Archinect - News

The Palestinian Museum opens its first show: Jerusalem Lives

2017-08-25T18:41:00-04:00

The Palestinian Museum opens its inaugural exhibition this weekend focusing on the holy city of Jerusalem, a city that both Israel and Palestine claim as their capital. The wide-ranging, overtly political show focuses on the realities of living in Jerusalem as well as the idea that despite being seen as the original global city, it also serves an example of how globalization has failed worldwide.

The Palestinian Museum, located in Birzeit, Palestine’s West Bank, opened last May. Back then, however, the $24 million structure designed by Heneghan Peng Architects had no exhibits to show due to a sudden resignation of the museum's former director.

Its first show, Jerusalem Lives (Tahya Al Quds), on view from August 27, is participatory, consisting of four chapters that examine the cultural, political, economic and ideological aspects of Jerusalem. The exhibit will include works by contemporary artists, a display of 20 large-scale commissions in the museum’s extensive gardens 'based on ideas about land, openness and non-exclusion', featuring artists such as Mona Hatoum, Emily Jacir, Khaled Jarrar, and many more. Additionally, supporting events and programs will be held at other Palestinian institutions.

“What is going on and why are these exclusionary policies being accepted? How are people—artists, organisations and civil society—working against it? And how can we build togethe...

Trans-Border Patrolling; A conversation about Tijuana with René Peralta and Orhan Ayyüce

2017-06-29T18:39:00-04:00

This week René Peralta and Orhan Ayyüce joins us to discuss Tijuana and the unique border condition the Mexican city shares with San Diego.

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Proposal for research study to regenerate the Tijuana River Canal into power producing and water remediation infrastructure for the city of Tijuana, Mexico.

Tijuana Solar River, by René Peralta.

The Department of Homeland Security plans to start building prototypes for Mexico border wall this summer

2017-06-28T14:55:00-04:00

Congress may not have agreed to President Trump's $2.6 billion budget proposal for his much-touted border wall, but that has not stopped Customs and Border Protection from preparing for the first stage of the project; testing prototypes for the border protection.

According to Ronald Vitiello, Customs and Border Protection’s acting deputy commissioner, $20 million, allocated from other programs, have been used to pay four to eight companies that will be contracted to produce prototypes for the border wall with Mexico. To be completed within 30 days in San Diego those prototypes will then serve as models for the roughly 2,000-mile border. More than 600 companies submitted designs for the wall before a March deadline.
“Think of it,” Trump told a crowd at a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “The higher it goes, the more valuable it is. Pretty good imagination, right?”

Global warming is redrawing national borders

2016-06-16T12:35:00-04:00

"Climate change is happening so fast and on such a huge scale that it's forcing us to change the borders of a country," said head of the mapping expedition, Marco Ferrari... The borders of a country are "something we always consider as stable, as a political device, the foundation of the modern state, the most sacred thing, but this huge natural transformation makes clear how disruptive and alarming these changes are," he said.

"Even the biggest and most stable things, like glaciers, mountains—these huge objects, they can change in a few years. We live on a planet that changes, and we try to make rules, to give meaning, but this meaning is completely artificial because nature, basically, doesn't give a shit."

Global warming is one of the most visible aspects of the Anthropocene, a name for the era in which humans activity registers on the geological record. For more on the Anthropocene and its relation to architecture, check out past some past Archinect coverage:

Curator of MoMA's “Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter" on palliative refugee architecture

2016-05-19T13:17:00-04:00

If we imagine one's escape to a refugee camp as fragmentary, provisional and incomplete, the camp must be transformed not only in design but also in its role as a catalyst for promoting the humanity of those living within its barbed-wired walls. [...] Architecture has become the litmus test of society's capacity for holistic and compassionate security.

For more on the architectural experience of refugees:

MAD slips through borders with Salone del Mobile installation

2016-04-13T13:53:00-04:00

Borders are often controversial and rarely flexible, but Ma Yansong of MAD has playfully reinterpreted them with his installation for the 2016 Salone del Mobile in Milan. “Borders are usually seen as something closed and unapproachable but I think it’s interesting to make borders attractive, dynamic and engaging," Yansong said about his 'Invisible Border' installation, which strings strands of EFTE across the Cortile d’Onore courtyard. "So we decided to play with the border between the historical loggias and the garden in front of it, and design a transition in-between them.”

Part shelter, part fragmented contemplation site for the sky above, the strands emit a whistling sound in the wind, and are designed to provide a surface for illumination at night (with lighting provided by iGuzzini Illuminazione).

“Our installation blurs the boundaries between the traditional and the contemporary. You see the difference in each end, but the transition is very organic," Yansong continued. "It’s ...

A world divided: mapping border fences globally

2015-09-17T13:31:00-04:00

Europe will soon have more physical barriers on its national borders than it did during the Cold War. This year’s refugee crisis, combined with Ukraine's ongoing conflict with Russia, has seen governments plan and construct border walls and security fences across Mediterranean and eastern Europe... Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, 40 countries around the world have built fences against 64 of their neighbours.

The Economist takes a look at the world's borders, (mostly) new and old. Of the 40 countries that have built physical border walls since the fall of the Berlin Wall, 30 of those happened after 9/11, and 15 this year alone. Check it out the interactive graphic here.

Related coverage: