Concrete Connections

Sarah Lynn Lopez, professor of architecture and migration studies, will present on the ways Mexican migrant workers have been transforming the landscapes of their rural Mexican towns and the U.S. cities over the past 40 years. This lecture traces the ways Mexican migrants’ sense of domestic space catalyzed and financed a building boom across small towns in Mexico, part of the 20 billion dollars families remit yearly to Mexico.

Graduating with a Ph.D in Architecture from UC Berkeley, Sarah Lynn Lopez has been arguing that architectural history should include migration contexts, and that scholars must follow migrant paths to examine the spatial and built environment histories of discrete places simultaneously. Her first book focused on the transformations Mexican migrants wrought in their hometowns in Mexico & the U.S. She is currently working on the century long railroad-linked architectural spaces forged by workers between Monterrey, NL and Austin as well as on the carceral landscapes of U.S. detention.