Recipro-cities: Building in the Borderlands
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Valenzuela-domvalen-march-arch-2026-thesis.pdf
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193.07 MB
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Author(s)
Valenzuela, Domonique Escarcega
Advisor(s)
Kolb, Jaffer
Date Issued
February 2026
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua comprise a bi-national metropolitan region that is largely shaped by transnational flows of goods, labor, and capital. A choreography of people and materials move continuously across the international boundary every single day. Students cross the border daily from Juarez to El Paso to attend school or university while residents of El Paso make frequent trips to Juarez for medical care. Residents of Juarez commute to El Paso for work while remittances flow back across the border to support families back home, and residents of both cities cross regularly to shop, eat, and visit loved ones.
In the construction industry, many workers from Ciudad Juarez contribute to the construction of homes, commercial buildings, and industrial facilities across the border. Materials used in building construction in El Paso often make their way to Juarez through local resale/reuse channels while Juarez’s manufacturing industry generates substantial quantities of material offcuts, packaging material, and components that circulate north into El Paso.
This thesis examines the complex interrelation between these two cities through cross-border construction labor and material flows, using their exchanges as a foundation for developing architectural interventions within Juarez at the domestic scale. Although El Paso and Ciudad Juarez are deeply interconnected, construction practices on each side of the border differ significantly in their materiality, regulatory frameworks, and cultural logics. The project focuses on the historic center of Juarez, examining how adapting and reinvesting in its existing domestic building stock, through regional construction methods, utilizing materials sourced through national housing finance institutions and local material exchange networks, can contribute to the preservation of the built heritage of Juarez’s oldest neighborhoods, support the revival of regional adobe construction practices, and respond to the growing vacancy impacting the city.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture
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