Archinect - News

Texas lawmaker pitches bill to continue border wall construction

2021-03-09T20:00:00-05:00

In an attempt to pick up border wall construction where former President Donald Trump left off, a state lawmaker in Texas has introduced legislation that would see the construction of a border wall along the Texas-Mexico border. HB 2862 would create a special "border security enhancement fund" to pay for the projects [...]

The legislation, introduced by Republican Texas House Rep. Bryan Slaton, also proposes to name the fortification system the "President Donald J. Trump Wall."

Construction Dive points out that it was "only a matter of hours after Biden was sworn in that he rescinded Trump's national emergency declaration, which the former president used to redirect Pentagon funds to border wall construction, and gave contractors seven days to stop all border wall construction [...]."

Section of US-Mexico border wall topples over in high winds

2020-01-30T10:00:00-05:00

A newly erected section of the border wall on the US-Mexico border toppled over in high winds this week. The section fell over onto the Mexicali, Mexico side of the border just across from Calexico, California. Luckily, no one was injured due to the failure.

According to local agent Carlos Pitones of the United States Department of Customs and Border Patrol, the wall had been recently installed in fresh concrete footings that had yet to cure, CNN reports. The area has been battered by strong winds this week, with gusts reaching strengths of up to 37 miles-per-hour, according to the National Weather Service.

The scene could be a sign of things to come, should presidential contender Bernie Sanders be elected. At an event in Iowa last week, Sanders, who has been a vocal critic of the wall project and has vowed to disband the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, hinted that he would be open to possibly tearing down the wall, VICE News reports, though only if it was not p...

Trump may reallocate additional $7.2 billion of military funds for border wall

2020-01-21T12:49:00-05:00

President Trump is preparing to divert an additional $7.2 billion in Pentagon funding for border wall construction this year, five times what Congress authorized him to spend on the project in the 2020 budget.

According to The Washington Post, the funding would give the government enough money to complete about 885 miles of new fencing by spring 2022, far more than the 509 miles the administration has slated for the U.S. border with Mexico. So far the Trump administration has completed 101 miles of new barriers, which is less than the promised 450 miles due for the end of the year, reports The Washington Post.

New border wall commences in South Texas despite landowner resistance

2019-10-25T12:36:00-04:00

...construction workers on Wednesday began building the first new border wall in South Texas just south of the town of Donna...it will connect to an existing border wall that was built in 2008 under the 2006 Secure Fence Act. On Sept. 29, CBP in partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded a contract to Gibraltar-Caddell Joint Venture for up to $296 million to build 22 miles of noncontiguous border wall starting east of Santa Ana.

The new construction has prompted concern from locals in the area, as the work has begun on private land.

According to Border Report, "many other landowners in the region have so far refused CBP access to survey their lands, and have not sold their properties for wall construction."

Border wall construction begins in Arizona

2019-09-16T13:31:00-04:00

The president and his administration said last week that they plan on building between 450 and 500 miles of fencing along the nearly 2,000-mile border by the end of 2020, an ambitious undertaking funded by billions of defense dollars that had been earmarked for things like military base schools, target ranges and maintenance facilities.

The construction has commenced in Yuma, Arizona, where the 30-foot-tall fencing will replace existing shorter barriers. "The Trump administration says the wall—along with more surveillance technology, agents and lighting—is key to keeping out people who cross illegally," reports The Columbian. The administration has come under fire in recent weeks for redirecting funding previously allocated for other military projects toward the construction of the wall.

Architects install transnational pink seesaws at U.S.-Mexico border wall

2019-07-31T14:25:00-04:00

It may seem like an ordinary scene: Children and adults playing on pink seesaws, carelessly laughing and chatting with each other But this is a playground unlike any other. These custom-built seesaws have been placed on both sides of a slatted steel border fence that separates the United States and Mexico.

