B
O
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D
E
R
Special t
my mom, da
my thesis advisor my studio my fr
thanks to
ad, & sister
r, E d w a r d B e c k e r professors iends
C O N T E N T
1
Soft Border
2
Hard Border
8
Paradox
15
Experiment
25
Covid - 19
34
SOFT BORDER
Figure ##
R
A B S T R A C T Hard and soft borders shape the way we experience our environment on all scales. Our perception of soft borders is influenced by many factors that weave between two entities. Factors like language, culture, nature, people, and ideas create a rhizome affect as they disperse and overlap across geo-political hard borders. Inter national geo-political borders are drawn on a map by the gover nment but they do not directly define how humans experience our planet. Geo-political borders are less important than we think, but boundaries have always held an essential function in the way we live. Throughout history boundaries have ensured physical safety, comfort, protection of resources, identification of possessions, and a sense of community. Today we can look at the pur pose of boundaries through the four lenses of desired privacy, allocation of resources, sustaining identity, and providing security. With these four necessities in mind we can start to question the need for borders and how they are represented in our changing world. Some borders today are still influenced by their primitive ancestors, like the USMexico border wall, even though their pur pose has changed. Can we rethink hard borders and adapt them more to their soft border qualities? My project studies the paradox between the need for borders in relation to the 4 categories, and our inherent desire to knock down borders. I studied this through the aspiration to create a space where separation is met with encouraged collaboration. If humans work together, especially across disciplines and cultures, we can solve problems more effectively and efficiently. How can architecture encourage this cross pollination of ideas while maintaining privacy, resources, identity, and security?
3
SOFT
BORDER
“Whether you’re a bird or a rainstorm or a human, there will be ways to transcend this wall.” - Ronald Rael
Despite the hard borders drawn on our planet’s surface, our lives are made up of soft borders. This drawing looks at how these geo-political borders are distorted by nature and people. The vague land mass resembles North America while the vertical lines represent geo-political borders arbitrarily slicing through the land, nature, and people. The cloud, which symbolizes nature, and the roots, which symbolizes people and culture, are distorting these vertical obstructions. People are always moving, creating relationships, spreading culture, and socializing with distant neighbors. A gover nment can’t inhibit people. Nature ignores abstract human concepts, such as a border, and does what it is meant to do for survival. People, even people in power, can’t stop a mountain from for ming, a stor m from passing, or a river from flowing.
4
Figure 1
N a t u r e
Politics
P e o p l e
NAT UR E
5
1
Oceans are an example of a natural occurrences that usually help define borders. Especially now, due to climate change, their footprint on the land is always changing. I Made Andi Arsana explains that if a “feature appears in high tide it is an island or rock but if this feature is exposed during low tide it is considered a LTE.” 4 Ocean borders become complicated when deter mining where the 12 nautical mile radius is measured from. Time and natural the activity of features like, oceans, rivers, and plants can’t deter mine the stagnate border’s gover nments want them to. If we use nature borders would be constantly changing.
2
The Rio Grande has been used to define the U.S. - Mexico border for awhile but this naturally changing river has proved problematic in some places, such as the case in El Paso, TX. Ronald Rael, in his book Borderwall as Architecture, explains how the dispute between the two countries left the community with a sort of island condition due to difference of opinion in whether or not the changed course of the river should be considered when deter mining the border line. This dispute left the small territory in a kind of limbo, “free zone”, which allowed for criminal activity and illegal border crossings. This lack of a border created a soft bubble of unknown authority. 3
3
Harold Fisk’s Mississippi River map drawings 2 show how the river flow/path has changed over time. Rivers are commonly used to define state borders but since their path is always changing how can we rely on this natural element to define a hard border? Time, the invisible border that defines our life’s, maybe be a hard socially construction but it is also what makes natural borders soft.
1 Ocean and island soft borders
USA
MEXICO
2 Historical flow of Rio Grande/Rio Bravo
3 Harold Fisk historical Mississippi river maps
PO L I T I CS
“Should the most valuable aspect of belonging to a place be that you were bor n there or that you activ el y chose it and contributed to that society?” (Milene Lar sson) 5
Geo-politcal borders are arbitrarily drawn on a 2D map to define one nation from another. The Earth, however, is a 3D surface with natural geographical features that rise, dip, fall, and surge. The way we draw borders derives a lot from the way we move in our environment. We have 2 feet and 2 legs so naturally we move horizontally but what happens when we climb mountains? We can’t ignore the Y-axis. What if borders ignored the X and Z axis? This drawing shows the strange implications of geo-political lines splitting the Earth in to vertical sections. This may seem irrational but I’d argue that it parallels the strange ways we represent hard borders today.
