Jessica Garcia Fritz (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture and the Design Justice liaison for architecture in the College of Design at the University of Minnesota. Her cross-disciplinary teaching and research challenge architecture’s role in nation-state building through the extraction of material territories in indigenous lands. As a citizen of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe (Itazipco), Jessica focuses on the links between settler-colonialism, construction histories, and instruments of architectural practice. Her research on specification writing was published in the Technology Architecture and Design Journal (TAD) and two editions of Building Knowledge, Construction Histories (CRC Press). As a member of the Oceti Sakowin Writers’ Society, she continues to contextualize this research along with relatives, elders, and others carrying on the Oceti Sakowin literary tradition.
Jessica received a Master of Architecture from the University of Minnesota and has practiced professionally in the Twin Cities, Portugal, and New York City. In 2012, after working as an exhibit designer for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in New York City, she joined the newly formed Department of Architecture (DoArch) at South Dakota State University. As an assistant professor, she combined design studio pedagogy with history and theory courses across undergraduate and graduate curricula. For ten years, Jessica’s leadership was central to developing the design cultures of DoArch, and establishing the processes that led to the Department’s successful accreditation.
The material impacts of the Building Arts ground Jessica’s work with local communities and organizations through grant writing, exhibitions, workshops, and symposia. She received a grant from the South Dakota Humanities Council to organize a Building Arts and Labor Symposium in 2021. Along with Federico Garcia Lammers, Jessica is a co-director of LAB-OR, a design practice that links design pedagogy to the asymmetric relationships between architecture and construction. As a part of her practice, she continues to work with the Center of American Indian Research and Native Studies, The Architecture Lobby’s Academia Working Group, and the American Institute of Architects.
