BORDERWALL AS ARCHITECTURE

Border Wall Alternatives

2011-04-10T09:54:00.000-07:00

Ronald Rael, assistant professor of architecture, discusses his designs for alternatives uses for the wall between the United States and Mexico.
4:10 min. video produced by Roxanne Makasdjian, UC Berkeley Media Relations
Full Story: http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/03/29/border-wall/

HBO: The Fence

2010-12-04T12:58:00.000-08:00

The Fence is an HBO documentary that examines the controversial fence along the U.S./Mexico Border. See more here.

The Iron(ic) Footbridge

2010-08-22T07:05:00.000-07:00

On each side of a towering West Texas stretch of the $2.4 billion border fence designed to block people from illegally entering the country, there are two metal footbridges, clear paths into the United States from Mexico. The footpaths that could easily guide illegal immigrants and smugglers across the Rio Grande without getting wet seem to be there because of what amounts to federal linguistics. While just about anyone would call them bridges, the U.S.-Mexico group that owns them calls them something else.

"Technically speaking it's not a bridge, it's a grade control structure," said Sally Spener, spokeswoman for the International Boundary and Water Commission, which maintains the integrity of the 1,200-mile river border between the U.S. and Mexico. The structures under the spans help prevent the river — and therefore the international border — from shifting.

The 800 Mile Wall

2010-03-26T20:31:00.000-07:00

The 800 Mile Wall highlights the construction of the new border walls along the U.S.-Mexico border as well as the effect on migrants trying to cross into the U.S. This powerful 90-minute film is an unflinching look at a failed U.S. border strategy that many believe has caused the death of thousands of migrants and violates fundamental human rights.

Since border walls have been built, well over 5,000 migrant bodies have been recovered in U.S. deserts, mountains and canals. Some unofficial reports put the death toll as high as 10,000 men, women and children. As a direct result of U.S. border policy, migrants are forced to cross treacherous deserts and mountains in search of low skill and low paying jobs in the United States. The New York Times writes, "Current border strategy is serving as a funnel through deadly terrain." The 800 Mile Wall documents, in great detail, the ineffective and deadly results of a failed border policy and offers some thoughts and on how the current human rights crisis may be resolved. Directed by John Carlos Frey and Produced by Jack Lorenz. Running Time: 90 min.

Ferry To The Other Side / Corner Of Latin America

2010-03-19T07:04:00.001-07:00

Margaret Randall reads Ferry To The Other Side / Corner Of Latin America from her book Stones Witness accompanied by Glenn Weyant on Nogales Border Wall, played with cello bow and implements of mass percussion.

The collaboration was improvised live on 3/14/10 at the bifurcation scar of Nogales Arizona and Nogales Sonora.

Video by Barbara Byers.

For more about Margaret's work visit:
http://www.margaretrandall.org

For more about Glenn's work visit:
http://www.sonicanta.com/

Virtual U.S.-Mexico Border Fence At A Virtual End

2010-03-17T08:49:00.000-07:00

The Department of Homeland Security's plan to build a virtual fence across the U.S.-Mexico Border has come to a crashing halt just days before the release of a report expected to slam the system. Read more or listen at NPR.

Illegal Border Crossing Park

2010-03-13T08:18:00.000-08:00

The Mexican town of El Alberto lies 800 miles south of the US border in the state of Hidalgo. It’s pretty much like any other town of 3,000 people, except in El Alberto they offer tourists the chance to participate in a simulated illegal border crossing. It all happens at a standard recreational park with swimming pools, river trips, zip lines, and the other typical fare. We took a few cameras and headed for the EcoAlberto Park to spend some late-nights running through underground tunnels on the heels of our personal “Coyote” while being chased by border patrol. While we were there, we crashed a quinceñera party and saw El Alberto from the perspective of the locals. We find that when Mexicans cross the border to pursue the “American Dream,” their real aim is to bring a slice of the pie back home to Mexico. And so they do, provided they can run fast enough.

Border Fence = Drug Deaths

2010-01-30T22:03:00.000-08:00

On January 9, 2009, American Border Patrol issued a press release entitled "Does the Border Fence Work?" In it, ABP announced a press conference to be held at the National Press Club on January 15 to, among other things, "show a strong correlation between the construction of the border fence and drug-related deaths in Mexico between 2005 and 2009."

WPA 2.0 Border Wall as Infrastructure Presentations

2010-01-29T08:18:00.000-08:00

Presentation delivered at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C. as a finalist in the WPA 2.0 competition sponsored by UCLA Citylab, wpa2.aud.ucla.edu

"There exists far more potential in a construction project that is estimated to cost up to $1,325.75 per linear foot." Recognizing the high cost, limited effectiveness and unintended natural consequences of the new, multi-layered US/Mexico border wall (disruption of animal habitats, diversion of water runoff that has caused new flooding in nearby towns), this proposal names alternatives that might better combat the energy crisis, risk of death from dehydration, disruption of animal habitat, loss of vegetation, negative labor relations, missing creative vision and lack of cross-cultural appreciation likely in the government sponsored version.

Project Credits:

Rael San Fratello Architects: Ronald Rael,Virginia San Fratello, Emily Licht, Plamena Milusheva, Brian Grieb, Colleen Paz, Molly Reichert

www.rael-sanfratello.com

Video presentation for exhibit at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C. Finalist in the WPA 2.0 competition sponsored by UCLA Citylab, wpa2.aud.ucla.edu

"There exists far more potential in a construction project that is estimated to cost up to $1,325.75 per linear foot." Recognizing the high cost, limited effectiveness and unintended natural consequences of the new, multi-layered US/Mexico border wall (disruption of animal habitats, diversion of water runoff that has caused new flooding in nearby towns), this proposal names alternatives that might better combat the energy crisis, risk of death from dehydration, disruption of animal habitat, loss of vegetation, negative labor relations, missing creative vision and lack of cross-cultural appreciation likely in the government sponsored version.

Project Credits:

Rael San Fratello Architects: Ronald Rael,Virginia San Fratello, Emily Licht, Plamena Milusheva, Brian Grieb, Colleen Paz, Molly Reichert

Soundtrack: Glenn Weyant/The Anta Project: www.sonicanta.com

Compiled from covert performances utilizing implements of mass percussion and a cello bow to play the steel wall, barbed wire fences and assorted ephemera that separates the United States from Mexico.

www.rael-sanfratello.com

60 Minutes on the Virtual Fence

2010-01-21T08:37:00.000-08:00

Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes reports on the virtual fence between the U.S. and Mexico. Watch here

2009-12-31T09:11:00.000-08:00

Border Wall = Immigrant Museum?

2009-12-31T08:25:00.000-08:00

Pier-Museum by Mario Cottone and Gregorio Indelicato

Italian architects Mario Cottone and Gregorio Indelicato propose an immigrant "Pier-Museum" which, pointing out to sea, will stand as a "horizontal monument" to all the immigrants who have arrived on these shores in search of a better future. The 100 meter long structure will point out to sea off Miami Beach and will house a museum in which the personal effects, souvenirs and photos belonging to the new generation of immigrants will be exhibited - those who came to the city of Miami from the 1950's to the 1980's in search of their own personal American Dream. To this end, this "Pier-Museum" is to function as an architectural landmark and serve as a space commemorating the new urban dynamic of the city,the global multiculturalism which defines the beginning of the 21st century. The design was the winning entry in a competition hosted by the University of Miami School of Architecture and Arquitectum.

Border Wall looking towards Tijuana, Mexico at Border Fields State Park

It is not clear if the Italian architects are aware of the western terminus of the border wall as it dives into the Pacific Ocean, a manifestation of, and symbolizing, the tensions that are directed at immigrants seeking a better future in the U.S. Is their proposal a political statement, irony or serendipity?

Border Wall as Infrastructure

2009-12-19T08:44:00.000-08:00

Border Wall as Infrastructure, a design proposal for re-imagining the border wall between the United States and Mexico, was designed by Rael San Fratello Architects and selected as a finalist in the WPA 2.0 Competition. Two examples can be seen below and more information on the project can be found here.

The most untapped potential for solar development in the United States lies along the U.S./Mexico border. Solar farms, in turn, are highly secure installations. What if we were to reallocate some of the funds used simply to construct and maintain the border wall for the construction of energy infrastructure along the border? We would actually create scenarios in many instances that are more secure than the existing wall, and that simultaneously provide solar energy to the energy hungry cities of the southwest.

The border wall can and should be envisioned as a linear urban park through certain urban geographies. When supplemented with green spaces, connected to schools, libraries and other parks, there is no reason not to think of the wall as the organizing condition for an urban park, offering pedestrian and bicycle routes through the city. The linear park, in turn, has the potential to increase adjacent property values and the quality of life on both sides of the border while providing an important green corridor through the city.

Is This A Fence?

2009-12-18T18:03:00.000-08:00

Borderless Border: Removing the US-Mexico boundary fence by reclaiming the Rio Grande

2009-11-24T18:53:00.000-08:00

Evidence of informal crossing along the border zone.

This is the border in the desert, west of El Paso running for 600 miles in the desert. In 1994, the U.S. Government planned a meter high steel fence along a 1.5 mile section of the US–Mexico border line, near Anapra. To tighten border security and stem the tide of new illegal immigrants. Since then, the number of crossings has ironically increased while the get-tough policy of the U.S. government has created more risk for immigrants: Mexican workers now have to walk further to the edge of the fence to cross, placing them at risk of deadly sun exposure, snake bites and shoot-outs with U.S. ranchers on remote borderlands. This project re-examines the 500-year paradoxical relationship of North America by drawing from the Ciudad Juàrez - El Paso “twin city” model along the border region. The strategy examines the effects of removing border infrastructure while forwarding a reclamation strategy for the Rio Grande and the Rio Bravo, a multi-stage watershed shared by the Province of Chihuahua and the State. Borderless Border: Removing the US-Mexico boundary fence by reclaiming the Rio Grande is a project by landscape architect Pierre Bélanger.

Border infrastructure along the Rio Grande and the industrial zones that serve North America.

Border Fence Requirement Is Removed

2009-11-20T17:37:00.000-08:00

Congress has stripped a provision from a Department of Homeland Security appropriation bill that would have required 300 more miles of tall fencing along the Mexican border, saying the money needed to build the barrier would be better spent on alternative security measures.

Walley Ball

2009-11-13T19:18:00.000-08:00

On the San Diego-Tijuana border, Brent Hoff and Josh Bearman initiate an impromptu volleyball game with two formidable opponents: Jerry and Eric. Playing over the dividing pylons between the two nations, the Americans ponder the implications of their game on U.S. Customs law.

The Border Fence - Where it is and How It Works

2009-10-24T21:19:00.000-07:00

Border Fence Co. Serving El Paso for 30 Years

2009-09-22T19:52:00.001-07:00

Border Wall as Infrastructure

2009-09-09T04:17:00.000-07:00

cityLAB, an urban think-tank at UCLA’s Department of Architecture and Urban Design, has announced the six finalists of its WPA 2.0 competition. The competition, which stands for working public architecture, invited designers of all stripes to submit proposals for rebuilding our cities’ infrastructure as a sort of throwback to the Great Depression-era WPA. Juried by Stan Allen, Cecil Balmond, Elizabeth Diller, Walter Hood, Thom Mayne, and Marilyn Jordan Taylor, the top-six picks run the gamut from heading off an impending water crisis to creating a softer, gentler version of our infrastructure.

Border Wall as Infrastructure, submitted by Rael San Fratello Architects, investigates unplumbed potentials for the Mexico-U.S. border fence. "There exists far more potential in a construction project that is estimated to cost up to $1,325.75 per linear foot." Recognizing the high cost, limited effectiveness and unintended natural consequences of the new, multi-layered US/Mexico border wall (disruption of animal habitats, diversion of water runoff that has caused new flooding in nearby towns), this proposal names 30 alternatives (covering nearly the whole of the Mexican alphabet, literally from Aqueduct wall to Zen wall) that might better combat the energy crisis, risk of death from dehydration, disruption of animal habitat, loss of vegetation, negative labor relations, missing creative vision and lack of cross-cultural appreciation likely in the government sponsored version. Read more at WPA 2.0 | Architects Newspaper | Curbed | World Landscape Architect

Franklin Delano Roosevelt on Border Walls

2009-09-03T11:46:00.000-07:00

"What I seek to convey is the historic truth that the United States as a nation has at all times maintained opposition --clear, definite opposition-- to any attempt to lock us in behind an ancient Chinese wall while the procession of civilization went past. Today, thinking of our children and of their children, we oppose enforced isolation for ourselves or for any other part of the Americas."

