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Isn't it fascinating how the simple act
of drawing a line on the map

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can transform the way we see
and experience the world?

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And how those spaces
in between lines, borders,

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become places.

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They become places
where language and food and music

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and people of different cultures
rub up against each other

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in beautiful and sometimes violent
and occasionally really ridiculous ways.

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And those lines drawn on a map

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can actually create
scars in the landscape,

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and they can create scars in our memories.

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My interest in borders came about

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when I was searching
for an architecture of the borderlands.

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And I was working on several projects
along the US-Mexico border,

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designing buildings made out of mud
taken right from the ground.

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And I also work on projects that you
might say immigrated to this landscape.

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"Prada Marfa," a land-art sculpture

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that crosses the border
between art and architecture,

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and it demonstrated to me
that architecture could communicate ideas

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that are much more
politically and culturally complex,

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that architecture could be satirical
and serious at the same time

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and it could speak to the disparities
between wealth and poverty

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and what's local and what's foreign.

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And so in my search
for an architecture of the borderlands,

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I began to wonder,

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is the wall architecture?

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I began to document my thoughts
and visits to the wall

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by creating a series of souvenirs

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to remind us of the time
when we built a wall

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and what a crazy idea that was.

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I created border games,

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(Laughter)

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postcards,

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snow globes with little architectural
models inside of them,

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and maps that told the story
of resilience at the wall

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and sought for ways that design
could bring to light the problems

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that the border wall was creating.

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So, is the wall architecture?

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Well, it certainly is a design structure,

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and it's designed at a research
facility called FenceLab,

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where they would load vehicles
with 10,000 pounds

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and ram them into the wall
at 40 miles an hour

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to test the wall's impermeability.

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But there was also counter-research
going on on the other side,

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the design of portable drawbridges

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that you could bring right up to the wall

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and allow vehicles to drive right over.

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(Laughter)

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And like with all research projects,
there are successes

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and there are failures.

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(Laughter)

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But it's these medieval
reactions to the wall --

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drawbridges, for example --

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that are because the wall itself is
an arcane, medieval form of architecture.

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It's an overly simplistic response
to a complex set of issues.

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And a number of medieval technologies
have sprung up along the wall:

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catapults that launch
bales of marijuana over the wall

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(Laughter)

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or cannons that shoot packets
of cocaine and heroin over the wall.

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Now during medieval times,

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diseased, dead bodies

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were sometimes catapulted over walls
as an early form of biological warfare,

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and it's speculated that today,

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humans are being propelled over the wall
as a form of immigration.

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A ridiculous idea.

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But the only person ever known to be
documented to have launched over the wall

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from Mexico to the United States

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was in fact a US citizen,

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who was given permission
to human-cannonball over the wall,

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200 feet,

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so long as he carried his passport in hand

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(Laughter)

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and he landed safely in a net
on the other side.

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And my thoughts are inspired
by a quote by the architect Hassan Fathy,

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who said,

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"Architects do not design walls,

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but the spaces between them."

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So while I do not think that architects
should be designing walls,

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I do think it's important and urgent
that they should be paying attention

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to those spaces in between.

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They should be designing for the places
and the people, the landscapes

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that the wall endangers.

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Now, people are already
rising to this occasion,

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and while the purpose of the wall
is to keep people apart and away,

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it's actually bringing people together
in some really remarkable ways,

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holding social events like
binational yoga classes along the border,

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to bring people together
across the divide.

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I call this the monument pose.

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(Laughter)

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And have you ever heard of "wall y ball"?

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(Laughter)

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It's a borderland version of volleyball,
and it's been played since 1979

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(Laughter)

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along the US-Mexico border

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to celebrate binational heritage.

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And it raises some
interesting questions, right?

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Is such a game even legal?

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Does hitting a ball back and forth
over the wall constitute illegal trade?

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(Laughter)

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The beauty of volleyball
is that it transforms the wall

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into nothing more than a line in the sand

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negotiated by the minds and bodies
and spirits of players on both sides.

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And I think it's exactly
these kinds of two-sided negotiations

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that are needed to bring down
walls that divide.

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Now, throwing the ball
over the wall is one thing,

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but throwing rocks over the wall

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has caused damage
to Border Patrol vehicles

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and have injured Border Patrol agents,

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and the response from the US side
has been drastic.

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Border Patrol agents
have fired through the wall,

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killing people throwing rocks
on the Mexican side.

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And another response
by Border Patrol agents

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is to erect baseball backstops
to protect themselves and their vehicles.

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And these backstops
became a permanent feature

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in the construction of new walls.

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And I began to wonder if, like volleyball,

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maybe baseball should be
a permanent feature at the border,

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and walls could start opening up,

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allowing communities
to come across and play,

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and if they hit a home run,

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maybe a Border Patrol agent would
pick up the ball and throw it

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back over to the other side.

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A Border Patrol agent buys
a raspado, a frozen treat,

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from a vendor just a couple feet away,

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food and money is exchanged
through the wall,

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an entirely normal event
made illegal by that line drawn on a map

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and a couple millimeters of steel.

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And this scene reminded me of a saying:

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"If you have more than you need,
you should build longer tables

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and not higher walls."

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So I created this souvenir to remember
the moment that we could share

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food and conversation across the divide.

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A swing allows one to enter
and swing over to the other side

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until gravity deports them back
to their own country.

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The border and the border wall

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is thought of as a sort of
political theater today,

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so perhaps we should invite
audiences to that theater,

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to a binational theater
where people can come together

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with performers, musicians.

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Maybe the wall is nothing more
than an enormous instrument,

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the world's largest xylophone,
and we could play down this wall

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with weapons of mass percussion.

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(Laughter)

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When I envisioned this binational library,

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I wanted to imagine a space
where one could share

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books and information
and knowledge across a divide,

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where the wall was nothing more
than a bookshelf.

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And perhaps the best way to illustrate
the mutual relationship that we have

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with Mexico and the United States

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is by imagining a teeter-totter,

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where the actions on one side
had a direct consequence

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on what happens on the other side,

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because you see, the border itself

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is both a symbolic and literal fulcrum
for US-Mexico relations,

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and building walls between neighbors
severs those relationships.

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You probably remember this quote,
"Good fences make good neighbors."

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It's often thought of as the moral
of Robert Frost's poem "Mending Wall."

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But the poem is really about questioning
the need for building walls at all.

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It's really a poem about mending
human relationships.

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My favorite line is the first one:

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"Something there is
that doesn't love a wall."

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Because if there's one thing
that's clear to me --

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there are not two sides defined by a wall.

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This is one landscape, divided.

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On one side, it might look like this.

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A man is mowing his lawn
while the wall is looming in his backyard.

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And on the other side,
it might look like this.

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The wall is the fourth wall
of someone's house.

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But the reality is that the wall
is cutting through people's lives.

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It is cutting through
our private property,

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our public lands,

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our Native American lands, our cities,

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a university,

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our neighborhoods.

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And I couldn't help but wonder

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what it would be like if the wall
cut through a house.

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Remember those disparities
between wealth and poverty?

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On the right is the average size
of a house in El Paso, Texas,

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and on the left is the average size
of a house in Juarez.

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And here, the wall cuts directly
through the kitchen table.

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And here, the wall cuts through
the bed in the bedroom.

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Because I wanted to communicate
how the wall is not only dividing places,

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it's dividing people,
it's dividing families.

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And the unfortunate politics of the wall

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is today, it is dividing children
from their parents.

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You might be familiar
with this well-known traffic sign.

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It was designed
by graphic designer John Hood,

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a Native American war veteran

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working for the California
Department of Transportation.

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And he was tasked with creating
a sign to warn motorists

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of immigrants who were stranded
alongside the highway

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and who might attempt
to run across the road.

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Hood related the plight
of the immigrant today

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to that of the Navajo
during the Long Walk.

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And this is really a brilliant piece
of design activism.

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And he was very careful

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in thinking about using
a little girl with pigtails, for example,

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because he thought that's who motorists
might empathize with the most,

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and he used the silhouette
of the civil rights leader Cesar Chavez

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to create the head of the father.

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I wanted to build upon
the brilliance of this sign

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to call attention to the problem
of child separation at the border,

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and I made one very simple move.

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I turned the families to face each other.

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And in the last few weeks,

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I've had the opportunity
to bring that sign back to the highway

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to tell a story,

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the story of the relationships
that we should be mending

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and a reminder that we should be designing

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a reunited states
and not a divided states.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)