Landscape, culture, and identity : redefining the borderlands

Abstract

The proposal seeks to develop and foster new understandings of this border through using built form as a vehicle for re-orienting, disorienting our physical and psychological understandings of borders. The physical intervention creates a release from the current condition which the fence embodies, that of separation, and contradiction. Through transgressing the fence physically and programmatically, one is temporarily freed of this tension, thereby accessing the fence through a different perspective. The resulting transgression is a new territory, perhaps a hybrid of the two. The building choreographs one's movement across the changes in the landscape, thereby revealing of the multiple readings of the fence. At points the boundary seemingly disappears, where at other times one is confronted with the wall as an artifact, a ruin that dominates the landscape. A point of passage is created through excavating underneath the fence; an artificial landscape is carved away in reference to the existing valleys, which already cut across the border. The fence becomes suspended, revealing the irony and frailty of its construction both literally and symbolically. Performance as program creates a venue for the transgression, which takes place. It is an instrument to allow for a alternate dialogue between the two countries. "The border wall has no architectural program, yet it generates intense activity. Crudely built, it is loaded with complex symbolism, more construct than construction... [and] reveals the power of an abstraction to create human environments. "--Teddy Cruz.