— FDR, speech on "The Four Freedoms," Jan 6, 1941

Selling The Border Wall

2009-09-03T07:00:00.000-07:00

They have heard of people tunneling under it, scaling it and, on the Mexican side, defacing it. But it is not often, law enforcement authorities say, that people try to rip apart the border fence to sell it. That appears to be the motive that led to the arrest this week in Tijuana, Mexico, of six people who, the authorities there say, were caught shearing off chunks of the metal plate fence to sell as scrap.

Saving the Sabal Palm

2009-08-06T13:46:00.001-07:00

Once found across much of the lower Gulf Coast, sabal palm forests have all but vanished under the plow. While some scattered trees can be found on private lands in the region, the significant remaining stands of these towering trees are located at Lennox Foundation Southmost Preserve, the Sabal Palm Audubon Center and the Lower Rio Grand Valley National Wildlife Refuge.
All three of those conservation areas lie in the path of the border fence

Palms B-Roll Preview from on Vimeo.

In order to save sabal palms that would otherwise be leveled by construction of the fence, the Conservancy is partnering with the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service and Audubon Texas in coordination with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to transplant palms to safe ground, one tree at a time.

2009-08-05T15:11:00.000-07:00

Border wall successfully halting illegal immigration (of wildlife)

2009-08-04T08:02:00.000-07:00

From the article: Border wall successfully halting illegal immigration (of wildlife) By Eoin O'Carroll in the Christian Science Monitor:

Those who wish to secure America’s borders from ocelots, pronghorn antelopes, gray wolves, and bighorn sheep scored a victory earlier this month, as an amendment to a Homeland Security bill passed by the House mandates an additional 369 miles of fence that will prevent these animals from crossing the border.
The border wall, which was constructed after waiving three dozen federal environmental laws, is expected to be successful in reducing populations of these and other species, most of whom do not speak English or pay taxes. The science news site PhysOrg reports on a study for the peer-reviewed journal Conservation Biology, which found that Sonoran bighorn sheep populations north of the border rely on contact with those on the other side of the border to maintain genetic diversity.
A 2007 report in Salon found that habitat fragmentation was also reducing populations of ocelots – a rare species of wildcat that some argue could potentially steal jobs from Americans.
Indeed, the only large mammal whose migration is largely unaffected by the border wall are H. sapiens, whose opposable thumbs and developed neocortex enable them to simply use ladders ordig tunnels under the fence. Last year, the Federation of American Scientists reported that the US Border Patrol had discovered 93 cross-border tunnels since 1990.
What’s more, almost half of illegal human immigrants avoided the border wall altogether by entering the US on a legal visa – an option not available to members of other species.
Still, by some measures, the border wall can be considered a success. Since its construction, there have been no reports of pronghorn antelopes enrolling in public schools, and the number of ocelots working in service industries appears to have been sharply reduced.

New US and Mexican Border Fence and Map 2009

2009-07-23T06:36:00.000-07:00

American Patrol, an independent pro-border fence website, has released a new online map of the Southwest border that shows the where and what type of fencing is installed between San Diego, California and Brownsville, Texas. Viewers can open a map of Border Patrol sectors and then click on a given sector to see where fencing and vehicle barriers have been installed.

Mexico Builds Border Wall To Keep Out Assholes

2009-07-10T21:58:00.000-07:00

Mexico Builds Border Wall To Keep Out US Assholes

Border Yoga

2009-06-22T11:35:00.000-07:00

A few dozen yoga aficionados rolled out their mats Sunday on both sides of the wall between Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego. The international group stretched and meditated together before exchanging hugs through the fence bars as the border fence yoga stretched the boundaries.

Border Locations

2009-06-12T09:31:00.000-07:00

H.R. 6061, Border Fence Act Fence Locations on Google Maps.

Virtual Fence: How it Works

2009-06-12T08:45:00.000-07:00

In a test area near Sasabe, Arizona, a 28-mile section of the virtual border fence is set to go live. Developed by Boeing as part of a $70 million contract, the test fence, dubbed Project 28, will use a combination of physical fencing and "invisible technology" So, how does it work?

Urbanism of Transgression

2009-06-06T08:55:00.000-07:00

One post-9/11 urban intervention that has received little attention in architectural circles is the massive transformation of the San Ysidro border checkpoint, currently in its early planning stages and for which an architect has already been chosen. Homeland Security is pouring billions of dollars into the San Diego/Tijuana border region to reinforce its infrastructure of surveillance, continuing to further divide the U.S. from its Mexican neighbor.

Read more in the essay SD/TJ BORDER WALL: URBANISM OF TRANSGRESSION by Teddy Cruz.

Border Wall Films

2009-06-06T04:12:00.000-07:00

The Wall

The 800 Mile Wall

The Border Wall

Competition Winning Border Crossing Oasis, Mexico-USA

2009-03-02T15:49:00.000-08:00

Thought you all may want to see what some others have suggested...

http://bustler.net/index.php/article/competition_winning_border_crossing_oasis_mexico_usa/

Competition Winning Border Crossing Oasis, Mexico-USA

Posted: Friday, February 27, 2009

With this proposal for a border crossing for pedestrians between Mexico and the United States, Belgian firm OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen, in collaboration with Wonne Ickx, won the first prize in an international design competition back in 2005. Not necessarily the latest competition news, but the architectural and political issue of construction projects along the US-Mexican border remains highly explosive and, yet, unresolved.

This is how the architects describe the project:

“An oblong volume provides a border crossing for pedestrians between Mexico and the US, and interrupts the endless demarcated boundary. A nine-meter high wall defines a no-man’s-land between the two countries. Within the white walls a grid of palm trees imposes order on a large, shaded garden. Pavilions for passport control and administration are spread around here and there, becoming part of the garden. The oasis is a point of reference in the vast Tex-Mex landscape, hidden within the open landscape by its walls. In all its simplicity it raises questions about the desire for the promised land.”

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen will also have their first solo exhibition coming up in deSingel International Arts Campus in Antwerp, Belgium. The exhibition is called 7 Rooms and will feature 17 key projects, and a catalog. The exhibition opens on March 5.

Images: OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen

Border Plan Will Address Harm Done at Fence Site

2009-02-20T22:58:00.000-08:00

Published: January 16, 2009

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

LOS ANGELES — The federal government has pledged millions of dollars to make up for the environmental damage from building hundreds of miles of fences along the Mexican border through wilderness and protected lands.

Dean Knuth/Arizona Daily Star

A photograph showing the nearly completed fence along the Mexican border taken in November 2007 near Sasabe, Ariz. Advocacy groups have complained about environmental damage.

But environmental groups who have fought the fence called it too little, too late.

In an announcement on Thursday, federal officials said the new spending was intended to resolve any conflict in the missions of the Departments of Homeland Security and Interior. The former is building nearly 670 miles of fences and other security equipment along the border, while the latter is charged with protecting and maintaining several hundred miles of public lands along the fence.

The officials said the Homeland Security Department would devote up to $50 million in the next year for “reasonable mitigation measures” to compensate for the damage or loss of animal and plant habitat and cultural areas like American Indian religious sites.

That compensation could include modifying the fence to curb flooding and to accommodate threatened and endangered species or restoring their habitats, but officials have not worked out those details and it will vary depending on the area.

The Interior Department will draft a list of priorities by June.

The agreement between the two departments has been in the works since April, when the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, to the dismay of environmentalists and some scientists in the Interior Department, used his Congressionally authorized power to waive environmental laws to speed access to broad swaths of land.

At the time, in the face of an outcry from critics, Mr. Chertoff said the fence construction would proceed but with sensitivity to the environment and in coordination with the Interior Department.

Homeland security officials said the department had spent about $40 million in the past two years to address environmental problems associated with the border security project.

The fence construction and related roads and equipment for detecting illegal border crossers directly affect 200 to 300 miles of Interior Department land along the fence route and some of the most environmentally sensitive sites in the region.

With the promise of new spending coming just days before President-elect Barack Obama takes office on Tuesday, it was unclear on Friday to what extent the agreement would stick.

Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona, a Democrat whom Mr. Obama has chosen to head the Homeland Security Department, has not publicly taken a position on Mr. Chertoff’s use of the waivers, a spokeswoman said.

But Ms. Napolitano has expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of the fence. On Thursday, she told a Senate committee considering her nomination that she planned a broad and thorough review of the department’s policies.

Nick Shapiro, a spokesman for the Obama transition office, said, “President-elect Obama will review all 11th-hour regulations and will address them once he is president.”

Lloyd Easterling, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection, the agency within the Homeland Security Department that will decide how to spend the $50 million, said transition officials were consulted on the agreement and took no position. But Mr. Easterling expressed optimism that it would go forward.

“Good environmental stewardship,” he said, “is transcendental of administrations.”

Environmental groups who challenged the fence construction, including an effort to have the Supreme Court block it, said dozens of species had suffered lost or damaged habitat. Among them, they say, are jaguars, ocelots, deer, javelinas and owls.

The environmental groups said that although steps to minimize the environmental harm of the fence were welcome, they would press the new administration to halt further fence building and reassess what had been done.

“We heard in Janet Napolitano’s remarks this week interest in evaluating this project, and that certainly is what the Sierra Club is asking for,” said Oliver Bernstein, a spokesman for that group in Texas. “This $50 million is too little, too late, but it is recognition that the border wall project is having tremendous environmental consequences.”

A version of this article appeared in print on January 17, 2009, on page A15 of the New York edition.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/17/us/17border.html?scp=3&sq=enviornmen%20border%20wall&st=cse

Border Fence Work Raises Environmental Concerns (November 21, 2007)

Environmental Laws Waived to Press Work on Border Fence (October 23, 2007)

Illegal Border Crossing Architecture: Faux Fences & Ramps

2009-02-08T11:59:00.000-08:00

Where the 600 miles of fencing are already up, along the borders of California, Arizona and New Mexico, “smugglers and illegal immigrants continue to breach the fencing that is up, forcing Border Patrol agents and contractors to return again and again for repairs,” the Wall Street Journal noted Wednesday. “The smugglers build ramps to drive over fencing, dig tunnels under it, or use blow torches to slice through. They cut down metal posts used as vehicle barriers and replace them with dummy posts, made from cardboard.”

Cardboard or Concrete?

When U.S. authorities raised a tall curtain of steel through this tiny Arizona border town to prevent people crossing illegally from Mexico, the smugglers on the south side were ready. Using blowtorches and welding gear they burned a rectangular gate in the barrier large enough to drive a truck through, then they sealed it with a padlock to use it at their leisure, border police say.

A modified pickup truck with extendable ramps stands idle a few yards to the south of the fence marking the U.S. and Mexico border near Campo, CA.

Sturdy steel posts have been sunk in the ground in many areas to stop vehicles crossing north, although drug traffickers have responded by building elaborate vehicle ramps to drive cars over the top, border police say. “It's like the old show 'The Dukes of Hazzard,' cars flying through the air,” said James Jacques, a supervisory Border Patrol in San Diego, Calif. Illegal border crossers are also routinely beating pedestrian barriers using ladders tailor-made in clandestine Mexican workshops, border police say, while others have used screwdrivers to try to clamber over new 14-foot tall, steel-mesh barriers designed to deny handholds.

Border Patrol agents seized hundreds of pounds of marijuana valued at almost three-quarters of a million dollars from a truck that was driven over the border on metal ramps.

