LET’S MEET AT THE BORDER: Exploring Prefab Solutions of Border Walls for Social Encounters by Paco Mejias & Tanzil Shafique
LET’S MEET AT THE BORDER: Exploring Prefab Solutions of Border Walls for Social Encounters by Paco Mejias & Tanzil Shafique
The workshop proposes an exploration about the possibilities of the design for acting critically against politician's nonsense, specifically regarding borders. With this, we want to reclaim the designer's role as a real political agent, which means acting on behalf of public welfare and not as a mere tool of the capital and the political demagogy. The borders in human settlements have always been places for dynamic exchange and interaction, analogical to the way in which the different environments meet in nature through border zones of vivid ecosystems—as for example a rivershore. Using design as a tool for oblique resistance, we will assume the limitations imposed by the border system, retaining the control of people and goods exchange through the artificial separation, and yet subvert them in order for social interaction. The workshop will demonstrate that this condition doesn't mean the border as a deactivated zone but rather a new world of possibilities of architectural programs and aesthetic emotions. Further than merely the material exchange, architecture has been traditionally based also in framing the condition for invoking the social interaction through the mutual exchange of services, information and emotions. We will use this power for converting the border wall into a social interface and an aesthetic hub. The border represents the boundary condition of design's possibility for further exploration. What could be this border that brings people together and not separate them? To explore, let's meet there.