The binational Teetertotter Wall intervention, connecting Sunland Park, New Mexico with Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, is the brainchild of Ronald Rael, a professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, and Virginia San Fratello, an associate professor of design at San José State University.

View this post on Instagram One of the most incredible experiences of my and @vasfsf’s career bringing to life the conceptual drawings of the Teetertotter Wall from 2009 in an event filled with joy, excitement, and togetherness at the borderwall. The wall became a literal fulcrum for U.S. - Mexico relations and children and adults were connected in meaningful ways on both sides with the recognition that the actions that take place on one side have a direct consequence on the other side. Amazing thanks to everyone who made this event possible like Omar Rios @colectivo.chopeke for collaborating with us, the guys at Taller Herrería in #CiudadJuarez for their fine cra...

Trump border wall prototypes demolished

2019-03-01T19:47:00-05:00

And the prototypes came tumbling down. [...] They have been used most dramatically as a backdrop for a presidential visit last March and for protest art. [...] On Wednesday, slabs from seven out of the eight prototypes fell in clouds of dust in under two hours, no match for a jackhammer. At the point of destruction, an owl fled from a steel tube atop one section.

And just as quickly as they came, they're gone again: seven of the eight prototypes for a lofty 1,954-mile border wall project to Mexico were bulldozed and turned into piles of expensive rubble on Wednesday morning.

The Guardian writes that "according to a report by the Government Accountability Office, the eight model sections were riddled with design and construction flaws. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) tested the slabs and found they could be breached."

In light of such grave design flaws, Mexico will likely not want to pay for the wall anymore.

Trump considers tent cities to house unaccompanied migrant children

2018-06-13T19:29:00-04:00

The Trump administration is looking to build tent cities at military posts around Texas to shelter the increasing number of unaccompanied migrant children being held in detention. The Department of Health and Human Services will visit Fort Bliss, a sprawling Army base near El Paso in the coming weeks to look at a parcel of land where the administration is considering building a tent city to hold between 1,000 and 5,000 children...

Over 11,200 migrant children are held without a parent or guardian by The Office of Refugee Resettlement at HHS who oversees around 100 shelters. As these shelters fill up with children separated from their parents, the Trump administration considers building tent cities to accommodate this rapidly increasing population who await processing.

Trump's design feedback on border wall prototypes: "We have to have a see-through wall"

2018-03-13T18:40:00-04:00

President Donald Trump took a firsthand look today at the eight massive border wall prototypes that he had commissioned in San Diego for the “big, beautiful wall” he wants to build along the Southwest border, favoring a mixture of see-through capability topped with rounded concrete to make it impassable by climbers.

It's been a busy Tuesday morning for Donald Trump today: after firing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson via a 5:44 AM Tweet, he traveled to San Diego to personally inspect the 8 border wall prototypes that had been erected last fall mere yards away from the actual U.S. border with Mexico.

One of the four "other materials" prototypes. Image: U.S. Customs and Border Protection

Upon visiting the 30-foot-tall structures, Trump's initial design feedback seemed to strongly favor the four non-concrete "other materials" prototypes over the solid, opaque versions: "You have to have see-through," he said. "You have to know what's on the other side of the wall." Trump gave more specifics, adding: "You could be two feet from a criminal cartel, and you don't even know they’re there."

Another "other materials" prototype. Image: U.S. Customs and Border Protection

In an unexpected, almost admiring tone, Donald Trump praised the athletic abilities of immigrants trying to enter the United States, sayi...

Teddy Cruz: A Tale of Two Cities

2018-03-12T09:00:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by the Vilcek Foundation

When Vilcek Prizewinner Teddy Cruz first emigrated from Guatemala, he had no idea that San Diego was a border town. He did not speak English, and his relatives had warned him that going downtown would be risky and dangerous.

"It took me almost a year to exit this Truman Show," he says. He was surprised to realize that not twenty minutes away from his new home were vibrant immigrant neighborhoods along the U.S.-Mexico border, and, just on the other side of the wall, the city of Tijuana.

It was a sharp contrast to the staid, homogenous suburbs he was living in, and Teddy began to cross the border often to spend time in Tijuana. "The texture, the ruggedness, of a place like Tijuana reminded me of my own country," he says. "I think that oscillation back and forth between these very different ways of constructing cities [is] where my sensibilities began...as an architect."

That realization, however, would come years later. Teddy had im...

AIA components in border states with Mexico mobilize opposition to the Border Wall

2018-03-01T09:32:00-05:00

The proposed $25 billion wall along the US/Mexico border raises questions that have proven divisive to society. [...] In 2017 and 2018, AIA state components and chapters in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas wrote resolutions and letters with the support of their boards of directors opposing a border wall and questioning its cost-benefit relative to infrastructure projects all over the country that they deem higher-priority.

AIA state components and chapters in each of the four states bordering Mexico—Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas—are organizing their opposition to Trump's border wall proposal and have passed formal resolutions.

"Robert Miller, AIA, 2018 president of AIA Arizona, led the charge in drafting a template articulating his component’s concerns, which he shared with AIA chapters in Arizona and, ultimately, components in Texas, California, and New Mexico," writes Katherine Flynn for the AIA. "Keeping the AIA Code of Ethics at the forefront, Miller says, helped him conceptualize the statement as something that members could support outside the context of their own partisan views."

Below are the AIA State Components’ statements regarding the proposed border wall:

AIA New Mexico

Texas Society of Architects

AIA California Council

AIA Arizona

Here are four AIA Local Chapters’ statements regarding the proposed border wall:

Facing backlash, companies building Trump's wall prototype seek protections

2017-11-06T20:02:00-05:00

The prototypes for Donald Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico have been completed, and the six participating companies, whose names have been publicly released, are beginning to face some serious pushback.

Since the bidding process began, companies vying for the construction contract have received nonstop calls and criticism, been the site of protests, have received countless death threats, and according to one company, have even had their tractors stolen. Accused of betraying their own community, Hispanic-owned construction firms participating in the bidding process have faced the most backlash.

Security work along the border has always been contentious and companies that have worked on the border fence as well as related roads and lighting have always experienced various levels of harassment. However, things are more charged nowadays.

Beyond public criticism, companies competing to bid Trump's wall are facing legislative opposition on both the local and state level. Berkeley...

Trump border wall prototypes completed, prepare for sledgehammer testing

2017-10-30T14:23:00-04:00

[...] prototypes for President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico have been completed and will be subjected to punishment to test their mettle — by workers wielding sledgehammers, torches, pickaxes and battery-operated tools. The testing lasting up to two months could lead to officials concluding that elements of several designs should be merged to create effective walls [...]. That raises the possibility of no winner or winners.

The six companies that were awarded contracts to build prototypes of Trump's border wall with Mexico earlier this year have completed their full-scale models on a site near San Diego and will see their creations undergo rigorous testing for nonclimbability, nonunderdiggability, and resistance to tools like sledgehammers and pickaxes (no word on battering rams or poisoned arrows).

While funding for the lofty idea of equipping all 1,954 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border with 30-foot-tall fortifications is still up in the air, the contractors erecting the selected prototypes were awarded between $300,000 and $500,000 for each model.

Here are a few of the prototype designs — some cast in concrete and some built of other materials to allow border patrol agents to peek through the wall into Mexico and prevent passersby on the northern side from being hit on the head by large sacks of drugs that reportedly keep flying over the wall.

All images via U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

...

Transparent border wall: Trump selects firms to build 'other materials' prototypes

2017-09-08T14:16:00-04:00

The Trump administration has awarded contracts to build four border wall prototypes using non-concrete "other materials," U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced Thursday. The contracts came a week after the administration announced four companies that will build prototypes of concrete border walls. In all, the eight prototype walls will cost about $3.6 million.

Adding to the four firms already selected to build border wall prototypes last week, Trump now also contracted another round of companies that will specifically build non-concrete prototypes of his favorite campaign promise.

By encouraging 'other materials' border wall designs, Trump hopes to eliminate concrete's main drawback — its opaqueness — and thus save countless lives of clueless border flâneurs potentially being hit by large sacks of drugs hurled over the wall from the Southern side. As he explained to reporters: "As horrible as it sounds, when they throw the large sacks of drugs over, and if you have people on the other side of the wall, you don't see them — they hit you on the head with 60 pounds of stuff? It's over. As crazy as that sounds, you need transparency through that wall."

The four companies chosen to tackle this challenge and erect the non-concrete 'other materials' prototypes are:

Caddell Construction in Montgomery, Alabama (also included in last week's select...

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has awarded contracts for Border Wall prototypes

2017-09-01T14:14:00-04:00

First, given their robust physical characteristics, like, reinforced concrete, between 18-30 feet high, the concrete border wall prototypes are designed to deter illegal crossings in the area in which they are constructed. Second, the concrete border wall prototypes will allow CBP to evaluate the potential for new wall and barrier designs that could complement the wall and barrier designs we have used along the border over the last several years.

On Thursday, CBP announced that it had awarded contracts to build several 30-foot-high concrete wall prototypes, which are supposed to inform future design standards and will likely continue to evolve to meet the U.S. Border Patrol’s requirements.

The four companies that will build the prototypes — Caddell Construction Company of Montgomery, Ala.; Fisher Sand and Gravel Company of Tempe, Ariz.; Texas Sterling Construction Company of Houston, Tex.; and W. G. Yates & Sons Construction Company of Philadelphia, Miss. — received contracts between $400,000 and $500,000 each.

“The border wall prototypes and designs will complement other tools we employ to secure our borders,” said Ronald D. Vitiello, acting deputy commissioner at Customs and Border Protection.

The NYT reports that "Homeland Security officials have also asked that a wall be at least somewhat aesthetically pleasing, at least from the American side, according to contracting documents."

...

A solar-paneled US/Mexico border wall?

2017-06-07T12:56:00-04:00

President Donald Trump floated putting solar panels on his planned Mexican border wall in a meeting with legislative leaders Tuesday afternoon, according to White House and Capitol Hill officials. It was unclear why Trump brought up the topic, but he presented the panels as a way to fund the wall, which is expected to cost billions of dollars, according to three people familiar with the conversation.

Of course, this comes on the heels of intense criticism of the President's decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.

The Department of Homeland Security issues presolicitation for the border wall

2017-02-27T18:52:00-05:00

The Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection has announced that it will solicit proposals for President Trump’s proposed “border wall” beginning on March 6. According to the announcement, published on FedBizOpps.gov, the solicitation will be for several design-build prototype wall structures “in the vicinity of the United States border with Mexico”. The procurement will play out in two stages. First, concepts must be submitted by March 10, 2017. Then, following a selection process, a full request for proposals (RFP) will be put out to selected vendors. Included in the RFP will be the full price of the wall segment. Contracts are expected to be issued in mid-April.

As Archinect contributor Julia Ingalls recently pointed out, there are many logistical issues to building the wall, in addition to ethical problems. Read more here.

Architecture and the Wall: Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman on the US-Mexico Border

2016-06-23T12:45:00-04:00

..We must expose rather than mask the institutional mechanisms driving uneven urban development. Such a revelation requires a corresponding expansion of our understanding of the scope of architecture itself—can we design human rights, for example? Can social justice become an architectural protocol? In other words, the most important materials with which architects must learn to work are not steel and concrete but critical knowledge of the underlying conditions that produce today’s urban crises.

The article makes reference to the controversy generated a few months ago over a competition to design Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's proposed border wall between the US and Mexico. The editors of Bustler, Archinect's sister site, decided not to host the competition due to potential conflicts with our ethical standards, writing, "We are conflicted about the nature of the competition and fear that it promotes xenophobia. The competition goes against the ethical standards we strive to align ourselves with.”

