An architect's subversive reimagining of the US-Mexico border wall

What is a border? It's a line on a map, a place where cultures mix and merge in beautiful, sometimes violent and occasionally ridiculous ways. And a border wall? An overly simplistic response to that complexity, says architect Ronald Rael. In a moving, visual talk, Rael reimagines the physical barrier that divides the United States and Mexico -- sharing satirical, serious works of art inspired by the borderlands and showing us the border we don't see in the news. "There are not two sides defined by a wall. This is one landscape, divided," Rael says.

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

can transform the way we see
and experience the world?

And how those spaces
in between lines, borders,

become places.

They become places
where language and food and music

and people of different cultures
rub up against each other

in beautiful and sometimes violent
and occasionally really ridiculous ways.

And those lines drawn on a map

can actually create
scars in the landscape,

and they can create scars in our memories.

My interest in borders came about

when I was searching
for an architecture of the borderlands.

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

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

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

"Prada Marfa," a land-art sculpture

that crosses the border
between art and architecture,

and it demonstrated to me
that architecture could communicate ideas

that are much more
politically and culturally complex,

that architecture could be satirical
and serious at the same time

and it could speak to the disparities
between wealth and poverty

and what's local and what's foreign.

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

I began to wonder,

is the wall architecture?

I began to document my thoughts
and visits to the wall

by creating a series of souvenirs

to remind us of the time
when we built a wall

and what a crazy idea that was.

I created border games,

(Laughter)

postcards,

snow globes with little architectural
models inside of them,

and maps that told the story
of resilience at the wall

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

that the border wall was creating.

So, is the wall architecture?

Well, it certainly is a design structure,

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

where they would load vehicles
with 10,000 pounds

and ram them into the wall
at 40 miles an hour

to test the wall's impermeability.

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

the design of portable drawbridges

that you could bring right up to the wall

and allow vehicles to drive right over.

(Laughter)

And like with all research projects,
there are successes

and there are failures.

(Laughter)

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

drawbridges, for example --

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

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

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

catapults that launch
bales of marijuana over the wall

(Laughter)

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

Now during medieval times,

diseased, dead bodies

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

and it's speculated that today,

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

A ridiculous idea.

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

from Mexico to the United States

was in fact a US citizen,

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

200 feet,

so long as he carried his passport in hand

(Laughter)

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

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

who said,

"Architects do not design walls,

but the spaces between them."

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

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

to those spaces in between.

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

that the wall endangers.

Now, people are already
rising to this occasion,

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

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

holding social events like
binational yoga classes along the border,

to bring people together
across the divide.

I call this the monument pose.

(Laughter)

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

(Laughter)

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

(Laughter)

along the US-Mexico border

to celebrate binational heritage.

And it raises some
interesting questions, right?

Is such a game even legal?

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

(Laughter)

The beauty of volleyball
is that it transforms the wall

into nothing more than a line in the sand

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

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

that are needed to bring down
walls that divide.

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

but throwing rocks over the wall

has caused damage
to Border Patrol vehicles

and have injured Border Patrol agents,

and the response from the US side
has been drastic.

Border Patrol agents
have fired through the wall,

killing people throwing rocks
on the Mexican side.

And another response
by Border Patrol agents

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

And these backstops
became a permanent feature

in the construction of new walls.

And I began to wonder if, like volleyball,

maybe baseball should be
a permanent feature at the border,

and walls could start opening up,

allowing communities
to come across and play,

and if they hit a home run,

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

back over to the other side.

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

from a vendor just a couple feet away,

food and money is exchanged
through the wall,

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

and a couple millimeters of steel.

And this scene reminded me of a saying:

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

and not higher walls."

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

food and conversation across the divide.

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

until gravity deports them back
to their own country.

The border and the border wall

is thought of as a sort of
political theater today,

so perhaps we should invite
audiences to that theater,

to a binational theater
where people can come together

with performers, musicians.

Maybe the wall is nothing more
than an enormous instrument,

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

with weapons of mass percussion.

(Laughter)

When I envisioned this binational library,

I wanted to imagine a space
where one could share

books and information
and knowledge across a divide,

where the wall was nothing more
than a bookshelf.

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

with Mexico and the United States

is by imagining a teeter-totter,

where the actions on one side
had a direct consequence

on what happens on the other side,

because you see, the border itself

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

and building walls between neighbors
severs those relationships.

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

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

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

It's really a poem about mending
human relationships.

My favorite line is the first one:

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

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

there are not two sides defined by a wall.

This is one landscape, divided.

On one side, it might look like this.

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

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

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

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

It is cutting through
our private property,

our public lands,

our Native American lands, our cities,

a university,

our neighborhoods.

And I couldn't help but wonder

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

Remember those disparities
between wealth and poverty?

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the unfortunate politics of the wall

is today, it is dividing children
from their parents.

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

It was designed
by graphic designer John Hood,

a Native American war veteran

working for the California
Department of Transportation.

And he was tasked with creating
a sign to warn motorists

of immigrants who were stranded
alongside the highway

and who might attempt
to run across the road.

Hood related the plight
of the immigrant today

to that of the Navajo
during the Long Walk.

And this is really a brilliant piece
of design activism.

And he was very careful

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

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

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

to create the head of the father.

I wanted to build upon
the brilliance of this sign

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

and I made one very simple move.

I turned the families to face each other.

And in the last few weeks,

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

to tell a story,

the story of the relationships
that we should be mending

and a reminder that we should be designing

a reunited states
and not a divided states.

Thank you.

(Applause)