Life on the Border: The Architecture of the Trans-boundary Urban Space
Life on the Border: The Architecture of the Trans-boundary Urban Space.
Weitzman School of Design Upenn
“…the wall was not an object but an erasure, …It was a warning that -in architecture- absence would
always win in a contest with presence.”
Rem Koolhaas, Field Trip.
Professor. Germán Pallares
Description:
Architects are inherently border-making agents: building the primitive hut meant to ‘define the space’ of what was for ‘human’ activities in opposition to those belonging to ‘nature’, to set boundaries between the interior and the exterior. In time, villages, cities, and nations were established by similar kinds of divisions, leading to the necessity to redefine borders as shared spaces. Spatial objects in urban landscapes - buildings, walls, highways, bridges, portals, etc. - represent both physical and imaginary borders, and function as both isolating barriers and unifying seams that affect the everyday life of the dwellers in these liminal spaces.
In view that the world is experiencing a resurgence of extreme nationalist politics that threaten to ignite nation-states’ isolationist immigration policies, to gain a comprehensive understanding about trans-boundary living conditions becomes increasingly relevant and necessary. This course begins by understanding borders as “geographies of conflict” that transcend physical and political divisions. These inherently systemic territorial and cultural landscapes have been historically disturbed, and many times radically altered by political forces, resulting in situations of confrontation. Recognizing our role as border-making agents, architect Teddy Cruz asks, “Can border regions be the laboratories to reimagine citizenship beyond the nation-state?... Can architects intervene in the reorganization of political institutions, new forms of governance, economic systems, research and pedagogy, and new conceptions of cultural and economic production?” 1
This course considers the architecture that makes the borders of cities, regions, and nations. Case studies central to this course will include: the border shared between México and the United States, the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) of North-South Korea, and the land dividing Palestinian and Israeli territories. Other examples, like the Berlin Wall, will be used as analogue case studies. The seminar will critically assess how architecture has been leveraged to facilitate state and institutional control of space; but also, how architecture and it’s projective tools like maps, plans, signage, and patterns of use can act as operative forces for alienation, segregation, division, violence and surveillance, as well as the post-border potential of architecture for connection, communication, and collaboration.
