René Peralta
Education
University of Oklahoma
Architectural Association, London
New School of Architecture and Design, San Diego
Contact
Research Gate
About
René Peralta studied architecture at the New School of Architecture in San Diego and the Architectural Association in London, England. He has a Master of Science in Planning with an emphasis in History and Theory from the University of Oklahoma. René has been a professor in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA, a Professor of Urban Design at the University of Washington in St. Louis, and, from 2012-2014, was Director of the Master of Science in Architecture with an emphasis in Landscape + Urbanism at Woodbury University in San Diego. Previously, he served as the inaugural Herb Greene Teaching Fellow at the University of Oklahoma (2019-2021).
René’s work in recent years explores the contemporary and future forms of the urban border between the United States and Mexico, specifically between the cities of Tijuana and San Diego. René is a coauthor, with Fiamma Montezemolo and Heriberto Yépez, of the book Here is Tijuana, published in 2006 by Black Dog Publishing in London. In 2018, he co-edited, along with Tito Alegría and Roger Lewis, the commemorative edition of the book A Temporary Paradise: A look at the special landscape of the San Diego Region, originally prepared by Kevin Lynch and Donald Appleyard (COLEF 2018).
His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, Santa Monica Art Museum, Mexico House at the Embassy of Mexico in Washington, DC, Shenzhen Architecture and Urbanism Biennial 2007 and the Central Society of Architects in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 2015, his research on the Experimental Housing Project (PREVI) in Lima, Peru, was part of the exhibition “Latin America in Construction: Architecture 1955-1980” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 2017, he directed Hyperloop West, a group that went on to become a semi-finalist in the global challenge competition organized by Virgin Hyperloop One. In 2017, Rene curated the Tijuana-San Diego exhibit space at the 2017 Architecture and Urbanism Biennial in Seoul, Korea.
René is a member of the board of directors of Fundación Esperanza de México (FEM), a non-profit organization with more than 25 years of experience building communities and improving the quality of life of low-income residents of Tijuana through assisted self-built housing.
René is based in Tijuana and, in his spare time, is the conguero for the band “The Good Times” of Tijuana.