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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.
— Politico
Of course, this comes on the heels of intense criticism of the President's decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. View full entry
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... View full entry
..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. — Art Forum
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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
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... View full entry
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.
— latimes.com
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. — urbanomnibus.net
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.
— El Paso, Inc.
An exhibition of 3D captured border cities from around the world projected onto giant scrims filling an abandoned maquilladora, might be an interesting project. View full entry
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. — bustler.net
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. — nytimes.com
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. — bldgblog.blogspot.com
"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... View full entry
“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.” — nbcbayarea.com
