Eva Franch is a New York based architect, curator, educator and lecturer of experimental forms of art and architectural practice. Franch specializes in the making of alternative architecture histories and futures.

 

Franch is the Chief Curator and Executive Director of Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York since 2010, and Associate Professor at The Cooper Union School of Architecture. In 2014 Franch, with the project OfficeUS, was selected by the US State Department to represent the United States Pavilion at the XIV Venice Architecture Biennale.

 

Franch has taught at Columbia University GSAPP, the IUAV University of Venice, SUNY Buffalo, and Rice University School of Architecture. In 2004, she founded her solo practice OOAA (Office of Architectural Affairs). She has received numerous awards and fellowships, and her work has been exhibited internationally including FAD Barcelona, the Venice Architecture Biennale, and the Shenzhen Architecture Biennale, among others. She has curated international projects including OUT, the 2014 Arquia Proxima biennial competition, and Borders, the 2011 Think Space biennial concept competition programme.

 

At Storefront, some of her recent projects include Letters to the Mayor -a project that invites architects to write letters to their city mayors as a way to open up dialogue about the making of cities and public life with more than fifteen editions globally including New York, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Athens, Taipei, Madrid, etc.-; World Wide Storefront – a digital platform for alternative global projects, the Competition of Competitions, and Manifesto, a new publication series in partnership with Lars Müller. Recent exhibitions include Sharing Models; Measure; POP: Protocols, Obsessions, Positions; Aesthetics-Anesthetics; Past Futures, Present, Futures;  No Shame: Storefront for Sale; and Being. Other projects include Storefront TV, the Storefront International Series with editions in the Dominican Republic and Portugal, the commissioning of design projects such as the Speechbuster by Jimenez Lai and Grayson Cox, and the film The Architects by Amie Siegel as part of OfficeUS. Her latest initiative, the New York Architecture Book Fair, will be presented in June 2018.

 

Franch has lectured internationally on art, architecture, and the importance of alternative practices in the construction and understanding of public life at educational and cultural institutions including the Architecture Association in London, Arts Club of Chicago, Cooper Union in New York, Hong Kong University, IAAC in Barcelona, Izolatsia in Kiev, Kuwait University, Northeastern University in Boston, School of Visual Arts in New York, San Francisco Art Institute, Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam, University of Manitoba, UT Sidney, Oslo School of Architecture, Princeton University, SCI-Arc in Los Angeles , and Yale University among others.

 

Franch has been part of international competition juries and member of several nominating and advisory boards including the Hong Kong Design Trust, Ideas City, +Pool, and the YAP PS1-MoMA in New York.

 

Franch’s work has appeared in the form of articles or interviews in magazines, newspapers and publications around the world including A+U, AD, Architecture Record, Architectural Review, Arquine, Bauwelt, Domus, Dwell, El Pais, New York Times, Metropolis, MOUSE, Pin-UP, Rolling Stone, and Surface Magazine among others.

 

Recent publications by Franch include Agenda (Lars Muller, 2014), Atlas (Lars Muller, 2015) and Manual (Lars Muller 2017) as part of OfficeUS. Upcoming publications include The Book of Architecture Books and Letters to the Mayor to be published in 2018-19.