For more on the competition, check out the editorial on Bustler.

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 ...

US/Mexico border wall competition provokes controversy

2016-03-16T17:08:00-04:00

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump dominated another round of primaries last night...further securing his position as the party’s frontrunner. His polemical campaign continues to provoke criticism from both his own party and from Democrats, as concern over his inflammatory, xenophobic and sexist rhetoric transforms into panic. The debate breached into architecture after a competition was announced last week for design responses to Trump’s call for a wall along the US/Mexico border.

Bustler, Archinect's sister site, declined the opportunity to post a competition calling for design responses to Donald Trump's calls for a border wall, which has since generated a good deal of controversy. Read about why – then join the debate on Bustler.

For related content, check out these links:

There's now a pedestrian bridge on the U.S.-Mexico border that let's you fly into Tijuana, and walk out into San Diego

2015-12-11T13:35:00-05:00

A purple pedestrian bridge between two terminals that link Tijuana International Airport and San Diego over the U.S.-Mexico border opened to passengers Wednesday morning. The Cross Border Xpress is the first project to join a site in the U.S. with a foreign airport terminal. [...] The $120-million private venture aims to serve about 2.4 million fliers each year who usually would have to queue up in busy border crossings at San Ysidro and Otay Mesa on the California side.

Urban Omnibus travels the Brooklyn-Queens Divide

2015-01-16T14:57:00-05:00

As a researcher interested in the intersection of urban form and place, Joseph Heathcott set out to explore how one of New York’s borders shapes the lived experience and physical environment of its surroundings. Through historical research, photography, and deep observation, he traces the city’s only major internal land boundary — the Brooklyn-Queens border — and draws out the social and spatial conditions of this largely invisible urban seam.

El Paso, laser scanned in 3D

2013-05-16T14:23:00-04:00

Robert González wants to create a 3D digital replica of Downtown El Paso, using lasers. The director of Texas Tech’s fledgling architecture program in El Paso says the student project would be part of a new historic preservation program he is developing here. The project would create a permanent record, in 3D, of El Paso’s most historic and endangered buildings.

An exhibition of 3D captured border cities from around the world projected onto giant scrims filling an abandoned maquilladora, might be an interesting project.

Winners of Borderless: Designing Future ASEAN Borders

2013-05-02T18:21:00-04:00

Winning design schemes have just been announced in the international competition Borderless: Designing Future ASEAN Borders. The competition brings attention to the spaces along the borders of the 10 members of ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, with the aim of improving their existing conditions.

The Carolinas Work to Clarify Their Borders

2012-04-09T17:19:00-04:00

In an ambitious project, the states of North Carolina and South Carolina are trying to set the record straight. After years of historical research and old-fashioned survey work mixed with global positioning technology, they are moving the boundary back to where it belongs.

Peripheral Porosity

2011-06-06T18:06:43-04:00

For this brief phase in international relations, then, the U.S./Mexico border formally included a strange, pop-up entry/exit point. A kind of embassy of the porous. Passport stamps from the experience must surely stand as some of the most unique in the world, like some variation on philatelic collecting.

"Architect and designer Quilian Riano was on hand for the crossing, and these are his photographs reproduced here. By way of email, Riano described the physical terrain where they crossed beneath and through the border, remarking that the hydrological status of the land there 'really makes you think about how arbitrary borders are.'"

Berkeley Prof Reimagines US / Mexico Border

2011-04-05T19:10:45-04:00

“It would be easy for me to raise a picket sign and as an architect say, ‘Down with this wall!’” Rael said in a release. “I have to accept the wall because it exists, but as a designer I see that something better is possible. Why not do something intelligent, something incredible? I envision not just a ‘dumb wall,’ but a social infrastructure that connects and improves lives on both sides.”