Ancestral Graves Desecrated for Border Wall

2009-01-23T08:30:00.000-08:00

Homeland Security destroyed 69 graves of Tohono O'odham ancestors in one location alone while constructing the US/Mexico border wall south of Tucson, in violation of all federal laws created to protect American Indian remains. Homeland Security and US courts waived all federal laws to protect Native American graves and the environment and then allowed for border wall construction at San Pedro near Nogales. The graves were violated and the details were not made public. Although the archaeologist exposing the desecration only revealed it as a rare find, for O'odham, these are the graves of their ancestors which were destroyed. Archaeologist Maren Hopkins said the village is believed to have existed from around A.D. 700 to 1200.

border elasticity

2009-01-03T18:38:00.001-08:00

The U.S.- Mexico border is penetrable along its length despite efforts to control passage through fencing. As people overcome and adapt to enforcements on the land, new processes of movement and settlement transform the position of the boundary. In cities such as Naco, Arizona and Naco, Sonora, the juxtaposition of dense, sporadic passage fro Mexico and fluid movement from the U.S. results in deformations of the borderline. The purpose of the border as a boundary becomes questionable as expanded conditions are revealed in a fluctuating zone comprised of varied rates of movement. The line becomes elastic - shifting in thickness - back and forth between boundary line and border space.

The fence proposal is a biological water treatment facility situated on the border 1-mile outside of the towns of Naco, Arizona and Naco, Sonora. The site formerly served as the location for Fiesta Binacional, an annual volleyball game and social gathering straddling the boundary where the existing 13-foot high fence terminates. The treatment facility is an extension of this fence and provides needed clean water to households in both Nacos. In addition, it serves as a platform for residents north and south of the border to openly convene in a shared binational zone. The facility is accessible from both sides with the existing floodlights serving as the only form of security.

Proposed sewage lines are housed along the present fence and enter the treatment facility below grade to flow into a collection of preliminary holding containers. A series of bioremediation tanks, integrated into the upper levels of the expanded structure, are constructedas ponds with various emergent plants, snails, and fish.The final remedial stages consist of passage through constructed wetlands abundant with plant life, fish, and other microorganisms. The remediation system is modeled after the Ashfield, MA Wastewater Treatment Plant and the Norfolk Holkham, UK Accel-o-Fac Treat-ment Facility.

Thought has been given to the future of the border wall and adjacent towns. The life of the treatment facility rests on the political position behind the physical fence and subsequent population increase or decrease of the two Nacos. If the towns are to grow, the structure is designed to expand along the border as a system of multiple units. The current proposal consists of two symmetrical units that provide for 350 households.

The possibility of population decline (negating or lessening the need for the facility) has required consideration of materials that may break down and/or disassemble for reuse elsewhere leaving behind the primary steel structureto act as a border marker or as a base for the developmentof a different structure. Left unbuilt, the remaining structural members would demarcate the frontier, however, rather than dividing the two sides, they would stitch the territories together with an open, porous, framework.

BORDER: WATER FOREST

2008-12-24T09:38:00.000-08:00

TRANSNATIONAL LANDSCAPES:
The US-Mexico border has evolved from being primarily a political and military dividing line between two nation states to latent urbanized regions with a high concentration of resources, capital, economic activities, where global economies, technologies and infrastructure take place. Indeed, one important byproduct of the urban expansion in the borderlands has been the emergence of sister cities. Today, close to 90% of the population along the border resides in the fourteen sister cities that straddle this international divide. The most important examples are El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, San Diego-Tijuana and Mexicali-Calexo. Although some of these urban settlements were established during colonial times, most of their establishment and growth happened during the second half of the XX century. Sister cities represent two separate spatial formations that evolved under different cultural and political conditions (highly sensitive to national culture) yet their physical proximity, and their social and economic ties create an “intriguing bicultural urban spatial arrangement.”

TROUBLED WATERS IN EL PASO/CIUDAD JUAREZ:
Urban growth and the economic development of the El Paso-Ciudad Juarez border zone have magnified the reciprocal nature of the border physical environment problems. Both the quantity and quality of water are in jeopardy because of the international character of hydrological systems operating around the boundary. “Geographically, the two cities are connected because they share the Rio Grande, as well as the regions’ two main aquifers, the Hueco and the Mesilla bolsones”, yet both sides suffer from inadequate civil infrastructure through which to transport water from households and industries to a centralized location for treatment, leading to surface and ground water contamination. The supply of surface water has been a major source of controversy, and more recently, access to groundwater aquifers has generated new legal problems concerning national rights of accessibility.

SITUATION: Before the twentieth century, the main source of water had been the river for both cities. In 1928, El Paso took interest in purchasing rights to stream flow, yet the Reclamation Services stated that the US portion of Elephant Butte storage was fully appropriated, forcing the city to adopt groundwater as the principal source of its water supply system. The range of choices open to Juarez in selecting its municipal water source was more restrictive than that of El Paso, making the city dependant on groundwater for its municipal water needs.

There is also a transnational difference in the location of groundwater fields. In El Paso, groundwater rights are concomitant to land ownership to be used without supervision, allowing for the city to look beyond its geographical limits into distant water reserves, while the Mexican Government controls the groundwater and Juarez is limited to the strata beneath the city.
The National Water Commission (CAN) indicates that the nation’s current water supply is less than half of what is was in the 1950. Mexico averages 5,000 cubic meters of water per person, an amount far below the global average of 8,000-10,000 cubic meters. Dissimilarly, the US, Canada Europe, and some countries in South America enjoy as much as 30,000 cubic meters of water. Nevertheless, hydrologists estimate that by 2025 the two cities will have doubled in size and will also have “sucked the last drop of drinkable water from the underground aquifer.

In addition, bad casing of wells have caused mineral contamination from leakage and encroachment of salt water into fresh water stocks. Salinity is a contentious issue in this case as it reduces the economic usefulness of water whether for agricultural or municipal use. Today, as a consequence of increasing demands, and as aquifers decline and become more saline, municipalities are switching to the Rio Grande as a long-term sustainable resource.

"Δ", EL PASO AND JUAREZ: El Paso won’t really run out of water, but costs will heavily rise, as they will look for it in places further away and harder to reach. El Paso already purchased water rights in two Antelope Valley aquifers (close to 150 miles southeast of El Paso). In order to take advantage of them, the city will have to build an expensive system to deliver this water to its citizens.

El Paso’s switch to surface water has not been easy, especially with regards to the negotiation of acquisition of irrigation rights, and poor water quality in the river. The dams while providing storage have also greatly reduced the river’s downstream flow. Beginning in the state of Colorado, the Rio Grande flows through New Mexico, delineates Texas and Chihuahua (Mexico), providing drinking water for 13 million people, and making it the main source of water to the Texas-Mexico border. As such, the maintenance of the river’s flow is crucial for the continued development of El Paso, Ciudad Juarez and other cities lying on the Texas-Chihuahua international border.

The Mexican municipal water consumption is generally only about half of the Texas per capita consumption rates. This difference is due largely to the higher water use in the US lawns, landscaping and swimming pools. Water demand in Juarez has in fact increased through the years. Nevertheless, the small percentage change is not correlated to an increase in population (the population of Juarez is now twice as big as El Paso’s) and as such can be read as a reflection of the growth of informal settlements in the periphery of the city lacking basic services including water.

PROPOSAL: An aqueduct. A network and infrastructure shared by both El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, physically demarcating space by directly addressing the essential pragmatics of the area. As such, the aqueduct replaces the security border, in its majority paralleling the Rio Grande, while at points branching out into the cities, connecting to existing systems and infrastructures, and thus disintegrating the border into the surrounding urban and rural landscapes. The proposal then deals with the collection and water (production, rainwater recycling and perhaps even grey-water treatment), its storage and its distribution.

Collection of water: The collection of water is done through various interconnected systems. The first one deals with the collection of rainwater through a specific roof membrane directly linked to the aqueduct and potentially other membranes that are placed in the cities’ already existing structures.
The second system focuses on the production of water. Seeing that deals with the cities cannot tap much more into the river, a system of production of water is then proposed. The roof membrane emulates the Namib beetle’s water condensation system through hydrophilic and hydrophobic skins and is based on the material research done by MIT with the regards to the potential of this water condensation and production technique.

Storage: Water is stored into bladders that are connected to the roof membrane and hang vertically from a created infrastructure. The bladders fill and empty reflecting a temporal reading of the environment and ecology, while at the same time becoming a water screen that fluctuates, screening, blocking or opening between the two sides. As the bladders grow, their weight pulls on the roof membrane, creating more tension, sectional differences and thus allowing for an aerial reading of the ecology. In addition, the ground and structure sculpt and manipulate the shape of the bladders giving way to other readings and spatial potentials. The different relationships that arise allow for new uses and interpretations by humans, fauna and flora.

Distribution: Due to the inefficiency of the existing system, this proposal seeks to replace the irrigation canals and create a new, more efficient and healthier network that links the cities together, not only dealing with crop irrigation but having the potential to tap onto water purification systems, etc. for domestic use.

Border Water Infrastructure: As implied previously, the infrastructure that is established has a specific metering and rhythm that allows for aggregation, additions and clustering. It consists of a roof membrane supported in tension by a triangulated, steel structure (with pinned connections), which, with the help of a cabling system, also support the water bladders. Adjustable, kinetic “arms” that attach to the bases of the main structure, help support the water bladders and accentuate their sculpting. In addition, by pushing or receiving the fluctuating ground enhances the manipulation of the water storage, allowing for permanent and temporal spaces of circulation and other uses.

Site-specific locations: The first and perhaps main physical manifestation of this water border network will be located next to the river, below the Franklyn mountains. In addition to this being the location where the Rio Grande becomes the border between Mexico and the US, the proximity to the Franklyn mountains give it a higher elevation thus facilitating the transportation or movement of water (due to gravity) and giving a lower temperature to the area. Winds, running perpendicular the mountain chain, create temperature changes between the East and West side of El Paso, achieving up to a 20 degrees in difference. This temperature change is necessary in the condensation of moisture.

A new landscape: The emergence of a new landscape captures our eyes and imagination. A forest where water hangs vertically, sculpted, restful and safe. Spaces of mediation, contemplation and gathering (amphitheater) arise in the molded ground. The new landscape becomes a recreational one as well as a didactic one, creating awareness as strollers walk by and experience the space. Circulation takes place on the ground, where one roams more freely, as well as in the sky, suspended in the canopy of the forest, hanging adjacent to the water bladders. These suspended circulation paths follow the water distribution; they come from specific urban centers in both El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, and lead directly to specific points of entry of the water forest. As such, the new landscape is one connected to its surroundings, open to all and symmetrical to both countries.

CONTINUING THOUGHTS:
Frequently, planning ends at the borderline, assuming that there is empty space on the other end. Nevertheless, in the case of the US-Mexico borderland, the environmental (as well as the socio-cultural) interaction operates according to principles that transcend the political geography. By focusing on water, the US-Mexico border becomes a hydro-region defined by the shared watersheds along the border. Bi-national approaches and measures, such as this aqueduct, are essential for they recognize the holistic nature of the region as an integral ecosystem and can work on policies that tackle problems from this comprehensive perspective. Both Mexicans and Americans are entitled to quality living standards and they should join forces to achieve them.

Urban Farming and US-Mexico Border

2008-12-22T10:40:00.000-08:00

To be continued....

films & surveillance

2008-12-22T09:46:00.000-08:00

more to follow soon...

A Practice in Excavating and Envisioning Ambos Nogales

2008-12-22T00:30:00.000-08:00

On June 28, 2007, agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) executed a search warrant at 24 North Escalada Drive in Nogales, Arizona, at a home used to conceal the U.S. entrance to a recently constructed tunnel that stretched nearly 100 yards underground to a residence across the border in Mexico.

According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, on January 16, 2008 authorities discovered three short tunnels in Nogales connecting approximately 250 ft. of storm drain to create one continuous passage. Then on December 11, 2008 another clandestine tunnel was found near the Mexico border in Nogales. The tunnel's exit was located about one foot away from the International Boundary fence and was estimated to be about 12 by 19 inches wide.

For the US Border Patrol, it was the sixth tunnel found in the Tucson Sector during fiscal year 2009, which started on Oct. 1. Since the start of fiscal year 2003, 40 tunnels have been found.

The US-Mexico border is not usually thought of in its below grade condition, but the continual illicit digging of tunnels, for the smuggling of drugs and individuals, by increasingly well-organized and sophisticated groups, has been cause for the deployment of combative strategies ranging from “tunnel teams” (Border Patrol Tunnel Unit) to concrete plugs. While monitoring technologies such as motion sensors are effective in the case of sewage infrastructure, clandestine tunnels are most effectively filled with concrete.

Up until now, these plugs have been used to close off the tunnels where they cross the border and at main entrance and exit points, while the areas in between remain largely intact. Part of the reason they have not been filled completely has to do with access to areas where they cross into private property, while on the Mexico side, a lack of resources sometimes keeps any work from being done, thereby keeping portions of tunnels available for reuse through new diggings. Without proper coordination and resources, this will continue to pose a binational security breach whose exact magnitude and range remains unknown.

My interest was in locating, excavating and envisioning three underground border systems: infrastructure (sewage tunnels), natural systems (caves, and illicitly dug tunnels, which through a system of aggregation, might suggest a specific spatial dynamic capable of being programmed for public access. Much of the potential for me exists within what I feel is the futility of the border fence as a definitive and defensible measure. Part of this dynamic is already visible at the border fence in the form of breaches that occur on a daily basis, requiring US Border Patrol to continually reseal and repatch what is often done with simple and highly accessible tools. During our visit to the border in El Paso we were told by US Border Patrol of days where, along just a stretch of a few miles, one to two hundred individuals would penetrate or jump the fence in an attempt to sprint across the barren Texas desert to then slip into the nearby neighborhoods. If this sort of circus can exist above ground, what sort of worlds might we find if we could have a totalizing view of the underground?

Negotiating border conditions- a case for the US/Mexico Border fence

2008-12-21T18:02:00.000-08:00

The border between two nations is manifested not just as a line of control, but a condition. It symbolizes a joint between the two nations rather than a divide; multi-cultural, diverse, and fragmented. This joint can be seen through everyday activities that initiates a dialogue between the two nations. Forming what may seem to be a third space/ third nation. (LEFT: image of the Israeli-Palestinian wall)

The wall/ fence sites itself in the center of this third space. It is here that these everyday activities, seek their way through ‘holes’ in these walls. Some created, others existing. Some illegitimate, others legitimate. The fence is probed and worked upon by various actors as an attempt to maintain this joint. This gives rise to local tactics that are imagined as global threats. As the walls grow taller, stronger, and more intense; nations divide, cities get fragmented and homes are rearranged. The reconfiguration and resettlement of the existing, in order to insert an alien screen/barrier, become a part of the hybrid. A new landscape is seen to emerge as a result of these new configurations.

The border fence reinstates ones notion of security (against the aliens), barricades illegalities (of exchange not allowed in the country) and controls immigration pressures. At the fence it is seen as a workspace for an illegal immigrant excavating his/her way through the night; as the meeting place for several families separated along this divide; as a space for trade for a drug peddler; as a screen to climb on, or a screen to play across…

My project began as an investigation and archive of everyday activities that form impressions along the border fence, thickening this line as a space for negotiations.

The new landscape

Site:El Paso/ Cuidad Juarez

Base map after the operatives were applied. Proposed landscape

This part of the project was developed as a 3-Dimensional, conceptual map that was built on a set of Boolean operations applied to the conceived space of the border. The stretch across the check points Paso Del Norte Port of Entry to the Stanton Street Bridge at the Mexico customs department that form legal entry terminals from the U.S. into Mexico was the site of examination.

Landforms that existed on either side were pulled across as bridges that joint the two sides as a series of stitches, twisting the existing morphology, creating a new landscape. This new landscape became the terrain for interventions.

Holes in the Wall

The U.S. Mexico border fence spans across the landscape, a high eighteen foot tall wall that is built on the U.S. side, barricading all communication with the aliens. Just as the wall cuts across land belonging to native families, school properties as well as the University of Texas, Brownsville, it breaks abruptly to allow for a golf course, an international recreation center or merely a property belonging to an influential billionaire. This brings into question, strategies applied by the homeland security in orienting pieces of fence along selected regions of the border. Legal mechanisms to puncture these barricades are legitimized by the introduction of programmed spaces. Hence my project introduces/ replaces segments of the fence with nodes that perform as public interfaces within a barren landscape.

Programming Exchanges along the border

Public participatory programs are inserted as plug-ins within an existing border condition as an attempt to instigate a dialogue or an ‘exchange’ of sorts that questions notions of exclusion/ inclusion.

“In the last few decades, the proliferation of fortified enclaves has created a new model of spatial segregation and transformed the quality of public life in many cities around the world. Fortified enclaves are privatized, enclosed and monitored spaces for residence, consumption, leisure and work. The fear of violence is one of their main justifications. They appeal to those who are abandoning the traditional public sphere of the streets to the poor, “the marginal,” and the homeless. In cities fragmented by fortified enclaves, it is difficult to maintain the principles of openness and free circulation that have been among the most significant organizing values of modern cities. As a consequence, the character of public space and of citizens’ participation in public life changes.” Teresa Caldera- Fortified enclaves- the new urban segregation

Everyday activities of local interactions are manifested as spaces for public interactions. The border wall thickens to allow for ones body to engage in a dialogue with the other. All forms of communication and exchange are experienced through the perforations or narrow crevices of a fence. These openings being designed to allow for a particular kind of exchange, legitimize its existence.

Exchange of information

Library............................. Newspaper stand

Exchange of values

The Confession room......................................The Church

Other exchange nodes

Scenario 1

A public landscape is proposed to span across the border bridging the two countries. The existing fence is maneuvered across the park along the new landscape that suggests a possible notch of two landforms. The fence is interrupted by proposed plug-ins that attempt to instigate a dialogue on the new border condition.

Through this scenario a post border projection is drawn where the border plug-ins are retained as monuments that mark a certain period in history.

...schematic diagram indicating the extent of the proposed landscape

Scenario 2

The wall plug-ins are imagined as a system of repetitive elements that can replace a volume of 480 square feet along the border condition.

These elements are programmed to perform a certain form of exchange that formally brings together people of diverse origin in order to engage in a dialogue on the border.

Through this scenario the border plug-ins are envisioned as nodes that perform as social spaces that become integral for the strengthening and building of a healthy society.

Concluding notes

The cities along the border, seem to be in an extremely unstable condition. The baggage of a socio-political threat along the periphery is killing everyday life in these urban and rural settlements.The two projected scenarios, propose the injection of civic/ public infrastructure as spaces for conversation, into this barren landscape of exclusion. These nodes of exchange are conceived as social spaces that can strengthen local ties, creating an archive of experiences and building healthier societies.

Bridging Space

2008-12-20T12:52:00.000-08:00

The curious room of heterotopias:

The trip to the US port of entry at the bridge of the Americas led us to a curious room. It is what I would like to call the “room of heterotopias”. The room preserved organic things that the border patrol would not allow into the country. Shelves containing stuffed birds, exotic insects, brooms, gaming trophies, fruits (that had touched the Mexican soil) and anything (even microscopic) that could be a potential source of disease and infection from the other side was held back in that space. Outside the room was a truck load of watermelons which was used to hide narcotics and had been confiscated by the alert eye of the patrol. Every day the port of entries confiscate things that are prohibited by the custom laws of either countries. There is no set way to dispose of these confiscated items. Some of the seized items are symbolic of the hypersensitivity that we display against the "other

The bridge:

The bridge of the Americas is a busy port of entry. Every day it receives scores of people who cross the border for work, leisure, education etc. The bridge, however is a sterile space, the only activity that takes place here is that of crossing. But bridges have the potential to serve as spaces of commerce and meeting . They can act as spaces where daily commuters (especially pedestrian) can stop and buy things before going back home, take a break to eat, or simply meet loved ones from across the border.

Also, the bridge is an interesting space because it behaves as no man’s land. It is not a line (that always creates the other) it is a space of the in-between. Things that cannot enter either of the two countries can find their space here.

The Design:

My design suggests the use of these bridges as a space for display and sale of things confiscated by the border patrols. It’s a place where seized apples can be eaten and residual watermelons be sold. It’s a market that changes its products everyday according to what is sequestered at the port of entries.

I propose it to be the space for the heterotopias that can sell books and show movies that are censored by either one or both the counties.

It is also a place where people can meet their loved ones who live across the border and not have to touch them through meshed fences.

The design creates space in-between the bridges that run from US to Mexico and visa versa. It stretches and suspends as meshed segments along constructed edges.

The edges act as buffer walls from the traffic yet are porous enough to give glimpses of the suspended meshed structure contained within it. The contained space can be populated by programs of sale and commerce as mentioned above. The thick edges also serve as spaces to store the things being sold. As every item sold here would have a story of exclusion in some ways the shelves would come to store stories of heterotopias.

Process:

The form took its cue from a previous border mapping exercises where I represented the stories of the wikimap as connectors in the virtual space - that at help personalize space. As De Certeau puts it. "They carry out the labor of transforming spaces into places and places into spaces. The model that represented this is shown along side where parts of Juarez and El Paso are connected with each other in a void space. In some ways the design for the bridge also seeks to create connectors in a void between two edges

The process of design made formal explorations into various ways in which the space could be moulded using fabrics that stretched across margins. The final space culminated as a series of platforms that flowed into each other creating smooth space geometry.

Conclusion : The creation of the border wall is an expensive yet futile attempt to curb problems of a much larger magnitude. It is a reaction to the symptoms and does not deal with the actual socio-economic- political reasons that are causing the exodus. The reaction reeks of hostility. My project intends to use the bridge as a space of release in this environment. It is a program that I believe can be replicated over various ports of entry into the country. Like many other projects in the studio, it seeks to puncture the antagonistic attitude that plague the space today. It attempts to make the space of the bridge a space for encounters and meeting rather than a sterile space for crossing over.

pneu border proposal :: part two

2008-12-19T19:31:00.000-08:00

please see previous blog post "pneu border" for rough project description. more to follow soon...

2008-12-18T11:31:00.000-08:00

Agricultural Hinge
U.S./Mexico Border Fence Proposal for Columbus NM and Puerto Palomas, Mexico
by Emily Licht

But when one draws a boundary it may be for various kinds of reason. If I surround an area with a fence or a line or otherwise, the purpose may be to prevent someone from getting in our out; but may also be part of a game and the players be supposed, say, to jump over the boundary; or it may show where the property of one man ends and that of another begins; and so on. So if I draw a boundary line that is not yet to say what I am drawing it for.
-Wittgenstein, Tractatus

I. Sister Cities

Urban settlements are the fastest growing formations along the U.S./Mexico border – the “longest contiguous international divide between a superpower and a developing nation.” 90% of the entire border population resides in the 14 principal sister cities strung along the border. These populations will more than double in the next ten years [see Romero, Hyperborder, p. 42].

Elongated border with sister cities correlated to actual border

This project imagines a future for these sister cities as a supra-regional urban area like the corridor from Washington D.C. to Boston. An initial series of studies [see “Border Megalopolis,” Nov. 24 2008], manipulates the space of the border through elongation and compression in an attempt to understand the typological vocabulary of sister cities.

Juxtaposing different patterns of development between these urban forms suggests future routes of growth—ways of imagining new utilities for the border. How can the border areas between sister cities be activated as spaces of connectivity rather than mere security? Shaped by local history, industry, and geography, each existing urban formation addresses the border in its own way, either by pushing up against it—even using it as the infrastructure for daily commerce—or by pulling back, creating an additional intra-national buffer. In the case of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, the border has practically dissolved in daily traffic. Elsewhere, such as Somerton, Arizona and Ciudad Morelos, the proximity of the larger urban center of Yuma diverts exchange that would otherwise grow between the sister cities.

In the smaller cities of Columbus, New Mexico and Puerto Palomas, Mexico, an undeveloped zone three miles long intercedes between the two cities, yet because of the strong reciprocity and interdependence between the communities, this space is projected to evaporate. This proposal theorizes a mechanism that transforms this fertile zone into a progressive agent of planned growth and economic stimulation.

II. The Hinge

After an initial study of the typologies of sister cities all along the border, I have situated this project in the zone currently dividing Columbus, New Mexico and Puerto Palomas, Chihuahua, Mexico. Like many cities separated by the border, Columbus and Puerto Palomas are undergoing ballooning populations and rapid urban expansion that propels fluid cross border traffic and bi-national reciprocities. School children, laborers, commodities and consumers all cross the border daily. As one educator puts it, “here you will find two cultures separated distinctly by a border; but the ebb and flow of culture across the line blurs the social-psychological separation" [see Herbert and McN ergney, The Case of Columbus settlement and the national border line. Unlike larger, p. 5].

There is a historical backdrop to these cultural linkages in the shared mythology of Pancho Villa. In 1916 Villa accumulated a force in Puerto Palomas that invaded, burned and sacked Columbus. It was Mexico’s last armed incursion into US soil, and it prompted the decision by the US government to mandate a buffer of at least 60 feet between any US settlement and the national border line. Unlike larger metrapoles such as El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, Brownsville and Matamoros, and San Diego and Tijuana, the towns of Columbus and Puerto Palomas have not yet physically converged. The three miles of land that separate them--the majority of it located on the US side--has at times been used for agriculture (natural aquifers here make this option attractive), but the land is currently fallow due to concerns over labor costs, and larger shifts in both state and global economic infrastructures.

This proposal uses the border “fence” to bridge these two communities; to stimulate a local agricultural economy and to project a future pattern of planned growth. The proposal replaces the existing six miles of fence with an “agricultural hinge,” a landscape machine, whose movement across the zone temporarily cedes territory to Mexico to facilitate the bi-national cultivation of newly viable farmland. The hinge is assembled from the 120-foot x 15-foot lateral irrigation trusses currently used in commercial agriculture. Linked together in a chain, these trusses create a moving border that relocates the security boundary between the two nations.

As the hinge opens and closes about its central axis, Highway 11, the area it irrigates is designated as farmland. Given that Columbus and Puerto Palomas are located on the largest aquifer in the region, this sort of water intensive proposal is not unrealistic, and current demographic data makes an agronomy-based proposal the most credible: more than 1 in 4 males in Columbus already earn there livelihood through agricultural work, and a skilled, underemployed labor pool already exists in the region. The New Mexico Food and Agriculture Policy Council has implemented incubator programs to aid community-based farms in the production of regional crops such as corn, alfalfa, chili peppers and onions. This proposal takes advantage of these preexisting stimulus schemes by locating these four crops within the purview of the hinge, with each situated based on its irrigation requirements, corn centered on the well-watered N./S. axis around Highway 11, and alfalfa—which requires minimal irrigation—on the edges.

Generators propel the trusses of the lateral irrigation system, but they can potentially be adapted to more energy-efficient, self-propelling mechanisms currently being developed by irrigation system specialists. Each truss supports a minimum of seven sprinkler valves, which are protected on one side by a thin polycarbonate sheet that is rotated by the pulse of pressurized sprinkler jets. These sheets protect the spray from wind and evaporation, but they also assume the role of the security boundary. The sprinklers extend down eight feet and they can retract to meet diverse crop needs. A lightweight continuous decking spans between the truss web members allowing for varying degrees of programmatic activity. The hinge thus has ancillary use as a moving promenade/bridge between the two communities. Variations envisioned in the design can accommodate light, flexible program elements such as meeting spaces, bike paths, bleachers, and classroom space to facilitate an agricultural learning center. As the hinge traverses its plot these elements can change. For example, where

the two arms of the hinge come together – this occurs on average once a month – a larger space is created for markets, dances or other community gatherings. On the ground, interspersed with the agricultural zones are designated park spaces. These “green zones” are maintained as recreational areas—park space rather than urban sprawl knits the two communities.

III. The Landscape to Come

By claiming this three-mile swath between Columbus and Puerto Palomas for agriculture, unfettered urban growth is not able to preclude a viable local agricultural economy. The Agricultural Hinge is a mechanism whose movement serves a utilitarian agricultural purpose while maintaining a truly bi-national territory. It allows people on both sides of the border to benefit from this land designation.

Should we enter a post-border reality, the hinge may be dismantled, limited in scope or allowed to remain as a static walkway. The agricultural space once traversed by the hinge can slowly open up to planned infrastructural development that further merges the two now-unmediated communities. The furrows drawn by the wheels of the trusses become roads and the parks attenuate, becoming fingers of green space that suture the now vibrant space between them.

This proposed border intervention is specifically crafted to the exigencies of Columbus, New Mexico and Puerto Palomas, Mexico, and it consciously pushes the scalar limits of such a system. Yet, a similar hinge mechanism for flexible (de)territorialization could be imagined as a way of mediating the inevitable collision of any of the sister cities along the border. As we develop a vocabulary of resolutions to the border “crisis,” Agricultural Hinge offers one landscape in a repertory of alternatives to a barren wall.

Hinge application across sister cities

Environmental Impacts Of The Border Wall

2008-12-11T22:49:00.000-08:00

The border wall is a controversial project that is quickly becoming a reality. The massive wall along the U.S. - Mexico border threatens communities and wildlife across the ecologically rich region. The borderlands contain a large number of federally protected areas, including National Parks and National Wildlife Refuges. These lands are part of America’s wild legacy, and are of significant ecological, educational, historic, cultural, recreational and economic value to the United States and its people. Read more...

The Toxicwall

2008-12-11T22:40:00.000-08:00

The Toxicwall, designed by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute architecture student Henry Louis Miller, is a response to the bullying, isolationist tone (as he sees it) creeping into the national debate on immigration. It's a simple idea. Collect earth from polluted brownsites. Use it to make toxic bricks. Form these bricks into a wall along the nation's southern border. Prevent illegal immigrants from crossing by forcing them to risk contamination.

Some thoughts on why designing/undesigning the border interface is such an important topic for architects and social theorists ...

Presentation: Border Wall as Architecture

2008-12-07T17:50:00.001-08:00

Student Designers: Emily Licht, Maria Chavez, So Rae Yoo, Lubaina Rangwala, Matthew Bitterman, Tanaz Modabber, Unchung Na, Adriana Navarro-Sertich, Namrata Kapoor, Gabriella Karl, Edwin Agudelo

Guest Critics: Nicholas de Moncheaux, Jordan Gieger, David Gissen, Darrel Fields, Keith Plymale, Laura Crescimano, Jill Stoner

Pneu Border Proposal

2008-11-29T15:17:00.000-08:00

“The true issue involves harnessing the political willpower to involve an educated community in the determination of its future and its economy.” ~ Marras, Amerigo. Hybrids, Fusions, and Architecture of the In-Between.

This proposal is a pneumatic border wall that primarily resides along the political border in the lower rio bravo/grande valley. The pneumatic wall creates a series of volumes which float along the rio, which can be programmed by the adjacent communities in a variety of ways which could benefit from either close bi-national contact or adjacency, or from being in an international zone or interstitial space. The wall itself is primarily two parallel tube sections which vary in section based upon programmatic needs or river morphology, with virtual-wall infrastructure in between which could potentially identify migrants as they cross the political border, for various purposes. The project aspires to encourage bi-national development, and cultivate cross-cultural contact and coordination in border towns and cities along and aside the rio grande/bravo, which most have largely turned their backs to. I am providing a system, a skeleton or carapice, to yes the Department of Homeland Security, but also to the communities in border regions along the river.

This investigation began with an interest in researching migrant death along the border, which identified two primary sites where this occurs- death by drowning along the rio grande/bravo, and hyperthermia in the frontier conditions of arizona and new mexico - too much water, or too little. Death however was just a by-product of a myriad of larger issues, which can be considered human ecology- the social, political, economic, and cultural environments in addition to a more environmental ecology. Aspiring to address some of these larger issues in addition to death along the border I began by looking at the river, as it forms nearly 65% of the nearly 2000 mile border, and the avulsions over time that have made what could be considered a "living border" - defining areas which have been both united states and mexico for some period of time, and what could be considered a general sort-of international riparian zone.

the project is anchored and accessed by a series of bridges which are built as the communities or governments desire to occupy the provided international spaces on the river [however discontinuous - divided by security gates and the virtual wall along the political border], and pneumatic pressure in conjunction with a to-be-designed vertebrae controls the shape of the inflatable where the bridges cannot to follow the river. in addition to a rather static condition along the river, the existing riparian zones - historically disputed lands or otherwise discarded spaces - can be developed in a variety of earthworks and landscape projects which can be shared bi-nationally with the intentional and controlled shift of the security border from the political border- moving the pneu border in a sort-of mimicry of the river avulsions.

The intermittent bridges serve as access and a track system to pull the pneu border over land, defining new bi-national or shared cultural riparian zones. The border wall can illuminate to serve these spaces at night and become a surface for projection, and the additional earthwork and landscapes could become anything from in-ground theatres and sports-fields to a decent migrant potters field. Optimistically when the wall is taken down {or deflated}, what is left in concrete are bridges and public spaces along the rivers edge.

The wall itself will be a series of individual pneumatic chambers which i'm working on designing now. The pressure cavity will be within the wall system, a double skin system that operates to modulate surface area by "poofiness," which will morph the form based upon necessary length and shape dictated by the river morphology or shifting across the riparian zones. This renders the interior spaces neutral in pneumatic pressure, however what floor and wall systems will need to expand and contract as the length and shape of the border wall shift. Various opacity, thicknesses, gradations, and unit modulation will be explored in this tectonic pursuit, which i'm excited about getting to once i've got the larger shifts represented etc... I hope the section of these tubes can vary in a big way over the length of the borderwall, and various formal typologies could be created to address the programs housed within - {i.e. "nave" section, "aviary" section, "office" section etc.} Aperture and penetration, rigidification etc. will be heavily considered and explored in this tectonic pursuit.

“Felix Guattari suggests that the basic question assailing us today is “how to produce, tap, enrich, and permanently reinvent (our subjectivity) in order to make it compatible with the Universe of changing values.” In this sense, ecology embraces the complexity of our social ecology, the ecology of the artificial environment that we produce in our being and becoming. It encompasses all ecologies that are at once natural and manmade.”

~Amerigo Marras adds to Felix Guattari in Hybrids, Fusions, and Architecture of the In-Between.

2008-11-24T21:59:00.000-08:00

Border Megalopolis

2008-11-24T12:01:00.000-08:00

Urban settlements along the US and Mexico border are some of the fastest growing regions in each respective country. This project imagines an east west megalopolis, similar to those currently spread North/South along the coastal United States. By manipulating the space of the border through elongation and compression, various relationships become apparent. In collapsing the string of “sister cities” occurring along this divide, patterns of development and urban form are juxtaposed, highlighting differences and similarities and suggesting future routes of growth. The area between each respective sister city and the border becomes activated as a space of potential connectivity. By analyzing how each urban form addresses the border, either by pushing up against it, even using it as quotidian infrastructure, or by pulling back, creating an additional buffer between the two nations, various characteristics and typologies appear. In the case of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, and other similarly sized metrapoles, the two border populations have veritably collapsed, with the border practically dissolved by the daily bustle. In smaller cities such as Columbus, New Mexico and Puerto Palomas, Mexico, a gap of three miles exists between the two cities, yet because of the strong reciprocity and interdependence between the two communities, this space is evaporated; the border fence being a weak demarcation of differences not observed. In other instances, such as Sullivan City and Ciudad Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, the proximity of larger urban centers diverts the exchange that would otherwise exist between these two adjacent cities. Every sister city relationship has unique characteristics shaped by local history, industry, geography and location in the larger map, yet in each instance, the space that defines the border in between is charged and presents opportunities for analysis and methods for responsible and just exchange.

construction stopped?!

2008-11-23T13:14:00.001-08:00

one account... watch the video through this link.

http://www.pro8news.com/news/local/34155179.html

Transnational Spaces, Transborder Places

2008-11-19T11:57:00.000-08:00

The Institute for the Study of Social Change (ISSC) UC Berkeley is pleased to co-sponsor the following event, which is free and open to the public:

Transnational Spaces, Transborder Places

A Mellon Colloquium
Friday, November 21, 2008, Noon-2pm
Geballe Room, Townsend Center, UC Berkeley
Reception to follow, Barrows Hall (5th floor, East lobby)

Recent scholarly attention to borders and borderlands represents an opening to social phenomena and frameworks of analysis historically neglected across the disciplines. This colloquium will bring together distinguished scholars of borderlands broadly conceived through ethnographic inquiry. Their collaboration represents a comparative approach, uncommon across disciplines, which considers geopolitical and cultural border/lands of the United States-Mexico and Mexico-Guatemala. Presenters will engage transnational and transborder perspectives to explore multiple meanings of border/lands, including:

the interplay of cultural constructs, such as race/ethnicity, gender, and class, with notions of geographic space; the impact of international migration on women's identities and roles; neoliberalism and marginality; and reshaping power through indigenous and mestiza women's collective organization and daily resistance within global processes. Panelists will present their work, compare their findings, and discuss with each other and audience members how communities, cultures, and people transcend borders and create borderlands.

Presentations and Presenters
"Netza-York and Other Transnational Urban Borderlands". Dr. Federico Besserer, Professor, Dept. of Anthropology, and Coordinator, Transnational Studies Program, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Unidad Iztapalapa,
Mexico City, Mexico.

"Migration to the North in the Mam Zone: New Identities, New Border Crossings in the Southern Mexican Frontier". Dr. Rosalva Aida Hernández, Professor and Senior Researcher, Center for Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS), Mexico City, Mexico.

"¡NAFTA No, Trabajos Sí!': Dislocation and Neoliberal Marginality at the U.S.-Mexico Border". Dr. Francisca James Hernández, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities, Dept. of Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley.

Moderator/Commentator: Dr. David Montejano, Professor, Dept. of Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley.

Sponsorship
The colloquium is an initiative of the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities and generous co-sponsors: Department of Ethnic Studies, Office of the Dean of Arts and Humanities, Chicana/o Studies Program, Department of Gender & Women's Studies and the Li Ka Shing Foundation, Department of Anthropology, Center for Latin American Studies, Institute for the Study of Social Change, Center for Latino Policy Research, Center for Race and Gender, Department of Geography, and the Beatrice Bain Research Group.

Redefining Walls

2008-11-13T06:29:00.000-08:00

The UTEP Union Gallery proudly presents Redefining Walls, a group exhibition that sets out to interpret the contemporary relationship between the United States and Mexico. Redefining Walls will be on exhibit at the UTEP Union Gallery, 2nd floor Union East, from November 20, 2008 to January 5, 2009 with reception to take place on the evening of November 20, 2008 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Featuring El Paso artists, Kelly Eoff, Dave Ford, Jason Lucero, Zeque Penya, and Keith Allyn Spencer, Redefining Walls explores how each of the five artists interpret the U.S./Mexico relationship either by responding to the physical presence of walls or by portraying imagery that conveys human immigration and movement.

Curated by Exhibition Practices II students and led by Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts Director and Lecturer, Kate Bonansinga, Redefining Walls is a physical culmination of a year's learning. Fore more information regarding Redefining Walls, please contact Marina Monsisvais at mmmonsisvais@utep.edu or by phone at 915.747.5481.

water border-el paso/juarez

2008-11-11T11:15:00.001-08:00

Third Nation: Michael Dear talks about a clear gradation from frontier spaces (of the Spaniards), to the delimitation of the boundary or “La Linea”, to the idea of a border spaces where US and Mexico seek control, later leading to the idea of fortification and enclave (“connecting the dots”). We must note that with this hyper-border and heightened security, segregation and hegemonic behavior, also comes the idea of integration and interpendence. We refer to Michael Dear’s “Third Nation”, a psycho-geography that overlooks the border in the everyday… As such, the border exists only as images, symbols and signs, Baudrillard’s symulacra. It’s polices and existence deterritorialized from time and space, defined from a disconnected place, solely based on foreign strategies, signs and symbols of fortification and enclave… a clear contrast to the de facto and everyday life at the border.
Clear aspects of interdependence transcending the border are evident in the politics of these spaces. As the fortifications grow so do bilateral and binational approaches. Economic integration and urban growth were key factors n the modernization of the borderlands and in the facilitation of bilateral agreements between the two countries, giving birth to a new era of collaboration. Chiefly among these were the 1892 International Border Commission (IBC) and the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC).

Troubled Waters: An arid landscape and climate as well as a rapid population and urbanization growth characterize the region of El Paso-Ciudad Juarez. NAFTA (1994) has accelerated the growth of manufacturing industries and has sparked a rise in export-oriented agriculture. As such, water shortage and the distribution of water have become serious issues shared by both cities. In the Ciudad Juarez- El Paso area, it has been predicted that groundwater will run dry in 20 years.
Shortage: With environmentalists and water experts becoming more vocal about the endangered aquifer, El Paso has cut its use back to 50 percent and is biding time by exploring other options. It has begun to develop water rights in rural counties to the east (Antelope Valley aquifers), has increased its dependence of surface water taken from Rio Grande, and began to plan strategies in order to bring water from more distant places and damns (Mesilla, NM). The latter would consequently increase the cost water by a substantial amount.
Juarez's position is more difficult; though the city uses half as much water per person as its neighbor, at 1.2 million Juarez has twice as many people. Juarez pumps aquifer water all year-round (Hueco Bolson) - even though researchers say at that rate fresh water will run out within as few as five years.
Inefficiency and degradation:
Municipal and irrigation systems canals are inefficient as they are open air and not lined with concrete resulting seepage and evaporation.
In addition, blackish Water from irrigation returns drains in the area and has degraded the water quality in the Shallow Rio Grande alluvium aquifer. “Below El Paso/Juarez, the flow in the El Paso/Juarez primarily consists of treated wastewater from EL Paso, untreated wastewater from Juarez and irrigation return flows”.

Proposal: An aqueduct. A network shared by both El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, physically demarcating space by directly addressing the essential pragmatics of the area. As such, the aqueduct replaces the border, paralleling to the Rio Grande, at points branching out into the cities and connecting to existing systems and infrastructures.
The proposal then deals with the collection and water (production, rainwater recycling and perhaps even grey-water treatment), its storage and its distribution.
Collection of water: The collection of water is done through various interconnected systems. The first one deals with the collection of rainwater through a specific roof membrane directly linked to the aqueduct and potentially other membranes that are placed in the cities’ already existing structures.
The second system focuses on the production of water. Seeing that deals with the cities cannot tap much more into the river, a system of production of water is then proposed. The roof membrane emulates the Namib beetle’s water condensation system through hydrophilic and hydrophobic skins and is based on the material research done by MIT with the regards to the potential of this water condensation and production technique.

Storage: Water is stored into bladders that are connected to the roof membrane and hang vertically from a created infrastructure. The bladders fill and empty becoming a temporal reading of the environment and ecology, while at the same time becoming a water screen that fluctuates, screening, blocking or opening between the two sides. As the bladders grow, their weight pulls on the roof membrane, creating more tension, sectional differences and thus allowing for an aerial reading of the ecology. In addition, specific physical interventions in the infrastructure and ground direct, sculpt and manipulate the shape of the bladders giving way to other readings and spatial potentials. The different relationships that arise allow for new uses and interpretations by humans, fauna and flora.

Distribution: Due to the inefficiency of the existing system, this proposal seeks to replace the irrigation canals and create a new, more efficient and healthier network that links the cities together, not only dealing with crop irrigation but having the potential to tap onto water purification systems, etc. for domestic use.
Border Water Infrastructure: As implied previously, the infrastructure that is established has a specific metering and rhythm that allows for aggregation, additions and clustering. It consists of a roof membrane supported in tension by vertical steel posts, which with the help of a cabling system also support the water bladders. Pipes weave in and out taking and distributing the water while at the same time helping sculpt the bladders. The sculpted ground as well as a secondary structural system that attaches to the primary system of posts and cables, enhances the manipulation of the water storage and as such create and allow for permanent and temporal spaces for circulation and other uses.

Site-specific locations: The first and perhaps main physical manifestation of this water border network will be located next to the river, below the Franklyn mountains. In addition to this being the location where the Rio Grande becomes the border between Mexico and the US, the proximity to the Franklyn mountains give it a higher elevation thus facilitating the transportation or movement of water (due to gravity) and giving a lower temperature to the area. Winds, running perpendicular the mountain chain, create temperature changes between the East and West side of El Paso, achieving up to a 20 degrees in difference. This temperature change is necessary in the condensation of moisture.
The network, in its majority mimicking the river, branches out into specific locations, thus disintegrating the border into the surrounding urban and rural landscapes.

The line, the cities and the wiki.

2008-11-08T01:26:00.000-08:00

While constructing the maps of Juarez and El Paso I realized that there was a lacuna in the type of information I got about parts of Juarez I was studying. The information I got from the maps in the library was of a certain kind of datascape, broad and demographic, it didn’t allow me to read the site the way one experiences it while walking through its street. Also the data available did not reflect the social and programmatic relationships that existed between Juarez and El Paso. So I turned to the wiki map for more information about the sites and realized that the wikimap breaks away from a lot of problems that are inherent in the traditional mapping techniques.

A wikimap, like a Google map is a photograph of the earth, what sets it apart from a google map is the ability to edit this map. Anybody in the world who has access to the internet can define geographies on this map and attach ones personal stories on to the delineated boundaries. These stories are then open to comments and discussions with other people who visit wikimapia.com. This editibility greatly changes a lot of our notions about space.

Acknowledging the public and public knowledge:
Untill now, map making has been the prerogative of a cartographer. The medium of the wiki takes away these privileges from a select few geometers and hands them to the people. This gives rise to a rhizomatic space that helps break the hegemonic practice of map making.

The space of stories and stories about space:
De Certeau in his essay on spatial stories states that - ‘stories carry out the labour that transforms places into spaces and spaces into places…”. The wiki map is a constellation of stories posted by people. These stories not only help personalize space. They help layer our perception of spaces with perceptions of others giving us a chance to have multiple readings of the same place. Depending upon the kind of stories posted one begins to read it through the context of politics, advertisement, history, or simply beings to meet people who live there.

Deriving the wiki:
“ Derive” is a term for wandering s of a flanure. The intent of a derive was to read the city in newer ways. The wiki map has now become a medium of carrying out a derive. It allows one to navigate the city and meet its people sitting at home.

The notions of heterotopias:
Perceiving a city by walking through areas that it allows us to walk through has its short comings. parts of the city that are considered unclean or unsafe are often hidden away from the public view. Psychologically we begin to perceive these spaces as other spaces creating a certain bias in our minds about the place and the people living here. The wiki map unfolds these spaces and makes these heterotopias visible. Also begins to release information about these places into the public realm. This medium that helped me read Juarez and El Paso without a hegemonic bias.

wiki limits
However one of the biggest criticisms of the wiki is that it is a privilege of the few who have a computer -internet access , and understand how to edit the wiki. Hence it can never be a representative democratic set. Also it has the capability of framing rumors as nobody can check the validity of all the stories posted., hence a lot of information is to be taken with a pinch of salt. None the less it is, as of now, our only access to a democratic mapping system.

The Green Border Wall

2008-10-27T22:04:00.000-07:00

The Mexican government is building a wall on their side of the border. Instead of being made of brick and mortar, like the proposed American wall, this one is made of trees—an environmental reserve about 30 feet wide and 600 miles long on the Texas border, a “green wall” to protect the Rio Grande from the roads and staging areas that smugglers use to ferry drugs and migrants across the frontier.

Hacktivists and Art Against Power

2008-10-26T08:05:00.000-07:00

Hacktivistas y arte contra el poder / Hacktivists and art against power. A project by Ricardo Dominguez from the blog B.A.N.G. lab

Download pdf

2008-10-24T10:09:00.000-07:00

photography and plaster over latex as records of manipulations and new readings arising.

milieu/ecology: In this field of connections and relationships implying interconnectedness; a system where the local and the global come into play absorbing or resisting external forces.
By manipulating this ecology, one can defamiliarize and reconfigure the distant plan. It is a new reading and understanding of space, extensions and potentials. As such, one discovers new components, other spatial localizations, axes, rights of passage and of defenses; there is a different way to measure distances, separations, etc. it is no longer a matter of precisely delineating, but of living, sculpting and adapting.

strategy vs. tactics: In this same manner one might make a parallel with the ay one truly experiences a city. We can refer to De Certeau, the new reading reflecting the "tactics" taken within the strategy. Michel de Certeau’s “strategy”, the aerial plan, fixed and determinant, yet disconnected and perhaps irrelevant with regards to the existing situation and psycho-geopgraphy. The “tactics”, the cognitive mapping that steps away from the geographical ad economic factors, and reflects the everyday, - temporal and nomadic; the psychogeography that redefines space. Guy Debord’s dérive.