6
Figure 2
What if borders and citizenship were deter mined by elevation rather than longitude and latitude coordinates?
L A N D
A RT
“Here, e v er y w he re, t he de st r u c t i o n o f n e w l an d i s br u t al i t y ” (Donald Judd) 1 0
That Tate describes land art/earth art as “art that is made directl y in the landscape, sculpting the land itself into earthworks or making str uctures in the landscape using natural materials such as rocks or twigs.” 6 The Roden Crater by James Turrell was created in a volcanic crater in Arizona. This controlled experience for the contemplation of light, time and landscape tries to hide in the landscape and test our perceptions of the world around use by framing views and experimenting with different border conditions in a broad sense. 7 The Dusty Boots Line manifests symbolism of time and memory in a border-like mark on the Earth. Star Axis’s artist, Charles Ross wants to make sure “the vie wer can walk through layers of celestial time, making directl y visible the 26,000-year cycle of precession, Earth’s shifting alignment with the stars.” 8 In Marfa, Texas Donald Judd has started a movement, with his 15 Untitled Works of Concrete, where he continues his pursuit of landscape intervention and experimentation with “space as a material”. 9
7
Dusty Boots Line - Richard Long 1988
Star Axis - Charles Ross 1971
Roden Crater - James Turrell
Marfa, TX - Donald Judd
HARD BORDER
Figure ##
R
M OV E M E N T A
C
R
W
O
O R
S
S
L
D
B O R D E R S
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a ch o s en
a maze, while movement South, in to Mex ico is a lot easier. T he US, Mex ico border is manifested as
Berlin
Wa l l a
to keep people in it’s walls, rather than out. I t was less of a s p litting condition
and
m ore
of
an enclosure. M ovem ent
a fence
in some places
across
th rough mutual ag reem ent,
but
real
se paration
ver y limited
is
comes
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ex istence, from 1961-1989.
sp a c e
9
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N
NORTH KOREA I SOUTH KOREA
UNITED STATES I MEXICO
WEST BERLIN I EAST BERLIN
KO R E AN B OR D E R
JSA The solid black buildings are occupied by North Korea while the white are occupied by South Korea and the UN
The Korea Demilitarized Zone or DMZ is the buffer zone between North and South Korea. Within the DMZ is the Joint Security Area or JSA, where North and South Korean forces stand face-to-face. Inside the blue JSA conference room the border between North and South Korea is recognized as the center line of the central conference table. Meetings can happen at this table while members are in two separate countries as they speak to each other and negotiate. The border is highly militarized but the JSA is a neutral weapon free zone.
10
Trump shaking Kim Jong-Un’s hand across a symbolic concrete footer
Joint Security Area in the DMZ
DMZ - from above
U S - ME X I C O B OR D E R
“No wadays, the y [walls] are built more to pre v ent immig ration, ter rorism, or the flo w of ille gal dr ugs.” 11 (Simon Wor rall) “Ev er y wall is a door.” 13 (Ralph Waldo Emer son)
The diagrams, from the LA Times article, 5 Misconceptions about the U.S.- Mexico Border, show the reality of the U.S. - Mexico Border condition. 12 The border is manifested through different types of barriers that cover 32% of the 2,000 miles, placed accordingly to help mitigate the most high risk infiltration areas. “W here borders are drawn, po wer is e xercised”. The border line drawn doesn’t have to be a wall or barrier per-say but it does represent where the control, of immigration for example, takes place. The U.S. - Mexico border is unique in its hostile representation despite the strong interdependency the two countries have on eachother. This hard border condition represents a strong divide between economic prosperity levels which brings out the worse in authority figures who give in to their inherent human tendency to distinguish between “us” and “them”.
