Ronald Rael’s talk reexamines what the 650 miles of physical barrier dividing the US and Mexico is and could be, suggesting that the wall is an opportunity for economic and social development along the border that encourages its conceptual and physical dismantling. Rael will illuminate the transformative effects of the wall on people, animals, and the natural and built landscape through the story of people on both sides of the border who transform and creatively challenge the wall’s existence. He will also discuss his architectural studio’s counterproposals that reimagine, hyperbolize, or question the wall and its construction, cost, performance, and meaning. Rael proposes that despite the intended use of the wall, which is to keep people out and away, the wall is instead an attractor, engaging both sides in a common dialogue.

Ronald Rael is the Eva Li Memorial Chair in Architecture and Associate Professor in Architecture, the College of Environmental Design, and the Department of Art Practice at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a partner in the award-winning architectural firm Rael San Fratello and CEO of Emerging Objects, a 3D Printing MAKE-tank. He is the author of Borderwall as Architecture: A Manifesto for the U.S.-Mexico Boundary (2017), Earth Architecture (2008), and Printing Architecture: Innovative Recipes for 3D Printing (2018).

Sponsored by the IHC’s Crossings + Boundaries series and the Sara Miller McCune and George D. McCune Endowment.

Ronald Rael: Borderwall as Architecture

The IHC’s mission is to advance knowledge about human experience in cultural, historical, and social contexts and to do so through programs that foster human agency, social connectivity, and civic empowerment.

IHC events include lectures, seminars and conferences organized by IHC research focus groups and sub-units as well as events co-sponsored with campus departments. In addition, the IHC mounts year-long public programs on themes suggested by UCSB faculty and graduate students.

Ronald Rael: Borderwall as Architecture

IHC UCSB