CROP 09: Shed is the ninth edition of Texas Tech’s College of Architecture student-led publication, CROP, gathering essays, interviews, and design work. Established in 2009, CROP is fully-bilingual in English and Spanish. It reflects the richness of the college’s architectural production, and the diverse cultural geography of its two campuses; in one West Texas and the other on the Mexico-United States border. The theme of this ninth issue, Shed, gets its name from the modest typology, acknowledging the vernacular, agricultural and industrial built environment tethering Texas to the Midwest. Furthermore, the issue interprets “shed” both as a noun and a verb, interrogating a double meaning of “to shed,” by examining what we store and protect, as well as what we disseminate and let go of, articulating the tension between releasing and containing, a matter crucial to contemporary architectural production and critical historical reflection. Specifically, this issue sheds off a year of quarantine and lockdowns to reflect on remoteness in action, exploring novel learning environments, and accelerating adaptations in architectural practice. Offering perspective and context from a location often considered “remote”—perched on the dust coast between the midwest and US/Mexico border—Shed aims to probe, challenge, and redirect metro-centric narratives of architecture. Penned at a watershed moment, the issue looks to the shed, the land, the climate, the worker, the radically-rural and beyond, gathering interviews, essays, prompts, and pressing projects of local, national, and international architecture.

Noémie Despland-Lichtert is a visiting instructor at Texas Tech University and CROP’s faculty editor and mentor. She holds a post-professional master of architecture from McGill University and a master of curatorial practices from the University of Southern California. Her professional experiences include the board of Montreal Museum Directors, the Canadian Center for Architecture, and the Getty Research Institute. Previously she taught at the University of Southern California, the Otis School of Art and Design, and in the master of science in architecture at Woodbury University.

Brendan Sullivan Shea is an architectural designer, educator, and faculty member at the College of Architecture at Texas Tech University and the School of Architecture at the University of Southern California. He is a creator of Reimaging, a collective that cultivates representational futures for architectural production, and cofounder of 2426, a space in Los Angeles that combines the production and exhibition of new architectural works. Shea serves as a consultant for CROP, advising the editorial team on academic issues, current trajectories, and upcoming opportunities in academic architectural publication.

Diego Diaz born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and raised in Corpus Christi, Texas, spent most of his years on the coast. While attending Calallen High School, he participated in Del Mar College's fledgling dual-credit architecture program and later enrolled in community college. There, he began interning for Freeman Schroeder Architects in 2018 and represented Del Mar College in the Texas Society of Architects student design competition in Galveston in 2019. After graduating from Del Mar College with an associate degree of science in architecture, Diaz transferred to Texas Tech University where he pursues a master's degree in architecture. Diaz joined CROP in 2021 as a student editor and writer.

Claudia De Grande is a first-generation college student from Mansfield, Pennsylvania. She was the editor-in-chief of her high school's student newspaper for three years. She joined CROP hoping to use her skills to serve the College of Architecture's community and its broader audience. De Grande writes for CROP, manages the website, and directs the bimonthly newsletters.

Texas Tech College of Architecture aspires to advance the knowledge, discipline, and practice of architecture through innovation, creative teaching, research, regional and global engagement, and scholarship. The College of Architecture has a new vision and goals which emphasize the discipline and practice, engaging in advanced design and design-related research. The College is in the process of fully implementing a revised curriculum. The new curriculum builds upon the needs of a changing world by looking at the method of integrating technology within design studios, introducing history and theory at an earlier level to invigorate the worldliness and capacity of students, reinforcing new ways to teach structures and construction techniques, and implementing a new study abroad programs that will help students engage the world.