Donald Trump has famously promised to build a “big beautiful wall” at the U.S.-Mexico border. Its construction could take more than three years and cost $21.6 billion, according to a report by the Department of Homeland Security, which has requested proposals for design-build prototypes. In February, Trump claimed it “is getting designed right now.” During his campaign, the President seized on the wall as a simple solution to complex problems of security and immigration. But, points out Ronald Rael, the editor of these collected writings, a wall already runs along 700 of the border’s 1,900 miles, and it is not effective: as former Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said, “You show me a 50-foot wall, and I’ll show you a 51-foot ladder.”
Rael, an associate professor in the departments of architecture and art practice at the University of California, Berkeley, and principal of the Oakland-based firm Rael San Fratello, gathered the essays by architects, academics, and authors to rethink the existing wall. He sought ways to “exceed its sole purpose as security infrastructure” and “make positive contributions to the lives and landscapes of the borderlands.”
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