11
Location of “Teeter-Totter Wall”
Average daily totals of people entering from Mexico by bus, car or on foot at port entries grouped by port code in 2018
Types of barriers along the U.S. - Mexico border
Ronald Rael poses questions and propositions about the wall dividing the U.S. and Mexico, with the
occasional satirical twist. In his book, Borderwall as Architecture , Rael proposes projects that engage both sides of the wall and encourages the conceptual and physical dismantling of the border. His “Teeter-Totter Wall” was temporarily installed in Sunland Park, New Mexico. This project attempted to recognize the mutually dependent relationship between the U.S. and Mexico rather than the way our relationship is currently perceived, through the symbolism of a “single-sided wall”. The pink teeter-totters provide a way for the two countries to connect, as well as bring awareness about our interdependencies.
Other border concepts include a Baseball Wall, Library Wall, Wildlife Wall, and Swing Wall. Through these “counter proposals” and personals stories of those impacted by the border wall Rael’s whole book looks at how the border needs to take in to account the people, environments, cultures, and lives that inevitably cross it. 16 This ties back to how geo-political boundaries and hard borders affect soft border conditions around the world.
Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman described the US-Mexico border as a “national threshold” that should be “considered as a more porous border region”. We can’t ignore the “social and environmental systems that bridge divided nations.” The MEXUS proposal would treat the separation between the United States and Mexico as a transnational bio-region that takes in to consideration voices from both sides of the border and all impacted parties. 14 In their Manufactured Sites project Teddy Cruz and Fonna For man consider how Mexico’s relation with other countries, through maquiladora (factory in Mexico run by a foreign company) “can positively contribute to the community on which it depends”. The sur plus from these factories can sposor microinfrastructure projects for their own workers along the border. “It is a nimble and light for m of activism: engaging with the maquiladoras rather than opposing their presence, reimagining their exploitative relationship with their workers from the inside out.” 15
12
Reunite Graphic Art
Swing Wall
Wildlife Wall
Teeter-Totter Wall
Baseball Wall
Library Wall
Border ‘Region’
MEXUS is comprised of 8 watershed systems shared by Mexico and the U.S.
Manufactured Sites
60 miles of Trans-Border Urban Conflict
Cruz and Forman visualized the difference in land use on both sides of the border. “On one side it was huge swaths of color, representing the exclusionary zoning of San Diego. In Tijuana, you see a much higher pixelation and compacted mixed-uses,” Cruz explains. But the image demonstrates that mixed land practices are beginning to infiltrate the largeness on the San Diego side of the border? (Estudio Teddy Cruz + Forman)
US MX
“T he bo rder i s a w ay o f re i n fo rc i n g an t a g o n i sm t hat do e sn’ t e xi st” ( Fo n n a Fo r m a n ) 1 7 I am from North County San Diego and my family and I decided to experience the border for ourselves by walking across it at the San Ysidro border crossing. When you begin to approach the border from the U.S. side you are faced with a feeling a of hostility and the desire to “keep outsiders out”. In contrast, once we made it in to Tijuana, we had a very different experience. The beach was very welcoming and activities, such as swimming, playing, eating, and drinking happened right up to the wall/fence. Even the 30’ high steel columns were painted with bright colors and decorations. This fun, colorful park was a dramatic contrast to the bleak, deserted U.S. side. You couldn’t even walk up to the wall on the U.S. side because of the 80’ buffer zone
13
MEXICO
US
B E R L I N WA L L
“...walls become prisons, instr uments of e xclusion and division that se parate what was for merl y connected. T his a pplies to the wall built in 1961 by the GDR gov er nment around West Berlin and along the inner-Ger man border to pre v ent people living in their ter ritor y from leaving. Its protectiv e po wer ser v ed at most those in po wer. For the people of the GDR it was imprisoning.” (Unbuilding Walls) 19
The Berlin Wall is one of the best examples of a wall that took shape due to the enforcement of a political ideology which took priority over human life and peace. The fight between the GDR and the Societ Union was manifested in the physical separation that cut through neighborhoods, families, and an entire city. This border condition left scars in the Berlin’s society despite its fall in 1989. Many architects considered what should happen along the course of the border strip. Zaha Hadid’s painting, T he Dead Zone, expresses her fir ms thoughts: “In our eyes, the Wall zone could become a linear park. W here were once a concrete ribbon wall and no-go zone, we would lay down a strip of park, decorated with buildings.” (Zaha Hadid Architects) 18
14
Zaha Hadid - The Dead Zone, Berlin 2000
PARADOX
X
WHY
DO
WE
NE
“The business of a bo - Achille
16
EED
BORDERS
rder is to be crossed.” Mbembe
?
M E N D I N G WA L L RO BE RT F ROST
Robert Frost masterfully poses important questions the need for borders in his poem, Mending Wall 20 . Frost brings up a reason for why we build walls in line 24: the desire to keep possessions and resources separate even though the 2 neighbors trees stay separate despite having a wall or not. The neighbor goes on to say the ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’ as another reason to build the wall. The patter n of mending and building walls has been a part of civilization since the beginning of man. Frost draws attention to the blindness we exhibit as we adhere to traditions that don’t necessarily benefit us anymore. There seems to be an inherent need for delineation.
“Borders amplify the innate human desire to own and protect property and physical space, which is impossible to do unless it is seen — and can be so understood — as distinct and separate. Clearly delineated borders and their enforcement, either by walls and fences or by security patrols, won’t go away because they go to the heart of the human condition.” (Why Borders Matter) 21
17
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
There where it is we do not need the wall:
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
My apple trees will never get across
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
The work of hunters is another thing:
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there. I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each. And some are loaves and some so nearly balls We have to use a spell to make them balance: ‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: ‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offense. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him, But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather He said it for himself. I see him there Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
And he likes having thought of it so well
One on a side. It comes to little more
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
4
ESSENTIALS
“They were instead mutual expressions of distinct societies that valued clear-cut borders — not just as matters of economic necessity [ RESOURCES ] or military security [ SECURITY ] but also as a means of ensuring that one society could go about its unique business without the interference and hectoring of
its neighbors [ PRIVACY ].” (Why Borders Matter) 22
“People
have
building
walls
since
themselves
[SAFETY],
to
safe
what
spatial
definition
been to
a
keep sense
of
belonging
mankind is
theirs
became
sedentary-to
[RESOURCES]
[IDENTITY].”
and
(Unbuilding
protect to
give
Walls) 23
There are four essential reasons we, as humans, need borders today. We need a sense of privacy, the allocation of resources, reliable security, and recognition of identity. Borders can serve as symbolic gestures, physical barriers, and sensual separations. While these
factors play a large role in why we keep
borders a part of our lives, I don’t think our current perceptions about what borders should look like apply to solving these problems in todays world.
18
P
R
I
V A
C
Y
R E S O U R C E S
S E C U R I T Y
I D E N T I T Y
PR I VACY
Privacy is a fairly new desire and privilege among humans. The Har vard Law Re vie w - T he Right to Privacy 24 describes how new rights need to be recognized and the common law is always growing to meet the demands of society. What started as the “right to life” has tur ned in to the “right to ENJOY life”, which recognizes mans spiritual nature, feelings, and intellect. Privacy, or the “right to be left alone” comes in to play when we consider man’s enjoyment of life to include protection of his reputation and emotions. Public exposure on any level can lead to embarrassment, ridicule, and stifling of creative thinking or ambition. This Har vard Law Re vie w document was written in 1890, so today we are seeing a new need for adaptation in our growing digitally dependent world. Privacy today is becoming more of a security issue with the appearance of technologies that allow activities such as, identity theft and location tracking. We need borders to provide privacy as civilization advances, but how can our built environment provide a sensation of privacy and comfort in a world where borders are becoming irrelevant to fight against virtual exposure and vulnerability.
This graphic represents the contradiction of privacy in an urban versus rural environment. In the center there is the icon of a house surrounded by a forest and a space bubble. When you are physically distanced from any surrounding people you experience true privacy on all levels. In contrast, the outer white cube represents thin walls in a dense urban apartment situation. The surrounding figures perform intimate activities only feet from each other but experience the illusion of privacy due to the visual barrier the walls provide. Architecture can provide a sense of privacy in different ways but in an age of virtual exposure through the Internet and social media are these walls enough?
19
Figure 3
R E SO U RCE S
Some of the first walls were built in order to distinguish between one man’s possession and another man’s possession. An early far mer might have built a fence to show where his crop field ended, and his neighbor’s began. It is important that we gain from our own labor and not take advantage of someone else’s labor. If I work hard to grow grapes, I want to use those grapes to make wine for myself and whoever I sell it to. If I sacrifice my life to fight for the control over an area with more oil fields, I want to do with them as I please. Borders provide and indication of where one person’s or country’s resource ends and another’s begins. Since our natural resources inhabit the Earth’s surface, the most logical way to divide our resources is through horizontal lines drawn on a two dimensional map. The problem is maps treat the Earth’s surface as one big flat rectangular plane. In I Made Andi Arsana’s lecture, “Borders in a Borderless ASEAN” 25 , Arsna talks about the complex ocean boundary condition between Australia and Indonesia. The “seabed” border line does not vertically line up with the “water column” border line, creating a weird jump in the sectional condition. This being said, a fisher man that catches a sea cucmber in the same vertical volume as a fish has perfor med an illegal catch for one of those catches. While distinguishing resources is important it is more complicated then the two dimensional approach we take to defining territories on a map.