The focus on representation:
Baudrillard states that technology, and communications have allowed for a deterritorialization of time and space, merging the boundaries between reality and representation.
Baudrillard’s simulacra… images, signs, and symbols replace reality; we live a simulation of reality rather than reality itself, we become reliant on simulacra; what is real and what is representation no longer matters.
The wall as simulacra: It’s polices and existence defined from a disconnected place. The wall can then be defined as hyper-reality, disconnected in its existence, deterritorialized from time and space, solely based on foreign strategies of fortification and enclave…The concept of the border can then move away from the idea of fortification and enclave, leading and focusing onto a world of everyday lived experiences and survival.
Informality- as a response to formal determinism.

Death Along the Border

2008-10-22T15:15:00.001-07:00

hi guys-

this link is to a nytimes article discussing death along the border through rendering a personal account of one family's loss...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/15/us/15border.html

links to more border images

2008-10-22T09:59:00.000-07:00

http://www.azstarnet.com/secureborder/panorama.php

2008-10-21T23:08:00.000-07:00

http://kqed02.streamguys.us/anon.kqed/radio/forum/2008/10/2008-10-21b-forum.mp3

interview on KQED with Guillermo Gomez-Pena. Second half of hour on Forum with Michael Krasney. Definitely worth a listen while falling asleep/driving/studio-ing away

Tue, Oct 21, 2008 -- 10:00 AM

Art of Ancient Afghanistan / Guillermo Gomez-Pena
In the first half hour we discuss the cache of ancient Afghan art and artifacts featured in a new exhibit at San Francisco's Asian Art Museum. In the second half hour, performance artist and MacArthur Foundation grant recipient Guillermo Gomez-Pena joins us to discuss his latest piece, now showing at Theater Artaud in San Francisco. In the piece, Gomez-Pena uses the human body as a metaphor for the Bush administration's policies toward Iraq and Afghanistan.

Download audio (MP3)

Host: Michael Krasny

2008-10-21T17:07:00.000-07:00

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/19/MNJ513KC2C.DTL&hw=ashley+surdin&sn=001&sc=1000

pretty much the same as the last article, but interesting to see the multi tiered coverage of this particular issue relating to the expansion of the fence and the impact it has on the interpersonal affairs of immigrants and border populations in general.

New Fence Will Split a Border Park

2008-10-21T13:58:00.000-07:00

Through a border fence, Jacqueline Huerta touched her niece, Yisell Martinez, who was held by her sister, Rosalie Martinez.

At a time of tumult over immigration, with illegal workers routed from businesses, record levels of deportations, border walls getting taller and longer, Friendship Park here has stood out as a spot where international neighbors can chat easily over the fence. NY Times

some thought on the trip

2008-10-09T10:27:00.000-07:00

border sensing: EL PASO-JUAREZ
adriana navarro

General informality: The post 9-11 discourse has lead the Pentagon to a strict redefinition of its border “Atlas”, re-conceptualizing the northern and southern hemisphere into “functioning core” and the “non-integrating-gap” respectively. It is precisely along the border that many of the most contested critical thresholds of the current socio-political geography exist. These are spaces that are much complex and cannot be defined by a simple dichotomy. They are spaces of overlaps and hybridization, spaces of flow with a constant exchange and interaction of bodies, work, materials, capital, law and politics, identities etc. In this regard, Michael Dear talks about transborder citizens; or the concept of a “Third Nation”.
This typical “socioeconomic and cultural osmosis” of the border regions lead to a set of inequalities that may be intensified by a tightening of restrictions. As such the development of informal settlements, also called “colonias” along the border, is not rare. The concept of the border can then move away from the idea of fortification and enclave, leading and focusing onto a world of everyday lived experiences and survival.
Informality- as a response to formal determinism.

The frontier: “We are the front line” . The conquest. Neocolonialism linked to the post-colonial mentality of the border? “La mision civilatrice”, the mission to civilize, to order and formalize the “Other”, resulting in hegemony, segregation, disparities, hierarchy, and perhaps even violence and criminalization.

The fence/wall: a “horrific beauty”. It is frightening to think of this particular fence as a beautiful object. It cuts and molds to the landscape, accentuating, challenging or mimicking the contours of the land; angular steel contrasting to the nature…yet one cannot ignore the power of the socio-political context surrounding. It is an object, defining and redefining boundaries…perhaps irrelevant in the psycho-geography already created. It is a contradiction in itself.
It follows a strict metering, layering and material gradation; different properties of transparency, different joints and connections.
It has a categorization: urban to urban or urban to rural, pedestrian, vehicles, visible or non-visible.
It transforms in height, length, porosity, and strength depending on various strategies. Depending on security and surveillance, the fence will become lighter, allowing light, sight and life to filter, framing but not blocking one side from the other.
It redefines a landscape on each side it delineates. A sectional difference accentuates the distinction to “the other”.
It is linear and infinite to the eyes, but stops.
It is impenetrable and imposing, yet opens with a key.
It is continuous yet can be perturbed.
It has vegetation growing on one side and spilling on the other. How is this defined? What exactly does this mean in the relationship between one and “the other”?
It is layered; sometime achieving 4 layer: mesh, panels, lights, cameras and humans…
The wall is to be notice on one side more than the other. Who’s wall is this?

The rituals:
-Surveillance: repetition, filtering, and intimidation. A clear demarcation of policing and control.
-Erasure: the land next to the fence is constantly smoothed and, wiped from any trace, only to find any new imprints.

bordertrip.2

2008-10-05T23:24:00.000-07:00

While rereading portions of Rem Koolhaas' S,M,L,XL over the last few days, I was reminded of the relevance of his essay "Field Trip," written about visiting the Berlin Wall in the seventies, while finishing his architectural studies at the AA. On a level as simple as the title of our studio course (riffing on Rem's agenda of documenting "the Berlin Wall as architecture"?) and as complex as all the layers of use and implication, I have found the rereading of this essay illuminating for our current investigations.

See: S,M,L,XL. Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau (New York: Monacelli Press, 1995). P215-232.

"[The wall] is 165 kilometers long and confronts all of Berlin's conditions, including lakes, forest, periphery; parts of it are intensely metropolitan, others suburban.

"Also, the wall is not stable; and it is not a single entity, as I thought. It is more a situation, a permanent, slow- motion evolution, some of it abrupt and clearly planned, some of it improvised...."

oxbow lakes & the "living" border

2008-10-05T11:57:00.000-07:00

hello-

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia::

An oxbow lake is a U-shaped lake water body formed when a wide meander from the mainstem of a river is cut off to create a lake. This landform is called an oxbow lake for the distinctive curved shape that results from this process. In Australia, an oxbow lake is called a billabong. By itself, the word oxbow can also mean a U-shaped bend in a river or stream, whether or not it is cut off from the mainstream.[1][2]

this is a pretty interesting phenomenon ron brought to my attention yesterday, and a few resources to further your understanding of it. did you guys get a chance to visit chamizal national memorial? at this site there are a couple of videos describing the surrounding political issues now and historically regarding a "living boundary" such as el rio. these short videos describe the disputes over territories as the river meandered over time, and chamizal to memorialize the resolution of some disputes between the us and mexico - a joint effort in ultimately physically MOVING the river. http://www.nps.gov/cham/historyculture/chamizal-history.htm

time magazine article

2008-10-03T15:06:00.001-07:00

check it out ::

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1816488,00.html

Art Against The Wall

2008-10-01T07:36:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick article on art along the border wall from the slightly partisan blog, No Border Wall:

http://notexasborderwall.blogspot.com/2008/09/art-against-wall.html

justjerusalem

2008-09-30T18:55:00.000-07:00

you should check this site out- it makes an interesting parallel/contrast to "our border":

http://www.hillarymushkin.com/projects/wall_to_end_walls/wall1.html

it is a proposal for the jerusalem wall competition. The info on the competition can be found at:

www.justjerusalem.org

bordertrip.1

2008-09-30T17:52:00.000-07:00

Walking through the Port of the Americas entry station at the El Paso - Juarez border on Friday, listening to our personable, reasonable border agent/tour guide talk about the work of the U.S. border patrol agency, it was disturbingly easy to think simply that this was a rational man doing a rational job, a job that needed to be done. It was easy enough to overlook, or to momentarily forget, the ludicrous, visionary enormity of the border wall construction project, this distressing and wildly expensive "fix" for economic and humanitarian issues likely better addressed through other means. A factual description of procedures delivered by a smiling, reasonable person can serve as an impressive palliative.

Standing next to new sections of the wall, in the sublime stretch of desert where New Mexico meets Texas, we got a glimpse of the fence that will run through hundreds of miles of sparsely populated land along the border. The line separating the US from Mexico is demarcated here by sturdy wire scrim or tall steel planks, replacing older sections of chain link fence or perforated aluminum, which a border patrol agent (one of the four or more sets of agents who stopped to talk to us during our hour or two of assessing the border fence) told us was "too easy for them to cut through."

To see the fence and this swath of land more clearly we climbed up a precarious and rather steep sandy embankment. The way the fence follows the contours of the land at this segment of the border calls to mind Christo and Jeanne-Claude's "Running Fence." Like a dark twin of that light and evocative project, the border fence runs up the ridge and registers the details of the topography. It disturbs me to say it, but there is something beautiful in this. Sliding back down the hill, Emily and I talked about this, the disjuncture of finding aesthetic qualities in something deeply distressing. To what degree can one see without truly considering what one is seeing?

some more resources

2008-09-29T18:52:00.000-07:00

hi-

i've come across several interesting websites today, one of which stands out in my mind as a portal to many of the larger issues at hand along and involving the border. this blog subtopia is written by a SF local {he wrote the thing ron suggested we read a couple of posts ago} , and he has done extensive research and writing about many of these issues. i've called attention to this one blog only because it contains a long list of links within his blog and outside that address some of these issues as a starting point. i thought there was an interesting analogy in http://subtopia.blogspot.com/2008/08/flooding-border-with-security-preserves.html of migrants as water etc., which i found in researching water issues along the border.

http://subtopia.blogspot.com/2008/01/my-very-own-border-outpost.html

also, please check out this photo-documentary website :: http://www.polarinertia.com/may06/mxborder01.htm

and what i'm surprised no-one has yet posted :: http://www.borderfilmproject.com/en/index.php

awesome + free high-resolution maps

2008-09-29T17:14:00.000-07:00

OPPS. i didn't see that you had already posted these gabriella! well here is a photo.

hi people.

check out the following site if you haven't already for maybe insanely beautiful maps from the geological survey. sure they are 40+ years old but who cares. the entire border is accounted for, and index maps provided to identify each section. if people are interested specifically in certain areas this would certainly be a great additional layer of information. note that they are rarely oriented with north up, but rather perpendicular to the border. index maps illustrate clearly.

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/us_mexico_border/index.html

Who's Gonna Build The Wall?

2008-09-26T12:43:00.000-07:00

Here's one take on the wall project, in song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZkAoosVLkA&feature=related

2008-09-26T02:48:00.000-07:00

map resource

2008-09-24T01:47:00.000-07:00

a good border map resource from the university of texas. the dept of treasury/customs aerial photos are the same ones filed at the map library - hard copies just across campus. great detail, but bear in mind the age (1980s).

Guide for the Mexican Migrant

2008-09-23T21:19:00.000-07:00

This is old, c. 2005, but I thought it would be interesting for people to read. It is a publication produced by the Mexican government directed to people who were migrating illegally across the border. It was taken down after the negative reaction from the US, but it lives on in various places on the internet, and I thought this was one of the better versions of it.

This has better images of the original document.

