Manuel DeLanda has been an internationally recognized philosopher since 1991. He has participated in more than 50 conferences all over the world, published essays in several journals and collections, and written six books, two of which have been translated into several languages. Before 1991 he was an independent filmmaker (his films are in the permanent collection of Anthology Film Archives), a computer programmer, and a 3D modeler, working for several production houses in New York. He is the author of six philosophy books, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (1991), A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (1997), Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy (2002), A New Philosophy of Society (2006), Deleuze: History and Science (2010), and Philosophy and Simulation (2011).

He teaches two seminars at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, Department of Architecture: Philosophy of Urban History and Philosophy of Science: Thinking about Structures and Materials. He also teaches in the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Southern California, and he holds the Gilles Deleuze chair at the European Graduate School in Switzerland. He holds a BFA from School of Visual Arts; an MA in Communication from the European Graduate School, Switzerland, and a PhD in media and communications from the European Graduate School, Switzerland.

Generous support for CCA public programs in San Francisco has been provided by Grants for the Arts / San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund.

The 2012-13 Architecture Lecture Series is funded by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP; Jensen Architects; John Marx / Form4 Architecture; Perkins+Will; Pfau Long Architecture Ltd.; STUDIOS Architecture; WSP Flack+Kurtz; ARCH Art Supply; BraytonHughes Design Studios; GCI; Long & Levit LLP; SFMOMA A+D Forum; Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture; Blasen Landscape Architecture; John A. Raeber, Architectural Specifications; and Ratcliff.