20
Sea Cucumber
Oil
Lumber
Fish
Water
SE CUR I T Y “It was walls that gav e people the security to sit and think. It’s hard to i ma gine a nov el being written in a world in which e v er y man is a war rior. Until a society achie v es security, it can’ t think about anything e xce pt the dangers all around it. As a consequence its culture will be limited.” (Simon Wor rall) 26
Security is one of the essential requirements for human beings. It is high on the priority list because originally it aided in our survival and evolution. The need for security today has transfor med from the original need for safety. When we first experienced safety from weather, wild animals, and other natural threats we were finally able to c o ntem p l ate, l ea r n, i nvent, a nd d i sc over. Today we think of security a little differently than protection from wild animals but we still reference primitive ways of guaranteeing our security. Our standard of living has excelled beyond our primal needs. We now desire protection of our freedoms, right to happiness, and financial stability. The fear of outside threat to these more complex desires gives way to a response similar to how cave-men responded to predatorial and natural threats. They built barriers. While it seems foolish to resort to wall building in this day and age, we still need walls to protect us from natural occurrences we can’t control. Clothes protect us from sun bur ns, roofs protect us from rain, walls protect us from pests, insulation protects us from weather, and even locked doors protect us from each-other. Barriers make sense on this intimate scale, but large scale efforts to protect ourselves from invaders, for example, make it obsolete. The invention of the aerial, nuclear, chemical, and cyber warfare render a 30 foot wall useless against attacks. With security as we know it today, are physical borders still necessary at a larger scale or should we adapt the way we think about borders to the security issues of today?
21
Early humans
Weather
Moder n times
Predators
Protection from
Enemies
Privacy
Freedoms
Protection of
I DE N T I T Y
“Sho ul d t he m o st val u abl e aspe c t o f be l o n g i n g t o a pl ac e be t hat yo u we re bo r n t here o r t hat yo u ac t i v e l y cho se i t an d c o n t ri bu t e d t o t hat so c i e t y ? ” “Bo undari es help u s fe e l l i k e w e kn o w w ho w e are o r at l e a st w hat so c i e t y w an t s us t o be. ” “In real i t y we do n’ t hav e ro o t s, w e hav e fe e t . ” - Mil ene Lar sso n 2 8
The use of borders to distinguish identity teeter totters on the edge of the “reasons we need borders list”. Originally the way cultures developed and diversified was through national identity but borders and the outline of nations is always changing. As Milene Larsson said in her Tedx Talk, Do We Need Borders to Define Our Identity?, “boundaries help us feel like we know who we are”. 27 However, how can we uses these ever changing lines to define our identity, especially when we ourselves are also constantly moving? While borders can give us a sense of place in this world, they should not exclude the rest of the world from finding their place. We can’t be possessive of our own identity or nationality because we need to tackle the world problems as if they are a “shared global responsibility”.
22
E X P LO R AT I O N
How do the blind and the deaf perceive privacy and barriers?
The construction of a wood frame cube around my desk allowed me to study how one can experience privacy and a sense of ownership in such an open work space, such as studio. Suprisingly, without any cladding, the frame itself already created a kind of psychological border around my desk. Passerby’s would avoid walking through the cube to get past my desk. Can privacy be protected with invisible borders as long as there some perceived limitation or barrier?
23
P A R A D O X
“W hy do we build the wall? We build the wall to k e e p us fre e T hat’s why we build the wall We build the wall to k e e p us fre e ” - Had estown 2 9
“ Ye s a more equ al w orl d for e v e r yone would com e with a cost, but are n’ t today’s bo rders that we think st an d for safet y an d st abi l i t y also fue ling global ine quality and social se g rogation which is precisle y what mak es t he w orl d le ss safe and costs a he ll of a lot m ore, not onl y in mo ne y.” - M ilene Lar sson) 3 0
24
Figure 4