Borders 2.0: Future, Tense

2008-09-21T23:46:00.000-07:00

Angela Mitropoulos and Bryan Finoki present an incursion, in text and image, into the contemporary borderlands. Read here.

Border Fence Construction

2008-09-19T14:31:00.000-07:00

Chris and I went on a tour of the border with McAllen, Texas border patrol. The footage below is of the construction of a portion of fence being built in their sector, which is simultaneously acting as a levee. Because the fence is serving a dual purpose it is being regulated, constructed, and funded by three organizations: FEMA, DHS, and Hidalgo County.

2008-09-18T15:37:00.000-07:00

not necessarily fence related, but definitely a taste of some of the issues pertaining to border settlements and their populations.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-mexico-riot.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

biowall

2008-09-17T15:06:00.000-07:00

photos

2008-09-14T10:01:00.003-07:00

Sahar and I have set up a Flickr account to share our photos in lieu of overloading the blog. We will continue to update it as we drive the second half of our trip, so check it periodically, and comment with questions if you have them.

A few simple maps...

2008-09-13T16:14:00.000-07:00

Here's a site with a few simple maps of the border, including airports, seaports, rail-lines, and trade corridors.

Not the most beautiful, but helpful data:

http://www.borderplanning.fhwa.dot.gov/maps.asp

Itinerary Part 2

2008-09-12T18:54:00.000-07:00

Marfa

Friday, September 12

Visit Marfa

Saturday, September 13

Chinati Foundation Tour

Sunday, September 14

Presidio/Ojinaga

Monday, September 15

Visit Ojinaga

San Antonio

Monday, September 15

Museo Alameda Tour

Tuesday, September 16

9:3oam meeting with Jose Garza, attorney at TRLA, involved in border fence lawsuit

Laredo/Nuevo Laredo

Wednesday, September 17

Visit Nuevo Laredo

Visit Paso del Indio Nature Trail

Brownsville/Matamoros and McAllen/Reynosa

Thursday, September 18

1pm meeting with John Wood, Cameron County Commissioner

Friday, September 19

11am meeting with Gerardo Guerra, border patrol agent in Rio Grande Valley Sector, for a tour of the border fence

Saturday, September 20

Visit Nuevo Progreso

Visit Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge

Rev. Robin Hoover, Ph.D

2008-09-09T18:05:00.000-07:00

Sahar and I spoke with Rev. Robin Hoover, president of Humane Borders. The following is a summary of our notes.

Tactical infrastructure at the border seems to be nothing more than "research and development for low-intensity warfare." Interpret that however you wish.
Despite the construction of the new border fence and the increase of border patrol agents by a factor of 3 in Arizona, illegal migration has remained relatively constant between 1993 and 2008. Therefore, the impact of the border fences is more ecological than tactical.
The number of apprehensions at the border, a statistic used by the government to record the flow of undocumented migrants, is unreliable in comparison to the number of death certificates processed by medical examiners on the American and Mexican sides of the border.
One human consequence of the construction of a taller border fence is an increase in jumper injuries (i.e. twisted ankles, broken femurs.) Also, the extension of the fence farther into the desert results in an increase in the distance between recovered bodies and roads as migration occurs in rougher and less developed terrain.
Illegal migration cannot be regulated without meeting the needs of the migrants first. This is, above all else, a human rights issue.
If the Department of Homeland Security continues to build new fences along the Texas border, residents being directly affected will likely react in unexpected and destructive ways. "Bubba's gonna have a C-4 party."
One cause of the different reactions to the border fence in Arizona and Texas is that 86% of Arizona's border is public land, while much of the land along Texas's border is privately owned.
42% of migrant deaths in Arizona occur on Native American reservations.
The three values upon which the US is built are effectiveness, efficiency, and equity. With this in mind, you can build a cheaper and more effective fence, but how do you make one that is more equitable? You cannot do your job as an architect without engaging in a discourse on equity!

Dr. Paul Ganster

2008-09-09T17:03:00.000-07:00

Sahar and I spoke with Dr. Paul Ganster, chair of the Good Neighbor Environmental Board and director of the Institute for Regional Studies of the Californias at San Diego State University. The following is a summary of our notes.

Most importantly, transnational cooperation and coordination must be practiced to achieve effective border policies.
Currently, the implications of national policies in the US and Mexico are not considered beyond the physical boundary of their borders. Examples include the environmental impacts of the construction of security infrastructure on the US side of the border and transportation infrastructure on the Mexican side of the border.
Conversely, San Diego County has begun to engage transnational cooperation and coordination through distributed energy and cross-border transportation.
A transborder environmental impact assessment of the construction of large scale infrastructure would benefit the border region.
One social effect of the thickening of the border is the loss of cross-border activities, such as the family gatherings that often take place between Las Playas and Border Field State Park.
The physical hardening of the border is lessening the possibility of transborder cooperation and coordination by making face-to-face meetings much more difficult.
Other links: Endpoint Environmental, Tijuana River Watershed, San Diego Association of Governments, Southwest Consortium of Environmental Research and Policy

readings on geometry

2008-09-06T23:57:00.000-07:00

hi everyone-

i've come across some pretty interesting reading on sort-of geometry at large which could be informative to your projects, for fetish or fancy i suppose. much of this has been addressed/manifest in many contemporary projects, and some of these geometric strategies could potentially provide radical and efficient structures that could be great solutions to our border problem. not only that, this stuff isn't that complicated to model these days, which is undoubtedly why we are seeing more and more of it. much of this is just wikipedia, but pretty interesting.

research on danzer tiling :: http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/4982/1/4982.pdf

project above :: http://www.terraswarm.com/projects/grotto.html

sphere packing :: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere_packing

voronoi :: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voronoi

minimal surfaces :: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimal_surface

weaire- phelan structure :: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weaire-Phelan_structure

kepler conjecture :: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_conjecture

catenary arches :: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catenary

catenoid :: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catenoid

helicoid :: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicoid

riemann surface :: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_surface

parabola :: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parabolic

unfolding doubly curved surfaces

2008-09-06T19:51:00.000-07:00

hi everyone-

http://designexplorer.net/projectpages/puzzlesurfcarbo.html

also, check out http://www.terraswarm.com/projects/baskets.html
there isn't any good photos of the baskets yet up- see the pink praxis. http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.nativepeoples.com/content_images/2006images/0106.td23.jpg&imgrefurl=http://bee-zee.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html&h=333&w=504&sz=81&hl=en&start=3&um=1&usg=__kuRfsq9Bktxz3lSrK8w7FKI2LMI=&tbnid=dK0EjK10uYll3M:&tbnh=86&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3Daranda%2Blasch%2Bwith%2Bterrol%2Bdew%2Bjohnson%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26rlz%3D1T4GGIE_enUS257US257%26sa%3DN this blog contains some interesting stuff visually, but also contains one image of the lasch baskets.

several of us indicated an interest in starting with sheet goods for the fence project, so here is a little more on that. there are several new technologies that facilitate the ability to translate complex geometries or doubly curved surfaces into flat stock. what immediately comes to my mind is the example of the charles and ray eames splint right? a bunch of flat laminates were cut precisely and laminated together to create an incredibly complex shape, and the joinery becomes both the craft and the aesthetic .

software:: i've got pepakura for flattening doubly curved surfaces, but it seems a little rudimentary and i've heard it is imprecise at times. rhino can flatten surfaces that are only curved in one direction. i'll be purchasing lamina to help with that i think. just to let you guys know, this is something i'm pursuing right now. i will keep doing this until you tell me to stop!

more inspiration

2008-09-06T19:04:00.000-07:00

as discussed in class ::

rebecca horn,
http://www.rebecca-horn.de/pages/biography.html
http://images.google.com/images?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGIE_enUS257US257&q=rebecca+horn&um=1&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=1&ct=title

teddy cruz
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/arts/design/19hous.html

http://rs.resalliance.org/2006/03/15/teddy-cruz-what-adaptive-architecture-can-learn-from-shantytowns/

http://www.world-architects.com/index.php?seite=ca_profile_architekten_detail_us&system_id=14396

EVENT in november i think teddy is reponsible for ::
http://www.politicalequator.org/

field office ::
http://www.field-office.com/

Inspiration

2008-09-06T18:16:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone-

I'm going to use this blog, if you will allow it, as a method of arranging my own thoughts, research, and inspiration throughout the semester - as a method of both sharing what i find, and displaying the work as it develops. This may serve to more efficiently and effectively share research and prevent us from all doing the same thing at the same time. I hope that you all will get into this, and do the same. Please photograph the awesome models you guys made and get them up here as soon as you can! {i will as soon as i get something built!}

ALSO - i'm going to be offering one of my FTP accounts for us to share files online. everyone will be able to store files there as necessary, software stuff, etc... works better than bspace.

i'm starting with geometry, form, etc., social/political stuff i'm saving for a later date.

some inspiration to start with {mentioned in ron's project part 2 description, and then further} ::
http://www.uchronians.org/site/html/indexmain.html
http://www.antonygormley.com/home.html -amazing artist!!
http://www.demakersvan.com/
http://www.solomonoff.com/

check out this artist that was featured in the latest praxis:: lots of work with repetitive elements
http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&rlz=1T4GGIE_enUS257US257&q=tara+donovan

this project is similar to what we are doing::
http://www.glform.com/blobwall.html
http://www.glform.com/ or go here and make sure you tell your browser not to block pop-ups, greg lynns website.

okay, more soon!

BORDERWALL AS ARCHITECTURE

Border Wall Alternatives

HBO: The Fence

The Iron(ic) Footbridge

The 800 Mile Wall

Ferry To The Other Side / Corner Of Latin America

Virtual U.S.-Mexico Border Fence At A Virtual End

Illegal Border Crossing Park

Border Fence = Drug Deaths

WPA 2.0 Border Wall as Infrastructure Presentations

60 Minutes on the Virtual Fence

Border Wall = Immigrant Museum?

Border Wall as Infrastructure

Is This A Fence?

Borderless Border: Removing the US-Mexico boundary fence by reclaiming the Rio Grande

Border Fence Requirement Is Removed

Walley Ball

The Border Fence - Where it is and How It Works

Border Fence Co. Serving El Paso for 30 Years

Border Wall as Infrastructure

Franklin Delano Roosevelt on Border Walls

Selling The Border Wall

Saving the Sabal Palm

Border wall successfully halting illegal immigration (of wildlife)

New US and Mexican Border Fence and Map 2009

Mexico Builds Border Wall To Keep Out Assholes

Border Yoga

Border Locations

Virtual Fence: How it Works

Urbanism of Transgression

Border Wall Films

Competition Winning Border Crossing Oasis, Mexico-USA

Bookmark & Share

Border Plan Will Address Harm Done at Fence Site

Published: January 16, 2009

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/17/us/17border.html?scp=3&sq=enviornmen%20border%20wall&st=cse

Related

Border Fence Work Raises Environmental Concerns (November 21, 2007)

Environmental Laws Waived to Press Work on Border Fence (October 23, 2007)

Illegal Border Crossing Architecture: Faux Fences & Ramps

Ancestral Graves Desecrated for Border Wall

border elasticity

BORDER: WATER FOREST

Urban Farming and US-Mexico Border

films & surveillance

A Practice in Excavating and Envisioning Ambos Nogales

Negotiating border conditions- a case for the US/Mexico Border fence

Bridging Space

pneu border proposal :: part two

Environmental Impacts Of The Border Wall

The Toxicwall

Presentation: Border Wall as Architecture

Pneu Border Proposal

Border Megalopolis

construction stopped?!

Transnational Spaces, Transborder Places

Redefining Walls

water border-el paso/juarez

The line, the cities and the wiki.

The Green Border Wall

Hacktivists and Art Against Power

Death Along the Border

links to more border images

New Fence Will Split a Border Park

some thought on the trip

bordertrip.2

oxbow lakes & the "living" border

time magazine article

Art Against The Wall

justjerusalem

bordertrip.1

some more resources

awesome + free high-resolution maps

Who's Gonna Build The Wall?

map resource

Guide for the Mexican Migrant

Borders 2.0: Future, Tense

Border Fence Construction

biowall