pérez (b. Madrid, 1973) is an Associate Professor of Architecture and a founding faculty member of the Architecture Program at the University of San Diego. He holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University, a Masters of Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University with honors, and an AA Diploma from the Architectural Association.

Scholarly Work

López-Pérez’s scholarship focuses on the historiography of modern architecture and its relationship to questions of technology, design-research, models of design pedagogy, material and environmental culture. He is the recipient of numerous research, publication grants and awards including the Graham Foundation, Mexico’s National Council for Culture and Arts (CONACULTA), Princeton University’s Barr Ferree Foundation, and a University of San Diego’s Faculty Undergraduate Research Mentor Award.

His work has been exhibited and presented nationally and internationally at institutions such as the University of Southern California; University of California, Los Angeles; Harvard’s Graduate School of Design; Storefront, New York; Canadian Center for Architecture, Montreal; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; Tec de Monterrey, Campus Guadalajara; the Venice Biennale; the University of Applied Sciences, Bochum; Bauhaus-Universität, Weimar; Alvar Aalto University Jyvaskyla, Finland; and Busan National University, South Korea.

Awarded a Graham Foundation Grant for Individuals, López-Pérez is the editor of Fuller in Mexico! The Architectural Alternative (Arquine, CONACULTA, 2015), a study of R. Buckminster Fuller’s “World Design Science Decade”.

As part of the OfficeUS program, López-Pérez, curated an exhibition and a series of lectures and roundtable discussions in the American Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Biennale.

Made possible in part by a Barr Ferree Foundation Fund awarded by the Department of Art and Archeology at Princeton University, López-Pérez’s is the author of R. Buckminster Fuller, Pattern-Thinking (Lars Muller Publishers, Zurich, 2020). Pattern-Thinking reassesses the work of Buckminster Fuller—unique hybrid between theoretician, architect, designer, educator, inventor, and author—as advancing contemporary models of design research, practice, and pedagogy. Drawing extensively on Fuller’s archive, the book follows his unique process of translation between the physical and conceptual dimensions of design, to redefine our understanding of the relationships between geometry, structure, language, and intellectual property.

As part of the 17th International Architecture Exhibition at La Biennale di Venecia, Lopez-Perez curated Geoscope 2: Worlds, an immersive, inflatable, multimedia split-sphere occupied by the public. Presenting the work of architecture students, theorists, and practitioners, Geoscope 2 offers a kaleidoscope of contemporary thoughts and visions at the planetary scale—from the widest reaches of the discipline—and responds to the current tsunami of upheavals within our global society and the natural world.

López-Pérez was one of the co-designers and curators of the exhibition Clip / Stamp / Fold, The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines from 196x to 197x. Clip / Stamp / Fold opened at the Storefront Gallery in New York and has since been exhibited at the Canadian Center for Architecture, in Montreal and the Architectural Association in London, among other international venues.

In professional practice, López-Pérez is the founder of Transversal Group (www.transversalgroup.com) a design collaborative focused on the intersection between research and practice.

López-Pérez has been project architect in a number of large-scale commissions and international competitions for David Chipperfield Architects in London, some of which were awarded first prizes such as the extension to the San Michele Cemetery in Venice.

In New York, López-Pérez was project architect for Foreign Office Architects, within the United Architects Team; whose submission was a finalist in the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation’s World Trade Center Ideas Competition.

Currently, López-Pérez is building a number of residential and mix-use projects along the coast of Baja California.

Areas of Interest

López-Pérez’s instruction is primarily in architectural design studios. The research in the design studios combines digital processes with new methods of material fabrication that focus on issues of materiality in the broader sense, such as typology, systems, structure, program, and larger scale questions surrounding infrastructure and the urban environment.

López-Pérez has taught design studios at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Princeton University, and the Graduate School of Design at Harvard.

Companies

• Associate Professor University of San Diego (2009)
• Design Critic Harvard University Graduate School of Design (2007 — 2009)
• Assistant in Instruction Princeton University (2005 — 2007)
• Assistant Professor Akademie der Bildenden Künste Wien (2003 — 2005)
• Adjunct Assistant Professor Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (2000 — 2002)
• Project Architect Foreign Office Architects (2000 — 2002)
• Project Architect David Chipperfield Architects (1997 — 2000)

Education

• AA Dip, RIBA II Architectural Association, London
• Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1991 — 1994)
• Center for Environmental Planning and Technology, Ahmedabad (1994)