Career
During her studies Franch worked in the Catedra Gaudi, a research center dedicated to the architect Antoni Gaudi. [4] Aged 22, Franch had a three-month internship in a Rotterdam-based firm, working on public buildings, masterplanning and social housing, after which she became a full-time employee heading the competitions team. [5] She then moved to Barcelona and founded OOAA, Office Of Architectural Affairs. Aged 24, she obtained a La Caixa full fellowship to study in the United States and went to Princeton. She was then awarded a Reyner Banham Fellowship that enabled her to teach and develop new research in Buffalo, and a Wortham Fellowship at Rice University in Houston, Texas where she led the Ecologies of Excess research unit [6] and was also the coordinator of its masters thesis program. [5]
Storefront for Art and Architecture (2010-2018)
In 2010, Franch became the executive director and chief curator of Storefront for Art and Architecture [3] [7] in New York City where she presented more than 30 exhibitions and a series of public events and debates that catalyzed the art and architecture community for almost a decade around spatial issues addressing the relation between politics, representation, and aesthetics. Under her tenure Storefront gained an international presence with a series of innovative curatorial projects [8] and initiatives including the World Wide Storefront, [9] the Storefront International Series, [10] Letters to the Mayor, [11] the Competition of Competitions, and the Storefront TV. In 2018, Franch launched the New York Architecture Book Fair. [12] The Letters to the Mayor project launched in 2014 [13] invites architects to write letters to their city mayors as a way to open up dialogue about the making of cities and public life. The project has had more than twenty editions globally [11] including New York, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Athens, Taipei, Madrid and Rotterdam. [14]
Franch curated international projects including Borders, the 2011 Think Space biennial concept competition program, and OUT, the 2014 Arquia Proxima biennial competition. [15]
Franch, together with a curatorial and design team including Ana Miljacki, Ashley Schafer, Natasha Jen, Carlos Minguez Carrasco, Lars Müller, and architects Leong Leong among more than 300 collaborators, was selected by the US State Department [16] to represent the United States at the XIV Venice Architecture Biennale (2014) with the project OfficeUS, [17] [18] an experiment for the making of new histories and global architecture practice.
At Storefront, she collaborated with hundreds of artists and architects including both prominent and emerging voices such as Vito Acconci, Alon Schwabe and Daniel Fernandez-Pascual (Cooking Sections), [19] Matilde Cassani, [20] Amie Siegel, [21] Andres Jaque - Office for Political Innovation, [22] Agnieska Kurant, Lan Tuazon, [23] Gary Husbit, [24] Frida Escobedo, [25] Anna Puigjaner (MAIO) [26] and Jing Liu and Florian Idenburg (So-IL), [27] among many others.
Selected exhibitions curated by Franch included:
- Strategies for Public Occupation (2011), [28] a creative response to the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York.
- Past Futures, Present, Futures (2012), [29] revisiting relevant ideas from 100 visionary projects from New York city’s unbuilt history [30] and projecting them with contemporary architects and artists [31] to the future; [32]
- Aesthetics-Anesthetics (2012), [33] denouncing the rendering culture in architecture; [34]
- POP: Protocols, Obsessions, Positions (2013), [35] reflecting on the political dimension of architecture drawings;
- No Shame: Storefront for Sale (2013), [36] investigating contemporary funding strategies for museums, public spaces and cultural production;
- Measure (2015), [37] investigating ideas of value;
- Work in Progress (2016), [38] addressing the economies and architectures of the construction boom in New York City;
- Sharing Models: Manhattanisms (2016), [39] in response to the rise of the sharing movement; [40]
- New New York Icons (2017), [41] exploring issues of value and image-making through newly commissioned souvenirs for the city to be voted by the public; [42]
- Architecture books: Yet to be Written (2018), [43] exploring through book-making issues of the canon, invisibility and decolonization.
In 2018 Franch commissioned "Marching On: the Politics of Performance" [44] by Bryony Roberts and Mabel Wilson presented as part of Performa addressing issues of race and politics. [45] The same year, Franch launched the "New York Architecture Book Fair" in partnership with the New York Public Library, E-Flux, the Cooper Union, GSAPP, Printed Matter and small bookstores throughout New York City.
Throughout her tenure, Franch expanded Storefont’s footprint in Kenmare Street in SoHo with two additional spaces for operations and the indexing and digitization [46] of the Storefront Archive. [47] The Digital Archive project, directed by Chialin Chow, started in 2015 and was finalized and launched in December 2019. [48]
In March 2018, while at Storefront, Franch was appointed Distinguished Professor of Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts. [49]
Architectural Association (2018-2020)
She was appointed - from a three-strong shortlist [50] - as the first female permanent director of the Architectural Association in London in 2018, [51] [5] succeeding Brett Steele. [2]
Under her tenure the AA gained taught degree awarding powers for the first time in the institution’s history [52] and financial stability, enabling the relaunch of AA Files and the publications department after the institution had closed them due to a financial crisis prior to Franch’s appointment. In autumn 2019, Franch launched the AA Residence, a research and cultural platform to develop new ideas and forms of practice at the intersection of architecture, art, technology, policy and design including the AA Wood Lab [53] and the AA Ground Lab. Franch launched the Experimental Program, the Speculative Studies department as well as a set of changes to ignite cross-programme collaborations around issues of climate and diversity. Franch introduced a series of pedagogical experiments including the Open Tutorials, the Open Seminars and the Architecture in Translation Juries. [54] During her tenure, Franch launched the AA Global Forums, a student care centre, the writing centre, a careers office and a hardship fund to support students and alumni worldwide. She also launched the Expanding Horizons campaign, offering, for the first time, full scholarships across all programmes to deserving students across the globe. [55]
Following votes of no confidence in her leadership, [56] [57] Franch was fired in July 2020 for "failure to develop and implement a strategy and maintain the confidence of the AA School Community which were specific failures of performance against clear objectives outlined in the original contract of employment." [58] Her dismissal came despite support from academics who wrote an open letter talking of "systemic biases" against women and of sexism, and accusing the AA of using "the pandemic for anti-democratic purposes". A number of academics later retracted their names from the letter after learning further details of her dismissal. [57] Architectural magazine Dezeen reported tutor and alumni views that the failure to investigate allegations of bullying and sexism had damaged both the AA school and the architecture profession, leaving "a cloud over the school". [59] However, a retaliatory open letter from two male AA tutors called the accusation of sexism "grossly uninformed", while other letters accused the AA of mixing the vote on leadership with "systemic issues" relating to its lack of diversity. [60] Franch herself remained silent, her PR consultant saying she could not comment for legal reasons. [60]
2020-present
In January 2021, Franch became a visiting lecturer at Princeton University School of Architecture. [61] In May 2022, Franch was one of the three artistic directors of the Barcelona Architectures Festival. [62]
